About Match Point
“Match Point” is a drama about ambition, the seduction of wealth, love, and sexual passion. Perhaps most importantly, however, the story reveals the huge part luck plays in events, refuting the misconception that more of life is under our control than really is.
In Woody Allen’s new film, “Match Point,” the writer / director proposes the notion that you can have great skill and even greater drive, but more often than we care to believe, it all comes down on the side of luck.
“We all like to think that we have so much control over our own lives and of our destinies,” says Allen. “You always hear people saying, ‘I make my own luck.’ We think if we work hard we will succeed and, yes, hard work is important. But people are afraid to admit how contingent their lives are on chance and luck.”
In “Match Point,” luck plays a large role in the ultimate fates of its central characters, beginning with Chris Wilton, a former tennis pro-turned tennis instructor. As luck would have it, Chris’ life takes a decidedly upward turn when he happens to be in the right place at the right time.
Chris has just landed a job as the tennis instructor at a very exclusive tennis club when he meets his first pupil, the to-the-manor-born Tom Hewett. Before long, the two have discovered a mutual interest in opera, and Tom invites Chris to join his family in their private box at the Royal Opera House. There, Chris is introduced to Tom’s sister, Chloe, who is immediately smitten by the handsome stranger. This is Chris’ entrée into a world of privilege and power, and it is impossible to know just how much of his reciprocal interest in Chloe is driven by Chris’ own ambitions. The enticements of wealth, however, prove no match for the seductive power of Tom’s stunning—and seemingly unattainable—American fiancée, Nola Rice.
Allen notes, “Chris is married to a very nice, perfectly lovely woman, and he does love her. But he has a passionate, lustful desire for Nola, which leads to problems because he not only has feelings for his wife, he has also been seduced into a very cushy lifestyle. He certainly has no intention of giving that up for Nola…even though he can’t keep his hands off of her.”
Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who stars as Chris Wilton, offers, “Chris likes Chloe very much; it’s just an added kicker that she’s got millions. It’s when he meets Nola that things really start getting calculated for him. Chris is genuinely greedy and lustful; he wants what he wants. He can be incredibly sweet, but he has great faults. He’s like every man out there, I suppose—given the right situation, any man would be tempted to cheat on his wife or girlfriend if the woman of his dreams walked in. Most guys wouldn’t think twice about it; they would just go and then suffer the consequences. You know if you go to bed with her, you’re in for a world of pain and guilt and lying…and eventually, you’ll be found out. You can’t get away with it; at some point, it’s going to come back and bite you in the ass. But you do it anyway, because your animal instinct wants what it wants. It’s like man’s morality versus man’s nature.”
A clue to Chris’ true character might be found in his well-worn copy of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. It could reveal that he is trying to better himself intellectually…or it might be a sign of his darker nature. Rhys Meyers remarks, “Woody says that Chris is a good guy who gets into a bad situation, but I think there is an undercurrent of danger to him. What he does is so purposeful and so callous.”
Woody Allen, who had first noticed Rhys Meyers in the film “Bend It Like Beckham,” says the actor has qualities that set him apart from others who were considered for the role of Chris Wilton. “The minute I started thinking about him for this role, I couldn’t get him out of my mind,” Allen recalls. “Other actors were recommended to me, but I kept coming back to Jonathan. He is a truly great actor — smoldering and intense and full of conflict and passion.
He’s got enormous power that he is able to project from the screen, which is a wonderful thing.” Rhys Meyers says he appreciated that Allen wanted what the actor could bring to his role naturally. “If Woody thinks you’re good and wants you for a role, then he knows that you can play that role. He’s probably the easiest director I’ve ever worked for because he doesn’t put too much pressure on you, and you respect him to such an extent that you bring your best game to a Woody Allen film.”
Speaking of best games, Rhys Meyers admits that tennis is not his. “I really had to concentrate on not looking like a total fool on the tennis court,” he laughs. “I’m a terrible tennis player. Any other game in the world would have been better for me, but Chris is a tennis player, so I had to practice a lot. We’re not known for tennis in Ireland. Actually, the character was originally not Irish; they made him Irish because I am, so that became a little private joke because there aren’t many Irish tennis players.”
Scarlett Johansson, who stars as Nola Rice, believes her character is more desperate than diabolical. “Nola is a survivor. She comes from a small town in Colorado and doesn’t want any part of her past. She is always looking ahead at her future and the possibilities. She wants to make it, to have the best in life. There is a certain desperation in a person who is unable to live in the moment, but is always wanting more. When you’re in that kind of situation and unsatisfied with your life, it can be a dangerous place to be, mentally and emotionally. I loved how at the beginning of the story she is this very sexy, sensual character, and then she reveals herself to be just a neurotic person.”
Woody Allen states that putting Johansson in the role of Nola was nothing less than a casting coup. “Scarlett Johansson is a home run with the bases loaded. She’s got everything: she’s a fabulous actress, she’s beautiful, she’s young, she’s sexy…she just projects sensuality and intelligence. She’s got tremendous range—she can be funny, she can be dramatic; it would not surprise me if she sang and danced and did card tricks.”
Johansson responds that the opportunity to work with Allen was one of the main things that drew her to the project. “I’ve always been a huge fan of Woody’s and have always wanted to work with him. When the opportunity came to me, I said I didn’t even need to read the script; I just want to go. But luckily, the script was as good as I had expected, so I flew to London and we started working. It was very quick.”
