CANNES, France — Woody Allen, not for the first time, confronts mortality in the romantic farce “You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger,” which premiered to thunderous applause yesterday at the Cannes Film Festival.
“My relationship with death is the same,” Allen, 74, said to big laughs at a press conference. “I’m strongly against it.”
Among the characters in the new flick is a rich older gent who tries to defy mortality by marrying a much younger gold-digger (Lucy Punch). He’s played not by Allen but Anthony Hopkins, two years younger than the director.
“For years I played the romantic lead, then I got too old — I couldn’t play it,” Allen said. “It’s no fun not to play the guy who gets the girl. It’s so frustrating to do movies with Scarlett Johansson and Naomi Watts and the other guys get her. I like to be the one opposite them in the restaurant, look them in the eyes and lie to them.”
In his new film set in London, Watts is cast as Hopkins’ daughter, an art curator who develops a crush on her handsome married boss (Antonio Banderas).
Allen, who struggled with names at times, was asked if he wanted to continue as long as 101-year- old Portuguese director Manouel de Olivera, whose latest film premiered at Cannes Friday.
The Woodman replied that he would like to do it as long as he wasn’t “dribbling, or hooked up.”