Whit Stillman – And Not Woody Allen – Should be Amazon’s Front-and-Center Auteur

If you hit any art house cinema this week, you’re apt to see a gorgeously stylized poster for Woody Allen‘s next nostalgia-laced film Café Society. The film has an all-star cast of bright, young things that includes Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, and Blake Lively. It also enjoyed a splashy — and controversial — debut at Cannes last month. But Café Society is noteworthy for another reason. It’s first film in the partnership between the cinematic legend and Amazon Studios. He’s got an original series with the streaming service due out later this year. Needless to say, Amazon considers Woody Allen a big “get.” They paid a reported $15 million upfront for it. (A typical Allen film goes for $5 million.)

Meanwhile, Whit Stillman‘s fifth film, the delicious Love & Friendship, is currently playing in art house cinemas. It, too, is Stillman’s first feature length collaboration with Amazon Studios. Stillman also made his first foray into television with Amazon with his sparkling pilot for The Cosmopolitans (which is sadly no longer available on Prime Video, but you can read Decider’s review here). Despite the similarities between Allen and Stillman’s relationships with Amazon, I can’t but help to feel like there’s been a bit more favoritism shown to Allen. You know, because he’s Woody Allen. And quite frankly, that surprises me because I think that it would be smarter for Amazon to angle Stillman, and not Allen, as their front-and-center auteur.

To be fair, I should back up and point out that Amazon Studios is hard at work assembling a stable of amazing auteurs. Jill Soloway, Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh, Nicolas Winding Refn and Alex Gibney all have shows or films with the streaming service. However, there’s a line that connects —and therefore contrasts— Stillman and Allen’s work. Both are straight white men who like to tear into societal norms with scathing wit and wry humor. However, Allen is considered a cinematic titan while Stillman’s work, despite sharing many similar hallmarks, has always been championed by a smaller audience. Stillman himself has joked that he was thrust into “director’s jail” for thirteen years after his third film, The Last Days of Disco, had a lukewarm box office reception. After bouncing back with the zany Damsels in Distress in 2011, Stillman discovered he had a new outlet — and a new audience — via streaming. He actually told Decider two years ago that he was unhappy that his first film, Metropolitan, had expired from Netflix due to a loss of streaming rights. The streaming giant had given the film the opportunity to reach more fans than ever before.

Here’s the thing: Woody Allen is going to have the platform to continue being Woody Allen with or without Amazon Studios’ help. If anything, working with Allen is an example of Amazon trying to be like any other arthouse studio. They are cozying up to a sure-thing director and not shining a light on what makes streaming superior to the old model: connecting lesser known auteurs with a larger audience. The beauty of streaming is that it gives audiences access to shows and films that might otherwise get lost in the mainstream shuffle.

Meanwhile, Stillman is hitting a new era in his oeuvre, and it’s being buoyed by Amazon’s patronage. Since Stillman produced The Cosmopolitans for the service, Amazon has been quietly championing his work. Okay, I’m going to say it: Right now, Stillman is doing more interesting artistic things with Amazon than Allen is. Love and Friendship is a breathtakingly brilliant take on Jane Austen, sexual mores, and the very nature of love in all its forms. Kate Beckinsale gives an astounding performance as Lady Susan Vernon, a seductive widow (who may or may not be the most charming sociopath ever caught on screen), and the little-known Tom Bennett steals the show in what is hands down one of the best comedic performances I’ve ever seen.

Cafe Society, on the other hand, sounds like your typical Woody Allen flick. A socially awkward dreamer stumbles around a glamorous world and wins the heart of a cute (and quirky) girl. Allen is narrating the film. It’s a lovely pitch, but it’s been done — a lot. Love and Friendship was a bold new take on a rather stale genre. Stillman’s latest work is marked by a glorious freshness, whereas Allen’s work is so influential that it’s almost become a cliché of itself. Furthermore, Stillman has a deep empathy for female characters and sees them as three-dimensional protagonists, as opposed to mysterious, and often manic, muses.

There is also, of course, the icky moral question of financially supporting Woody Allen’s work. While it’s completely possible to separate a great artist’s work from his or her life, there is an increasing pressure in the media to hold Allen accountable for his alleged sex crimes. So, is Amazon condoning Allen’s alleged abuse by funding him? That’s a question for a larger, and far more complicated, debate.

Any way you slice it, Amazon is in the process of cultivating a very specific aesthetic as a studio — and a streaming service. In contrast to the more populist vibes of Netflix and Hulu, Amazon wants Prime Video to feel like TV for The New Yorker-reading crowd. (See as an example: Amazon Original The New Yorker Presents.) In this regard, they should want to bet bigger on auteurs who are doing smart, savvy, and new things. They should zag away from the status quo. Woody Allen is part of the establishment that streaming can uproot, whereas Whit Stillman can be a uniquely “Amazonian” auteur.