Parents' Guide to Rifkin's Festival

The movie may take place at the annual San Sebastian Film Festival, but this underwhelming comedy is really Allen's Film Festival. Main character Mort Rifkin is an authority in film history, and it's pretty clear that he's serving as a stand-in for Allen here. In Rifkin's Festival, the director reshoots iconic scenes from works by well-respected European directors, working his avatar's life into them. Film buffs may enjoy identifying the original work and seeing whether they agree or disagree with Rifkin's take on attitudes about the cinematic giants. But mostly it's a self-serving endeavor, giving Allen the pleasure of stepping into the shoes of those he admires.

That includes himself: Allen rips off/pays homage to his own work here, too. Mort is a film guy who's trying to be a novelist, stuck in a deterioriating relationship while pursuing an intriguing younger woman while visiting another country. In other words, pretty much the exact logline of Allen's own Midnight in Paris. While that film had the gimmick of the main character jumping into different eras and interacting with famous European artists, in Rifkin's Festival, the main character jumps into the films of famous European directors. Kind of the same. But it's also sort of the reverse of Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo, in which a classic cinema character steps off the screen and into the life of a movie lover stuck in a bad marriage. Rifkin's includes other elements that are Allen hallmarks: a scenic European location featured like a travelogue, mentions of "neurosis" (even though it's a term that's largely been phased out of pop cultural conversation), and a much older man romantically pursuing a much younger woman. There's not much here for teens, and there's not an uplifting ending, but Allen and European art cinema have rarely been concerned with either.