Swing Low
Sweet and Lowdown
On general release. Written & directed by Woody Allen. Starring Sean Penn.
US 1999 95 mins.
First, the good news. Allen can still write comedy, sweet and nuts. There are moments in this film as unexpected and as originally comic as in his early work. The not so good news is Sweet and Lowdown is inconsequential, for all that it is well observed, well scripted and well acted. It's a sadder film that any Allen's made in quite a while, sad for chances spurned. Penn's Emmet Ray is a jazz guitarist lacking soul. His music is sweet, but he's just about as numb as a person can be while still upright.
The film ought to be full of interesting contradictions. Ray is sublimely fortunate in his talent, although this sentences him to an itinerant, penurious living, he gets admiration and short working hours in return. He doesn't appreciate this though, and though the star of his outfit, swaggers and worries through life and loves, never finding a balance.
His total lack of self understanding dooms him from the start - while he is directly charmless, his music keeps assuring those around him that he must be better than he is. Ray's interests outside jazz are kleptomania, shooting rats, and watching trains. His only other income is pimping. (Even played by Penn, he doesn't seem quite brutal enough to survive.) So his end is seen coming from the start; he isn't marred by pride or ego, but all his warmth and humanity is in his music. There is a greek tragedy in this - this is the man who sold his soul for art. This is how he looks at himself, but the choice was never his to make.
Sean Penn aches effectively, and is more impressive than in more galumphing roles. Uma Thurman is one of the let downs of the piece. Ray says, after trying to hustle an amateur night, "I can't play badly," and Allen can't quite write badly. Thurman's Blanche thinks in the trendy cliches of the time, and the only thing she gets right about Ray is the title of one article, 'Struts and frets', which fits him exactly, although it has been used on every guitarist ever.
