Rifkin's Festival

Cinema devotee Mort Rifkin (Wallace Shawn) accompanies his publicist wife Sue (Gina Gershon) to the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, worried that her fascination with her young film director client, Philippe (Louis Garrel), might be more than professional. In addition, Mort hopes the change of scenery will provide a respite from his struggle to write a first novel that lives up to his impossibly exacting standards.

Turned off by the lavish praise showered on Philippe's film, which he considers banal, Mort becomes preoccupied with the cinema classics he once taught as a professor, by masters like Bergman, Fellini, Godard, Truffaut, and Bunuel. Mort's relentlessly dismissive opinions of Philippe, Sue's current focus as a professional and someone she greatly admires, strains their already frayed relationship.

Mort's mood lightens when he meets Dr. Jo Rojas (Elena Anaya), a kindred spirit whose marriage to tempestuous painter Paco (Sergi López) is also causing her pain. While Mort's personal tastes have sometimes pushed people away, Jo's intellect and shared sensibility draw them closer together.

While Sue spends her days with Philippe, Mort's relationship with Jo deepens and he rekindles his love for classic films. Reflecting on the events of his life through the prism of those great movies, Mort finds renewed hope for his future.

Filled with absurdist humor, Woody Allen's RIFKIN'S FESTIVAL blends unreal situations with interwoven tales of romance and heartache to create a loving tribute to the transformative power of film.

About the Production

Woody Allen originally conceived of Mort Rifkin, the protagonist of RIFKIN'S FESTIVAL, as a younger man. "I had a very clichéd of the typical leading man in mind at first," he says. But when his longtime friend and former casting director Juliet Taylor suggested Wallace Shawn for the role, he changed his mind. "I thought, 'My God, how perfect! Wally has a comic persona as well as the ability to portray a poignant dimension," says Allen. "But most importantly, he has a genuine intellectual quality. Some of the actors I had considered might have been intellectuals, but they didn't give off that particular vibe. And I thought, 'why not use a real intellectual?' Once I made the shift in my mind, the person born to play the part emerged."

Shawn has previously played many memorable supporting roles in Woody Allen's movies, including RADIO DAYS, SHADOWS AND FOG, THE CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION, and MELINDA AND MELINDA, but few know that Allen actually launched Shawn's acting career. It happened when Juliet Taylor attended a performance of the first play Shawn ever acted in, Wilford Leach's "The Mandrake," and asked Shawn if he would like to meet Allen. "At that point, I had spent years writing plays, and I thought 'The Mandrake' would be my one adventure in acting," says Shawn. "But I went to Woody's office, and my memory-and this is a fantasy I think is that he was standing on a ladder looking at some books in a library, barely paying any attention to me. He asked if I was doing anything this summer. I said 'no.' And that was my audition."

The result was that Shawn played one of the most memorable cameo roles in all of Allen's movies, Diane Keaton's ex-husband Jeremiah in MANHATTAN. While Shawn was on-screen for a very brief time, his character was referred to often before his arrival, and consequently, his appearance in the film made a big impression. Soon, Shawn was fielding numerous acting offers. "After a couple of years, I realized I could make a living as an actor and support my playwriting and pay my bills," says Shawn. "Juliet and Woody discovered me. I would not be acting if it hadn't been for them."

Shawn sees Mort Rifkin as the greatest acting opportunity of his career. "It's a wonderful character and a gigantic challenge," he says. "I'm still in shock that Woody would have trusted me to this extent. I did pour my heart and soul into it in a way that surprised even me." Allen was very happy with the result. "I was thrilled to hear the way Wally played Mort," says Allen. "He did everything I wanted and came through."

Mort Rifkin is a former professor of film, who, after writing a screenplay many deemed "turgid," is making his second attempt at writing, this time with a novel. Despite his best efforts, he remains blocked and unable to reach the high bar he sets for himself, as he will accept nothing short of a masterwork. "He's constantly revising it and putting it off and trying it again and again, but he just doesn't have the gift," says Allen. "It's as simple as that. If you go through a million people, one person will have the gift." Mort's frustration with writing has turned him into a cantankerous man whose persistent gloom is threatening his marriage to his movie publicist wife Sue (Gina Gershon). "He's in a kind of low-grade state of depression," says Shawn. "He has somehow gotten into a rut of feeling that he's worthless if he doesn't write a great novel."

