Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Rifkin’s Festival’ on VOD, in Which Woody Allen Regurgitates His Formula, Blander Than Ever

Woody Allen’s latest film, Rifkin’s Festival, debuts on VOD with a blip that’s barely on the radar – no surprise, considering how the specter of controversy continues to haunt the filmmaker, whose 30-year-old sexual abuse allegations were reinvigorated via the #MeToo movement, a busted film deal with Amazon and 2020 HBO docuseries Allen V. Farrow. But the filmmaker soldiers on, prompting separate-the-art-from-the-artist debates, and maybe some morbid curiosity, as he makes puffery like this, a comedy that’s a fill-in-the-proper-nouns Allen template script much like many others that came before it.

RIFKIN’S FESTIVAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Rifkin (Wallace Shawn) the story to his analyst, and I say “analyst” instead of “counselor” or “psychotherapist” because that’s been the proper Woody Allen nomenclature since the 1970s. He tells of the recent time when he went to the San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain with his wife Sue (Gina Gershon). He’s a former film professor who’s struggling to write a novel, and dreams in black-and-white homages to Persona, Citizen Kane, and Breathless. She’s the publicist for Philippe (Louis Garrel), a hot-shit director who’s new film is the talk of the festival. Is Sue secretly shtoinking Philippe? Rifkin’s almost sure of it, and it really grinds his gears, because he sees Philippe as a middlebrow hack who’d never be able to hang with Bunuel or Fellini.

Even worse for Rifkin, he has to hear Sue and everyone he meets hail Philippe as a genius. So instead of getting soaked in the peripheral spittle-spray of gross praise for the guy, Rifkin goes for long walks and contemplates the big questions he believes everyone should be considering at all times: Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life? What’s the purpose of life in general? And how come I can’t finish my book? Between his feelings of professional inadequacy, existential angst and Sue’s endless adoration for Philippe, Rifkin begins developing chest pains, and this being a Woody Allen picture, they’re almost certainly psychosomatic.

Once Rifkin meets the doctor who finds diddly-squat wrong with him, he begins wishing he had a smorgasbord of physical ailments. Turns out Dr. Jo Rojas is short for Joanne (Elena Anaya), and he’s instantly smitten with her. Coincidentally, her marriage is shit, and he happens to be in her office while she doesn’t bother to step away to have a heated conversation with her husband. So there’s his opening, and despite being a stammering schlep 30 years her senior reciting thrice-warmed-over, rarely amusing Woody Allen dialogue, Rifkin manages to entice her to go on cute little excursions for postcard picnics and leisurely strolls through flea markets. Meanwhile, as Sue and Philippe hop between parties, interviews and premieres, he reaches out and touches her face, prompting her to say, “Oh gosh, you’re touching my face now,” and then he replies, “Yeah.” Riveting stuff.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This feels like a moldering bottom-drawer Allen script along the lines of his most forgettable work: Anything Else, Whatever Works, Deconstructing Harry.

Performance Worth Watching: Gershon mostly acquits herself of this tepid and awkward script by giving her character – mostly sympathetic because her weariness of Rifkin/Allen’s shtick extends to the audience – a little effervescent pep.

Memorable Dialogue: I swear I heard this in one of the other 48 movies Allen has made:

“Who but a Jew would think of suing God?”

“Who but a Jew would have a slamdunk case?”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Those who want to dub this Basque Country-set movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona should hold their horses – Rifkin’s Festival is innocuous frippery, a retread for the filmmaker in almost every way. Unlike the last Allen movie I saw, 2017’s Wonder Wheel, it doesn’t subtextually rile the beast of public scrutiny that’s been gnawing at him; its female characters were unsympathetically rendered as shrewish, desperate and/or stupid. By comparison, Rifkin is bland and forgettable, a nicely photographed wisp of a story with lovely scenery and empty characters who inspire very little in the way of laughs or emotional investment.

Rifkin is yet another Allen-persona construct: Neurotic, unlucky in love, insecure, intellectual, self-involved, hypochondriacal, quick with a one-liner, etc. Shawn, looking as ever like a turtle without a shell – I mean that as a compliment – looks uncomfortable in nearly every scene, reciting flaccid dialogue, his mouth forced into a grin, a puzzled look on his face. Even he doesn’t seem to be buying the bull roar in this story, that anyone could find this jabbering ego of a character appealing enough to hang out with for 90 minutes, not to mention spending an entire afternoon with him as he squeaks and flusters and airs out his anxieties in front of gorgeous Spanish architecture or a sumptuously sun-dappled countryside. “I just love the way you say ‘reflux,’” Rifkin says to Dr. Jo. Poor Dr. Jo. Poor poor Dr. Jo.

Maybe, maybe this might’ve worked 30 years ago, when we weren’t worn down by Allen’s formula, and if there wasn’t a sense that he’s just getting through this thing, artless and workmanlike, calling scenes good after a single take. Interactions are stiffly staged with no comedic snap to the dialogue or visual gags, the latter of which are mostly relegated to the movie’s many on-the-nose pastiches to classic films (Christoph Waltz inspires pretty much the film’s only laugh when he turns up as a parody of Death from The Seventh Seal). Perhaps now we better understand why Allen writes so many protagonists who are stuck in a rut.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Even for the (very few) audiences still interested in watching a new Woody Allen movie, Rifkin’s Festival will be thoroughly underwhelming.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.