Melinda and Melinda

Even the hardest critics of this movie acknowledge that the subject is excellent: life should be told as a comedy or as a tragedy?

The story begins with a dinner with a group of friends at a restaurant in Manhattan. At this dinner, the conversation verts on whether, at the end of the day, life is funny or tragic. As the dinner is attended by two playwrighters (Wallace Shawn and Larry Pine), someone proposes that each of them should develop a dramatic story and a comic one from the scene of a distressed woman who breaks abruptly in an apartment where a group of friends are having dinner. Melinda (Radha Mitchell) will then be the star of the two stories, both the comedy and the drama.

In the comic version, Susan (Amanda Peet), an independent filmmaker is in the process of shooting a film; she is married to Hobie (Will Ferrer), an actor that is stalled. Melinda, neighbor of the couple, knocks on her door for help: she has taken some pills. Since then Susan decides she must find her a boyfriend, but she never thought it could be Hobie.

In the tragic version, Melinda arrives desperate at her friends', Laurel (Chloe Sevigny) and her husband Lee (Johnny Lee Miller), an alcoholic actor. Melinda's ex-husband wants to take their children aways and her lover left her.  Laurel will try to cheer her up with a dentist, but she prefers the composer Moonsong (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an incurable seducer, perhaps led by the fate of his name, who will not leave Laurel alone.

In the first version, the infidelity ends in a happy way: Hobie, already in love with Melinda, does not know how to tell Susan until he finds her in bed with another man. Hobie’s happienes, or rather the great performance by Will Ferrer, who sees a clear path to Melinda, will give us one of the funniest scenes of the film. In the tragic story, Melinda will be unable to overcome the double betrayal of her friend and the composer and will attempt to suicide.

Then we return to the discussion back at the restaurant in Manhattan, but before the end, suddenly, the light goes away, the movie is over, it is all over. While discussing whether life is tragedy or comedy we can die. Is life a tragedy or a comedy? Doesn't matter: the only certainty is that life can go away in a second: more important than trying to answer that unanswerable question is to be happy while we can and enjoy every bit of our lifes.

Director: Woody Allen

Writer: Woody Allen

Stars: Will Ferrell, Vinessa Shaw and Chiwetel Ejiofor