But it's a hat that fits Allen's new protagonist handily. David is Boris Yellnikoff, a brilliant (or so he says) physicist, divorced from his wife, no longer teaching at Columbia, and making a paltry living tutoring chess to pipsqueaks (and berating them mercilessly). He walks with a limp - souvenir of a failed suicide - and lives in a walk-up on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
In fact, here's something new for Allen: Returning to hometown New York after exploring England and Spain in his latest films, he's tumbled on virgin territory - Chinatown duck shops, cheap Italian cafes, East Village flea markets. Boris even has a line about how he once lived in the tony Beekman Place neighborhood. This is an altogether funkier, more diverse, colorful view of the city. It's as if, having discovered the urban pleasures of London and Barcelona, Allen is seeing Manhattan with fresh eyes.
So, the tale? It, too, takes off from familiar precincts: A much younger woman - a kid, really - enters the picture, befriending and beguiling the much older man. Melodie St. Ann Celestine is her name, a baton-twirling runaway from the Deep South who shows up on Boris' block. She's broke, she's alone, she's a cultural ignoramus - so, of course, Boris takes her in.
"Imbecile child, brainless inchworm," he grumbles at her, telling his buddies that even a Pygmalion makeover wouldn't work on this Mississippi Eliza Doolittle. (She's like "a character out of Faulkner, not unlike Benji," Boris snarks.) Evan Rachel Wood displays delightful comic chops as Melodie - walking that fine line between dumb blond parody and an authentic bumpkin with keen instincts and a good heart. Wood's not quite as screwball as Judy Holliday's Billie in Born Yesterday, but the two are kindred spirits.
