the sweet smell of success; Woody Allen proves he's still got it in Match Point.("Cache")(Movie Review)

There are two tragedies in life," wrote George Bernard Shaw. "One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it." He could have been talking about Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), the slippery hero of Match Point, an enjoyably dark tale of social climbing, sexual betrayal, and sheer dumb luck that has me saying something I feared I'd never say again: Woody Allen's new movie is good.

Chris is an ambitious young Irishman who, like the hero of a nineteenth-century novel, dreams of conquering the big city. He has abandoned a so-so

career on the tennis circuit to seek success in a slyer way-by working as a pro at an exclusive London club. Sporting a poshed-up accent, he begins coaching Tom Hewitt (Matthew Goode), an amiable toff who apparently graduated from the Hugh Grant Academy of Debonair Dithering. Tom is impressed by Chris's obvious desire to better himself-he totes around a copy of Crime and Punishment-and invites him to meet the family. All too quickly, Chris is sleeping with Tom's good-hearted sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer). If Chris just keeps his head, he'll soon have it all-a devoted wife, elite family ties, and a lucrative job working for Chloe's father (Brian Cox). Then he meets Tom's young American girlfriend, an aspiring actress named Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson). Moody, hard-drinking, and frustrated by her inert career, Nola might as well be wearing a necklace that says caveat emptor. Chris doesn't care. She's his catnip.

It's long been part of the Allen mystique that his natural gift for comedy keeps being set aside in favor of his own catnip-the deep-dish seriousness of Dostoevsky, Strindberg, and Bergman. In Match Point, these opposed impulses mesh for the first time since Crimes and Misdemeanors. The opening hour unfolds as an amusing social comedy filled with nights at La Traviata, grouse-hunting escapades, and romantic banter between Chris and Nola. When he asks if she's special, she coolly replies, "Nobody's ever asked for their money back." The line earns a laugh, but there's something slightly tawdry about the exchange that hints at trouble to come. Even Allen's comedies have a ruthless streak-think of the murderous gangster playwright in Bullets over Broadway-and the couple's illicit affair builds to the most powerfully operatic scene of his career, complete with a Caruso aria, as Chris must choose between the woman he secretly craves and the velvet prison of life with the Hewitts. What does a civilized man do with an inconvenient mistress?

Although Allen's work is notoriously sex-obsessed, his previous movies have never had the slightest erotic charge. Match Point is not only his raciest film (oily bedroom massages!), but in Rhys-Meyers and Johansson it boasts attractive stars who look at the world through bedroom eyes. It's a ...