Setting aside Woody's recently contaminated personal life for a moment, to fully enjoy Rifkin's Festival is surely going to be problematic, but not impossible. If you watched the accusations detailed in HBO's "Allen v. Farrow" you may already have decided to intensely hate the man. I'll leave that decision to you.
So let's get this over with right now: Woody's pinnacle as a filmmaker likely ended around 30 years ago. His best work may indeed be behind him but he apparently isn't finished yet.
Rifkin's Festival is about obsessing about one's own demise, and reveals multiple parodies of several well-known film classics (Citizen Kane, films by Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, snd Federico Fellini, etc.). These frequent "regressions" are crisply shot in black-and-white film, not color. It's a small movie with a moderately sized heart. As of May 28, 2021, Rifkin's Festival has barely grossed $768,449 in Spain and $1.8 million worldwide (Spain, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Italy and Russia). Who knows if it will ever be officially released in America and worldwide? It's not likely to be a huge money maker, but then how many previous Allen projects ever reached those improbable financial heights?
Still, Rifkin's Festival resides in familiar Allen territory, and he shamelessly exploits the same weather worn recipe in this new film, which not surprisingly involves a liberal dash of marital angst lovingly blended in a glamorous and bluntly romantic Spanish setting.
Is Rifkin's Festival worth watching? Of course it is. Is Allen a despicable person? Perhaps. And perhaps not. But to enjoy an artist's work, one needn't align themselves or idolize the person who created it. Viewers must judge the film itself, a work studded with biting dialogue and ironic drama. The film embraces familiar themes, which emerge early and stubbornly remain until the film's final act.
For that reason alone, the film works, placing the mostly veteran cast and their motivations in the forefront, and leaving unspoken the lurid tabloid accusations to be determined to the shifting sands of time. One must review the film, not the director's allegedly controversial personal life choices.
You can loath the artist and still find room in your heart for their art. Rifkin's Festival is a symbolic reminder that real life and art are often interchangeable, complicated, and sardonic. But it takes gifted writing, superb direction, and malleable actors to bring it to a recognizable acceptance.
And perhaps this is the solemn (albeit overly tread) message of Rifkin's Festival and Allen's 49th film. Rifkin's Festival is subtly brought to life, capturing all that is profoundly human and flawed, but ignoring the inescapable vulnerability of life itself.
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