Match Point (2005)
Overview
Luck, ambition and the edge of the net
Match Point begins with a tennis ball suspended above the net and the idea that, sometimes, winning or losing comes down to which side it falls. That image becomes the film’s governing principle. Chris Wilton is intelligent, observant and ambitious, but his progress through London society depends as much on chance as calculation.
The move away from New York gives the film a noticeably different atmosphere. London is elegant, wealthy and controlled on the surface, while underneath it sits a story about desire, class, guilt and the uncomfortable possibility that morality may matter less than luck.
It is one of Woody Allen’s darkest films, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers at the centre as Chris and Scarlett Johansson bringing volatility and vulnerability to Nola Rice.
Watch Match Point
My review
When luck becomes a moral system
There is something immediately different about Match Point. The familiar rhythms of New York have gone, the comedy has largely disappeared and London seems to have changed the temperature of the filmmaking. Everything feels cooler, more controlled and more dangerous.
The opening image tells us exactly what the film is interested in. A tennis ball strikes the top of the net and hangs for a moment before falling to one side or the other. We like to believe that success follows talent, effort or good judgement. Match Point keeps returning to the far less comforting idea that sometimes the decisive factor is simply luck.
Chris Wilton understands the world he wants to enter almost immediately. He recognises the manners, interests and behaviour expected of him and adapts accordingly. Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays him with an effective restraint. Chris rarely needs to announce what he wants because we can see him quietly calculating how to reach it.
What makes the film especially unsettling is that ambition itself is not presented as the problem. Chris wants money, security, opportunity and a place in a world that has previously been beyond his reach. None of that is particularly shocking. The darkness comes from discovering what he is prepared to do when the life he has constructed is threatened.
Scarlett Johansson brings a completely different energy to the film. She had already made a huge impression on me in Lost in Translation, a film that is always somewhere in my personal top ten of all time, so I came to Match Point particularly interested in seeing what she would do with Nola Rice. She is emotional, uncertain and volatile in a world where almost everyone else seems determined to maintain appearances, and there is something immediately dangerous about the attraction between Chris and Nola.
What I like about Johansson's performance is that Nola never feels like a simple temptation placed in Chris's path. There is insecurity, frustration and vulnerability underneath the confidence. The more unstable her situation becomes, the more the controlled world around Chris begins to look as though it could collapse with her.
London was another reason I was particularly interested in the film. I lived there from 1989 to 1999, so I was excited to see how Woody Allen would use my old hometown after spending so much of his career making New York such an important part of his films. I knew London well from the ten years I lived there, so I was curious to see which parts of the city Allen would choose and how familiar places would look through his camera.
And London is crucial to Match Point. The galleries, restaurants, country houses, offices and expensive apartments create a world that Chris desperately wants to belong to. Allen doesn't try to turn London into another Manhattan. It has its own character here: elegant, affluent and apparently ordered, but with something much colder underneath. The city is photographed beautifully, yet the elegance never feels comforting. Instead it becomes part of the trap. The better Chris's life becomes, the more he has to lose.
The use of opera adds another layer. These huge voices and doomed emotions sit over a film in which the central character spends much of his time trying to suppress emotion, control consequences and keep disorder outside the carefully arranged life he has built.
What stays with me most is the film's refusal to offer the moral reassurance we instinctively expect. Woody Allen has explored guilt, responsibility and chance before, but here those ideas are stripped of much of the humour that usually surrounds them. The result is colder and considerably more disturbing.
By the end, the tennis ball from the opening no longer feels like a clever metaphor. It feels like the entire argument of the film. Character matters. Choices matter. Morality matters. And yet there are moments when chance may matter more than any of them.
Cast & characters
Desire, ambition and the Hewett family
At the centre of Match Point is a small group of people whose lives become increasingly tangled as Chris Wilton moves into the wealthy world of the Hewett family.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Chris Wilton
A former professional tennis player who takes a job teaching at an exclusive London club. Intelligent, watchful and ambitious, Chris quickly learns how easily his friendship with Tom Hewett can open doors into a very different world.
Scarlett Johansson
Nola Rice
An American actress struggling to establish herself in London. Nola's confidence is mixed with insecurity and frustration, and her attraction to Chris introduces an unpredictability that neither of them is able to control.
Emily Mortimer
Chloe Hewett Wilton
Tom's sister and Chris's route into the Hewett family. Chloe is affectionate, trusting and genuinely committed to Chris, while the wealth and connections of her family transform the possibilities available to him.
Matthew Goode
Tom Hewett
Chloe's brother and the first member of the Hewett family Chris befriends. Their shared interest in opera quickly develops into a friendship, giving Chris his introduction to the family's affluent social circle.
Brian Cox
Alec Hewett
Tom and Chloe's wealthy father. Generous towards Chris and impressed by his potential, Alec is able to provide the professional opportunities and financial security that Chris has never previously enjoyed.
Penelope Wilton
Eleanor Hewett
The Hewett family matriarch. Eleanor is protective of her children and far less convinced by Nola than the rest of the family, particularly when it comes to Nola's ambitions as an actress.
Music & soundtrack
Opera carries the weight of the film
Match Point has a very different musical character from many of Woody Allen's films. Instead of the jazz and popular songs so closely associated with his New York work, the soundtrack is dominated by opera.
