Rifkin's Festival is a 2020 American/Spanish/Italian dramedy film directed by Woody Allen.
Mort Rifkin (Wallace Shawn) and his younger wife Sue (Gina Gershon) attend the San Sebastián Film Festival in the Basque Country in Spain. Sue is doing the press and represents a popular director, Philippe (Louis Garrel), whose work Mort disparages as not being up to par with his favorite European directors (Bergman, Fellini, Godard, etc.). Mort also suspects that Sue and Philippe are romantically involved. While mulling this over, he meets a beautiful young doctor, Joanna Rojas (Elena Anaya), with whom he falls in love.
Tropes:
- Deliberately Monochrome: Mort dreams up several recreations of classic European films (and Citizen Kane) where the characters are replaced with him and the people he knows. These scenes are shot in black and white, just like the movies they're parodying.
- Did Not Get the Girl: Mort falls in love with Joanna and sees her a lot while Sue is similarly preoccupied with Philippe. When Sue asks to divorce him, it seems like Mort is able to pursue Joanna free of guilt, but Joanna is wrapped up in her own unhappy and toxic marriage, which she doesn't have the strength to leave. Mort is thus alone in the end.
- Homage: Mort's dreams are essentially an excuse for Woody Allen to homage his favorite directors. Citizen Kane, Jules and Jim, Breathless, Persona (1966), Wild Strawberries, The Exterminating Angel and The Seventh Seal are all parodied.
- Moustache de Plume: Mort assumes Dr. "Jo" Rojas must be a man, but is not displeased to find out she's really a woman, Jo being short for Joanna. She implies she does it on purpose because men are not always comfortable seeing a female doctor.
- Scenery Porn: Allen seems to relish showing off the monuments, nature and general beauty of San Sebastián.
- This Is My Story: Mort narrates the film, which is framed as him telling his shrink about what happened.
- True Art Is Angsty: In-Universe. Mort is much fonder of old European cinema, which he considers to be more pessimistic and concerned with existentialist questions, than he is of old American filmmakers and their optimism. People around him don't share his views (at least not to the same extent), with Sue calling him out for being indifferent to certain classic American movies (Bringing Up Baby, Some Like It Hot, It's a Wonderful World), which Philippe and "the rest of the world" love. Mort is mocked as being suspicious of anything that's entertaining.
- War Is Hell: Philippe's film has this for An Aesop, according to the other characters. Most speak glowingly about it, while Mort snarks that war being bad isn't exactly an original or controversial theme.