The term “quick” might be an understatement. Allen explains, “For her first scene, Scarlett flew all night from New York to London, got in at 7:00 in the morning and came directly to the set, not having slept at all. She came right in and did a complicated, dramatic scene and did it brilliantly.”
“I love working with Woody,” Johansson says. “He’s very easy to communicate with and is very open to ideas. He can help you if you need it, but he’s the kind of director who says, ‘You’re an actor; you know how to do your job. I hired you because I believe you can do this part and have a good take on it.’ He’s just great.”
The lone American in the cast, Johansson is also, like Allen, a native New Yorker, so the two developed an instant affinity on the London set of “Match Point.” “We were both born and raised in New York, and we have a similar sense of humor,” the actress offers. “He just cracked me up all the time.”
Emily Mortimer portrays the woman at the opposite end of the spectrum from Nola, Chloe Hewett Wilton. “One thing I found very daunting about playing Chloe was that she has very little subtext. What you see is what you get, and what she says is what she means. That doesn’t mean she is an uninteresting person, she is just very confident and very happy.”
Mortimer continues, “Being someone like that, when Chloe meets this dark, handsome guy—who obviously comes from a completely different background from her, reads Dostoyevsky and has this fascination with fate and the tragic—to her he seems deeply desirable. I think Chloe sees Chris as beautiful, but in a dark and mysterious way. Unlike her, he has a lot going on beneath the surface and she is captivated by his depth. She falls in love with him and her love is steadfast, and although behind her somewhere terrible things are happening, she goes through life blithely believing that everything is going to be all right. Woody described it brilliantly as the arrogance of class—nothing has ever gone wrong in her life, so she doesn’t expect it ever will.”
Allen says he was thrilled to cast Emily Mortimer in the role of Chloe. “I had seen Emily in other films, and I always thought she was great. I felt lucky to have an actress of her caliber in the part. I knew the role would sing in her hands, and it did.”
Through happenstance, both Nola and Chloe come into Chris’ life via his newfound friendship with Tom Hewett, played by Matthew Goode. “Tom is the son in a very wealthy, oldmoney family,” Goode remarks. “Ostensibly, he’s a sweet guy who’s looking out for his sister, Chloe. He is engaged to Nola, but there is a time bomb on that relationship. She is beautiful, and maybe he even wanted to rile his family by going out with her in the beginning. But basically, he is a bit of a mummy’s boy, really, and his mother isn’t happy about his choice of a girlfriend.”
“Matthew was a find for me,” says Allen. “I saw his tape and it was, ‘Who is this guy?’ I read with him in England and he was terrific. I knew we had to use him. He’s a wonderful actor and he’s dynamite looking; he was born to play this part. I told the cast to feel free to improvise, and Matthew improvised throughout the movie. He created this aristocratic young man in a way I could never have done.”
Tom and Chloe’s parents, Alec and Eleanor Hewett, are played by veteran British actors Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton. Cox notes, “Alec is the patriarch of the family. He thinks he can buy anything, including happiness; it seems to be the logical extension of wealth. When Tom introduces Chris to the family, Alec recognizes that this young man is very important to his daughter’s happiness, and he is prepared to pay for that.”
“I’ve always admired Brian Cox,” Allen states. “He told me he was amazed that I wanted him to play the aristocratic father, and I was thinking, ‘You’re Brian Cox; you can play anything you want.’”
“Only a New Yorker would cast me in such a role,” Cox laughs. “For years, I had been trying to get roles like this in England, and no one would cast me. It was wonderful to finally be cast as ‘posh.’ I was also very impressed by the script. I thought it was a great script written by a great writer. There are very few true creative giants, and Woody is among the top.”
Penelope Wilton agrees. “I was thrilled to be asked to be in this film because all of my adult life I’ve seen Woody Allen pictures and waited for the next one to come out. It was an amazing experience finally to work with him. His humor and storytelling are brilliant. His films are about things that might happen to any of us. He also doesn’t make moral judgments; like all great artists, he just puts it out there for you to make up your own mind about it.”
“Penelope is such a fine actress. She came in and made a real contribution to the role of the mother,” Allen comments. “She made Eleanor come alive in a very specific and very dimensional way.”
In keeping with the central theme of the movie, Allen asserts that he was very lucky to have had the cast he had for “Match Point,” not just in the main roles, but for every part. “One of the lucky things that happened was that even the one-line actors in the picture were fabulous.
They all came in and contributed something. They didn’t just do the line and go home, they made it into something. Sometimes they ad-libbed, sometimes they just did the line as written, but they were all wonderful. I let the actors have a lot of freedom. Often their instincts are better than mine; they know what they’re doing.”
Given that the writer/director was working for the first time in London, where the dialect is decidedly different from that of New York, it was especially important to give his English cast more latitude on the script. Emily Mortimer attests, “The one thing he told us was to feel free to change the dialogue to fit how the English would say things. He told us just to make it natural.”
Match Point (2005)
Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Brian Cox, Emily Mortimer, Alexander Armstrong, Morne Botes, Rose Keegan, Miranda Raison, Penelope Wilton
Screenplay by: Woody Allen
Production Design by: Jim Clay
Cinematography by: Remi Adefarasin
Film Editing by: Alisa Lepselter
Costume Design by: Jill Taylor
Set Decoration by: Caroline Smith
Art Direction by: Diane Dancklefsen, Jan Spoczynski
MPAA Rating: R for sexuality.
Distributed by: DreamWorks Pictures
Release Date: January 20, 2006
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