At its centre are historic recordings by the legendary tenor Enrico Caruso. His voice gives the film an almost timeless quality, bringing enormous emotion to a world whose central character is constantly trying to keep his own emotions under control.
At the centre of the soundtrack
Enrico Caruso
Five of the nine tracks on the released soundtrack feature Enrico Caruso, whose recordings bring a distinctive sound to the film. They carry all the surface noise and distance of another era, which suits a story preoccupied with fate, desire, guilt and consequences.
For me, the choice works beautifully. The scale of the voices makes Chris's private decisions feel much larger than the controlled, affluent world in which he is living. Long before the story reaches its darkest point, the music already seems to know where things are heading.
Selected pieces
Music from the film
Giuseppe Verdi
Mal reggendo all'aspro assalto
Il Trovatore
Enrico Caruso
Giuseppe Verdi
Un dì felice, eterea
La Traviata
Monika Kraus & Georg Tichy
Antônio Carlos Gomes
Mia piccirella
Salvator Rosa
Enrico Caruso
Giuseppe Verdi
Gualtier Maldè!... Caro nome
Rigoletto
Alida Ferrarini
Georges Bizet
Mi par d'udir ancora
Les Pêcheurs de perles
Enrico Caruso
Gioachino Rossini
Arresta e quali sguardi
Guillaume Tell
Janez Lotric & Igor Morozov
Giuseppe Verdi
O figli, o figli miei!
Macbeth
Enrico Caruso
Giuseppe Verdi
Desdemona
Otello
Janez Lotric & Igor Morozov
Gaetano Donizetti
Una furtiva lagrima
L'elisir d'amore
Enrico Caruso
The sound of Match Point
“The opera gives the film a sense of tragedy long before Chris understands just how dangerous his choices have become.”
Locations
London, wealth and the world Chris wants
Match Point was Woody Allen's first feature film made entirely outside New York, and London gives it a very different visual identity.
The film moves through tennis clubs, galleries, expensive homes, restaurants and some of the city's most recognisable modern architecture. This is a prosperous, polished London that fits perfectly with the life Chris Wilton is trying to enter.
The setting
London
Allen had spent decades making New York instantly recognisable in his films, but he approached London differently. Rather than relying entirely on the city's most obvious landmarks, Match Point spends much of its time in the affluent neighbourhoods, cultural institutions and modern architecture that surround Chris's new life.
The South Bank, West Kensington, Belgravia, Pimlico, Covent Garden and St James's all contribute to the film's picture of the city. London looks attractive throughout, but there is a formality and distance to it that suits the story particularly well.
Selected locations
Around the city
West Kensington
Queen's Club
The prestigious tennis club provides the setting for Chris's work as a tennis instructor and establishes his first point of contact with the wealthy world he will eventually enter.
South Bank
Tate Modern
The former Bankside Power Station and the surrounding South Bank help give the film a distinctly contemporary London backdrop. The vast industrial architecture and changing light made the location especially attractive to the filmmakers.
City of London
30 St Mary Axe
Better known as the Gherkin, the building appears as part of the modern financial London surrounding Chris's professional rise. Both its exterior and interior caught Allen's attention when the locations were being chosen.
Westminster
St James's Park
The park was useful for the long walking conversations Allen often stages between his characters. Its open paths allowed him to retain something of the extended walk-and-talk style familiar from his New York films.
Covent Garden
Covent Garden Hotel
The hotel is among the fashionable London settings used throughout the film, reinforcing the restaurants, clubs and expensive social spaces that increasingly surround Chris.
Central London
Belgravia & Pimlico
Streets and homes in these wealthy neighbourhoods provided the sort of surroundings needed for the Hewett family's world. Production designer Jim Clay introduced Allen to areas that suited the family's money and social position.
Beyond London
Englefield House
Berkshire
The Hewett family's country estate was filmed at Englefield House near Reading in Berkshire. Its grand house, grounds and unmistakable sense of inherited wealth expand the social world Chris encounters through Tom and Chloe.
It also makes the difference between Chris's original circumstances and the life now available to him immediately visible. By this point, his attraction to the Hewett world involves far more than money alone.
London in Match Point
“Allen finds a London that is beautiful, expensive and controlled — exactly the kind of life Chris has decided he wants.”
Awards & recognition
Major recognition on both sides of the Atlantic
Match Point received some of the strongest awards recognition of Woody Allen's later career, particularly for his screenplay and for Scarlett Johansson's performance.
The film reached the Academy Awards, earned four Golden Globe nominations and received further recognition across Europe, including a Goya win for Best European Film.
78th Academy Awards · 2006
Academy Awards
Nomination
Best Original Screenplay
Woody Allen
63rd Golden Globe Awards · 2006
Golden Globes
Motion picture
Best Motion Picture — Drama
Director
Woody Allen
Screenplay
Woody Allen
Supporting actress
Scarlett Johansson
Festival de Cannes · 2005
Cannes
Out of Competition
Match Point was selected for the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, where it screened Out of Competition.
The Cannes appearance gave Allen's first London film a major international platform before its wider theatrical release.
European recognition
Further honours
Goya Awards · 2006
WinnerBest European Film
Woody Allen
César Awards · 2006
NomineeBest Foreign Film
Woody Allen
Recognition
“The screenplay, Scarlett Johansson's performance and the film itself all found recognition during an unusually strong awards season for Allen.”