The director was already struggling to finance his films, but saw the industry almost completely turn his back on him after his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow accused him of sexually abusing her when she was a child.

Woody Allen denies these accusations, for which neither of the two investigations launched have succeeded.

"Rifkin's Festival", available online and in a few theaters in the United States, will not be released until Wednesday in France, one of the countries where the public is most loyal to the filmmaker, two years after its presentation at the opening of the San Francisco festival. Sebastian (Spain).

It was also shot on location, with a certain Mort Rifkin, a failed and hypochondriac writer, as the main character.

Actor and playwright Wallace Shawn, close to Woody Allen and accustomed to supporting roles, embodies this Jewish intellectual obsessed with women, religion and the meaning of life - a semi-autobiographical character omnipresent in the East Coast filmmaker.

A former film professor, lover of the great European directors of the 20th century and of the New Wave, Rifkin travels to San Sebastian to accompany his wife, Sue (Gina Gershon).

He suspects the latter, press secretary in the cinema, of having an affair with the fashionable director she is looking after and for whom he has the greatest contempt, Philippe (Louis Garrel, perfect in the role of the filmmaker face to face slaps and nonchalant).

Pastiches

Inevitably, for his part, Mort will fall in love with another woman, Jo (Elena Anaya), a cardiologist much younger than him, whom he will consult under all pretexts, before trying to free her from the grip of her husband, a passionate but violent entertainer played by Sergi Lopez.

At 86, the author of "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan" does not leave the beaten track.

The repartee is sometimes tasty, but the situations somewhat hackneyed, in a comedy in the form of a tribute to 20th century European auteur cinema.

Bergman, Fellini, Godard, Truffaut, Buñuel... The film is sprinkled with nods to the great directors whom Woody Allen venerates, he who makes his character say, sorry for contemporary cinematographic production, that in the history of cinema, "the Europeans have arrived and the films have become adults".

Allen himself appeared weary, during an interview given to actor Alec Baldwin, on the latter's Instagram account, at the end of June, where he did not rule out his 50th film, which he must shoot in Paris in September, the last.

"I'm probably going to do that extra movie but a lot of the excitement has evaporated," he said.

"I don't have as much fun making a movie and having it shown on the big screen anymore," he added, referring to the arrival of streaming.

Is Woody Allen like the character of "Rifkin's Festival", overwhelmed by the evolutions of the world around him, and finding only the classics of the 7th art as his only refuge?

In the film, Rifkin dreams, in black and white, replaying in pastiche mode cult scenes from his favorite films, from "Jules and Jim" to "A man and a woman", until finding himself, as in "The Seventh Sceau", to play chess with death (played by Christoph Waltz)... which enjoins him to watch his cholesterol to postpone the deadline!

Crossed during a private screening of the film in Paris, the director Claude Lelouch smiled at the impertinent homage made by the New Yorker to his cinema: "He dares everything!", He let go, leaving the session.

© 2022 AFP