Cafe Society 2016 ***

Every review of a Woody Allen film starts with a long précis of the writer/director’s career to date. Perhaps it’s understandable, since it’s often hard to see his films as individual pieces, and too easy to place them on a chart of the advance or decline of his storytelling. Café Society is a bitter-sweet romance which ably reteams Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg, the Hepburn and Tracey of the stoner generation from Adventureland and American Ultra, and builds around them a tragic-comic narrative in a F Scott Fitzgerald style. It’s a boy-meets-girl story in 1930’s Hollywood, with a neurotic anti-hero who briefly gets the girl only to see their relationship drift apart. With luminous leads and photography, Café Society is a strong and persuasive meditation of the fragility of love, and might just have some appeal to those unfamiliar with Allen’s back catalogue.