Mort accompanies Sue to the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, more to keep an eye on her than out of any desire to watch films. He is convinced that Sue is infatuated with her client, French filmmaker Philippe (Louis Garrel). "Philippe is a pretentious pseudo-intellectual," says Garrel. "Apparently he directed a movie that's 'against war,' which is a message everybody finds easy to agree with, so he gets a lot of praise when he's doing interviews." From Sue's perspective, however, Philippe is truly gifted, the kind of artist she is always searching for in her career. "Sue's passion is nurturing talent," says Gershon. "With Philippe, she feels she has a thoroughbred and she's excited by it. She believes in him and wants to push him to win all the awards at the festival. But Mort is not respectful and supportive of what she is doing."

In fact, Mort can't seem to miss an opportunity to ridicule everything about Philippe and his work. "Sue has a wonderful job," says Shawn. "Why would she want to be with Mort if he is mocking somebody she admires? But Mort is living, from his point of view, in a world of false values, where what is excellent and beautiful is ignored, and the words that should be applied to great films are being applied to sentimental pandering to the audience. Of course, he could keep that to himself. But because he's not in a good mood in his life, he's not motivated to be polite."

Mort's inner torments ultimately turn physical, and he begins to experience chest pains. While Sue, who has heard it all, chalks up Mort's ailment to tacos on the plane, Mort feels he urgently needs to seek medical help. Following a recommendation from a producer friend to see Dr. Joe Rojas, he is surprised to discover that the doctor is Dr. Joanna "Jo" Rojas (Elena Anaya). Almost as soon as they meet, Mort finds he has a surprising amount of things in common with Jo: a taste in cinema marked by a shared dislike for Philippe's films; a nostalgic love for New York City and Paris, and an unhappy marriage, "This is something that happens in life," says Allen. "Every once in a while, you know, you meet a person, and you come away thinking, 'I like that person. That person has the same outlook as I do; they have the same taste I do." Gradually, this initial encounter becomes deeper as Mort and Jo recognize how much they are truly kindred spirits. "I think that life sometimes gives us a gift, and that happened to Jo when she ran into Mort," says Anaya. "She is completely alone, desperate, and heartbroken in her marriage, and just at that moment, she runs into this person who happens to understand her and listen to her and help her. And she can see that he needs a friend too."

Jo's husband, Paco (Sergi López) is a selfish, tempestuous painter who constantly cheats on her and makes her miserable. "He's one of those guys who have a sense of privilege," says Allen. "He thinks, 'I'm an artist, I'm a genius, I don't have to obey the rules of the bourgeoisie, I can do whatever I want. I'm sexually free, and I can drink, and my wife has to accept me as I am." López believes that Paco behaves the way he does because he is in pain: "Paco is somebody with a lot of emotional troubles with his wife, with his life, with himself, with the universe. He's a grownup child, and Jo is more like a mother to him than a wife. When he says he'll kill himself, I don't think he means to do it, he just wants Jo to act like a mother and stop him." Jo is caught up in this toxic relationship with Paco, but she can't see a way out of it. "She's lovesick," says Anaya. "She loves Paco, and he loves her, but not in a good way, and that makes her suffer."

Shawn feels that Mort and Jo can provide for each other what both their spouses no longer can. "Her husband is exciting and romantic in a certain way, but I don't think he necessarily cares about a great deal of the things she cares about," says Shawn. "Mort is able to appreciate Jo in a way that her husband no longer does, and Jo is in a position to see admirable qualities in Mort that Sue is tired of."

