Magic in the Moonlight

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Woody Allen/Starring: Colin Firth, Emma Stone, Marcia Gay Harden, Jackie Weaver, Eileen Atkins and Simon McBurney

A world famous magician with the stage name Wing Ling Soo also uses the persona of a Chinese mystic in his act. Offstage, he is an arrogant, peevish British man named Stanley (Colin Firth) who disdains anything and everything metaphysical. His friend, a fellow magician Howard Burken (Simon McBurney), has made the acquaintance of an American woman who claims to be a medium with psychic powers. While Stanley scoffs at the notion of a spirit world, he agrees to meet the woman and sit in on a seance. Howard claims the woman has abilities he can't readily dismiss though his career as a magician has inured him to every kind of spiritualist's trick.

Of course Stanley scoffs at the medium's professed powers; asserting his superiority as a debunker of spiritualists. When he meets the medium/psychic; an attractive, young woman named Sophie Baker (a lovely Emma Stone), he is treated to feats of her psychic powers. She is able to almost guess his vocation though he insists he is in the import/export business. An American woman named Grace (Jackie Weaver) and her son Brice (Hamish Linklater) play hostess and host to Stanley, Sophie and her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) in their vacation home in the south of France.

Before the seance, Stanley and Sophie cross swords over the supposed phoniness of the supernatural and the spirit world. He is determined to prove that Sophie is a charlatan, even it means alienating her and all who are gathered. The mutual attraction between magician and medium is undeniable, which is complicated by Stanley's engagement to another woman and Brice's feeble courtship of Sophie.

When the seance commences, Stanley sits apart from the proceedings, watching for anything fraudulent. When a candle begins to float, Howard excitedly claims he is unable to account for the phenomenon or the attendant thumping sounds. Days after the seance, Stanley begins to believe her abilities are genuine, which has a profound effect on him and his disagreeable personality. The possibility of a spirit world; a world even skeptics wish was real, impacts Stanley's emotional life. His demeanor changes, leaving him more optimistic about life. He also falls in love with Sophie.

While one watches Stanley fall hopelessly under Sophie's spell, one wonders if Woody's rational mind has accepted the possibility of the metaphysical. Later in the film, when Stanley's aunt lies in a hospital bed, on the verge of death, his vigorous prayers in the chapel are a startling contrast to his once unassailable bastion of reason. He abruptly stops praying, realizing that what he is doing is absurd, which leads to his suspicion of Sophie's alleged powers.

The issue of reason confronting the supernatural world should be fertile ground for a compelling drama/comedy but somehow the story and action can't reach escape velocity, leaving us with an occasionally charming romance but nothing more. It's not that Colin Firth and Emma Stone can't sell their characters. Their exceptional acting skills are more than a match for Woody's story. What went wrong? One wonders if Woody hurried the production without fully exploring the philosophical issues at play. Some scenes seem partially lifted from his earlier films, particularly one where Stanley and Sophie happen upon an observatory Stanley has known from the past. It recalls the scene in Manhattan, where Woody and Diane Keaton seek refuge in a planetarium. It's glaringly obvious how and why the observatory fits into the film's theme. Much less obvious is Stanley's reaction to the star and moon-filled sky after the observatory ceiling is opened. It's Sophie who gazes in wonder while Stanley sees the beautiful spectacle more matter-of-factly.

Cinematographer Darius Khondji brings some vivid color to the Provencal landscape as well as Emma Stone's lustrous, blue eyes and her hair's coppery allure. At times her face is bathed beautifully in lambent light. We can see why Stanley would fall prey to Sophie's passive charms.

The dialogue, as one might expect of Woody, is smart and occasionally witty but it gets a little clunky at times when some scenes play a little long.

My immediate assessment wasn't that of some critics who have savaged the film. Maybe I was expecting very little after reading the review in the New York Times, but after the tight, beautifully acted Blue Jasmine, it seems like a letdown. It's probably unfair to dismiss his film so, given the fact that Woody fans hold him to a higher standard. It may also be unfair to expect a Crimes and Misdemeanors from him with every new release.
Magic in the Moonlight isn't a failure but it's far from an artistic success. Save for some magical moments between Firth and Stone, it leaves one shrugging one's shoulders. Maybe the film would have worked better as a farce? Maybe not, but it might have been more fun than what unfolded onscreen. Or maybe not.