He may have already taken the film to Cannes, but West Yorkshire represents a quirky step away from the regular festival beat for a man who in his mighty heyday once found it hard to set foot beyond the Brooklyn Bridge. Plotwise, film-goers in Bradford will be greeted in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger by the usual focus on marital disharmony and renewal through infidelity. Anthony Hopkins is married to Gemma Jones, whose daughter Naomi Watts is married to Josh Brolin, who has a thing for Freida Pinto while Watts finds herself falling for Antonio Banderas. Here’s a taster of what Bradford can expect.
Watch the trailer for You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Allen’s casting seems to be getting more and more eccentric. Because he now films in Europe – this is his fourth film set in London – and casts more non-American actors, he no longer does his famously impersonal auditions. You’ve read about them in countless interviews, the ones in which extremely well-known actors go to his place on the Upper East Side to be looked up and down, briefly thanked and sent on their way. Result, the cast list for You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger may well be Allen’s most bizarre and randomly summoned yet. Look out also for Ewen Bremner, Anna Friel (last seen entirely bald in Come Fly With Me) and Pauline Collins. The game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, in which you have to name any actor and get them back to Bacon in half a dozen leaps, just got a whole lot easier.
- The Bradford International Film Festival from 16 to 27 March
- Find Woody Allen on Amazon
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