Like Jo, many of the characters in RIFKIN'S FESTIVAL don't choose their romantic partners well. "It's a very common malady," says Allen. "There are a billion psychological reasons for it, and they're different in every case." Jo has a weakness for artists who don't treat her well, as her first husband was a poet, who left her for another young woman. "I think Jo is attracted to artists because she thinks artists understand life in a different dimension," says Anaya. "But she falls in love with the dream, not the real people. She thinks they'll be sensitive and beautiful, but instead, they are quite the opposite, they are brutal." Mort was also repeatedly drawn, dating back to his teenage years, to girls and women who rejected him, largely because they weren't interested in the kind of intellectual pursuits he was. He dated Doris (Tammy Blanchard) who didn't appreciate his refined taste for cinema, and, much to Mort's disappointment, Doris found his brother Jake (Steve Guttenberg) so much more to her liking that she married him. In Sue, Mort found somebody who idolized his intellectual prowess, but over time the marriage foundered due to his failure to live up to his potential. "They had a good relationship for a long time," says Allen, "but she grew tired of him. And one could make the case, 'who could blame her?' He was not at ease with the world." Gershon feels that Sue simply reached her limit on how long she was able to support Mort, and had given up on having romance in her life when Philippe appeared. "I don't think she meant to fall in love with Philippe," she says. "She's practical and not a flighty woman. But I think that all of a sudden he's presenting her with a life that she's always dreamed of living, and I think she felt at that moment that this was a second chance for her to follow her own mind and her own heart." Garrel sees an element of fantasy in the way Philippe courted Sue: "There is a mythology about Frenchmen and love, and I think the film plays with that idea in a comic way."

Unlike the other members of the cast, Wallace Shawn had previously worked with Allen many times, so was prepared for his approach, and knew what to give him. "I think that Woody enjoys a kind of spontaneity in acting," says Shawn. "If something seems artificially cooked up, he doesn't like it. He doesn't want actors to have a preconceived idea of how somebody would behave in a situation, and then try to imitate it. He wants you to not preplan and let your subconscious surprise you."

Gershon, who considers herself a character actress who, in her words, "puts stuff on my face and uses accents," found it challenging to play a role closer to Gershon herself. "It was difficult at first because he wanted me to just be myself and not add all these things, which honestly I've never done before," she says. "I was like, 'Wait, how do I just be me?' His first direction was, 'don't think. You're thinking too much, just don't think.' I went, 'Okay' and I didn't think from that point on. I just kind of behaved and went through it."

Elena Anaya describes working with Allen in a different light. "He would give amazing directions," she says. "Every note was so precise and so true. He said, 'When you said that line, you were thinking this, but you have to think that.' He was right. He was reading my mind. He was seeing everything that was happening inside of me."

As a long-time Woody Allen fan, Garrel was nervous when he first came on the set. "I've seen all of his films, and I was curious to find out how he works," he says. "I asked him, 'do you think I can add this and this?' And he said, "Yeah, just make this seem natural. Add what you want.' And I decided that he doesn't have a special secret, he's just looking for things to look natural."

Two-time Academy Award® winning actor Christoph Waltz joined the cast in the role of "Death," even though he had only one scene. "I wanted to work with Woody Allen," he says. "One scene is better than none whatsoever. Maybe next time I'll get two scenes. I'm happy to work my way up." Waltz's interpretation of the Grim Reaper is droll and surprisingly big-hearted: "He is very caring and concerned for the well-being of others," says Waltz. "He understands the concerns and worries of human beings, and he's very sympathetic."

Setting up two sharply contrasting visual expressions in the same film is a continuing aspect of Vittorio Storaro's four-time collaboration with Allen: for example, Storaro's differing treatments of vintage Hollywood versus the New York nightclub world of CAFÉ SOCIETY and his juxtaposition of the dingy apartment in which the characters live with the sumptuous colors of Coney Island in WONDER WHEEL. In RIFKIN'S FESTIVAL, Storaro photographs the exterior reality of the festival and San Sebastian in color and Mort's interior life in black and white. "Most people dream in color, but I think Mort because he identifies so much with the black and white movies he loves, dreams in black and white," says Storaro. "If you think about it, black and white photography is more imagination than reality, because black and white does not exist in nature." Storaro, who has written many books on the symbology of color, hasn't made a film in black and white since the beginning of his career. "If Woody or any other director would ask me now if I would like to do a black and white movie, I would say no," he says. "It's like you have a piano, and you have so many notes to play with. I don't want to go back to three: black, gray, white. But with RIFKIN'S FESTIVAL, I had the color side and the black and white side, which allowed me to have a visual dialogue."

Production designer Alain Bainée (VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA) and costume designer Sonia Grande (MIDNIGHT IN PARIS) are long-time friends who have worked on many films together. "Our collaboration is full and fluid," says Bainée. "Working with Vittorio Storaro, we were specifically focused on how the colors of her wardrobe would work in the sets I designed." The black-and-white sequences in the film presented special challenges. "We all agreed, since part of the film would be shot in black and white, and it was important to raise the color in the other areas, not only to differentiate the reality from the dream but also to give visual rhythm to the entire movie," says Grande. Bainée and Grande also endeavored to recreate the San Sebastian Film Festival as accurately as possible, to provide a believable background for Allen's comedy and characters. The film was shot on actual festival locations like Kursaal Building and Victoria Theater, but the logos of the festival were altered, and the posters had to be invented from scratch. "It was fun to try to make everything as realistic as possible while we made it all up," says Bainée. Grande paid close attention to details like the extras' dresses: "The surface finish of the background is something that is fundamental to me, and I am quite obsessive about the fine details," she says. "Everything is essential to the credibility and beauty of the film."

As a movie lover, Mort's identity and sense of what is important to value in life was forged by the films he saw in his formative years-in particular, particularly 50s and 60s movies by Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and others. "In the 50s and 60s, there was a tremendous preoccupation with 'what is the point of being alive?'" says Shawn. "Bergman was obsessed with that question and with those types of questions. Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA was soaked in that kind of preoccupation. And I think that it was really through watching these films that Mort came to feel that these are the important questions in life." Perhaps because he is always wrestling with these questions, Mort is attracted by churches, even though he is an essentially agnostic man who grew up Jewish. "Something draws him there, and maybe it's because churches have played important roles in those films that he thinks he'll get something out of walking around in there," says Shawn.

Allen thinks that Mort would like to be a believer: "Religion, God, the meaning of life or its lack of meaning is what's always on Mort's mind," he says. "And so that's why when a filmmaker like Philippe is making films about political subjects or war, even though these subjects are meaningful, to Mort they're not meaningful. Mort feels, as he states in the film, that even though you lived in a perfect world, these other questions would still be haunting and terrifying people."

Mort also got his ideas about love and romance from French movies like Truffaut's JULES AND JIM and Godard's BREATHLESS. "For Jules and Jim, love is the most important topic in a human's life," says Shawn. "I think Mort is also influenced by French film in his seriousness about that aspect of life, which he cares about so passionately." Allen sees the European films of that era as more grown-up about matters of love than Hollywood ones. "The Europeans were more mature sexually on the screen," he says. "A married couple did not have to sleep in twin beds. In Europe, that was laughed at. But after the Europeans influenced us, American directors made films where men and women could sleep together, and Hollywood endings didn't have to be happy."

When Mort is trying to deal with the issues that he's facing in life, like his fading marriage and his emerging feelings for Jo, he always looks through the filter of his love of classic movies. "Mort is a character that likes to dream awake because watching a movie can be like dreaming awake," says Anaya. "I think we all project in our dreams, whatever we want to get, whatever we want to live, or whatever we want to feel. Mort does that through cinema and movies." Mort's musings often lead him to take steps out of reality. "There are fantastical situations," says Shawn. "And yet Mort always behaves very believably and naturally, in a way that most people wouldn't behave if such fantastical situations ever happened in real life. But Mort can only be what he is. He can't be anything but wholly himself because he hasn't trained to be anything but himself."

RIFKIN'S FESTIVAL begins in a therapist's office, and the entire story is narrated by Mort looking backward at everything that happened to him not only during his trip to San Sebastian but throughout his entire life. Mort tells stories of his parents, his early relationships with women, his marriage, and his struggles to find meaning. In a sense, the audience is placed in the role of the psychiatrist, listening to Mort and trying to assemble the pieces of the puzzle that led Mort to be so unhappy at the beginning of the film, and if there might be hope for him. "When Mort meets Jo, it gives him a new lease on life," says Shawn. "He wakes up and he's regenerated. He didn't think he had it in him to have so much enthusiasm for something anymore, but he discovers that he does."