CINEMATIC Review

THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO   ***1/2

Woody Allen

1985

IDEA:   A woman falls in love with her new favorite movie star - when the character he plays literally walks off the screen and into her life.

BLURB:   Allen’s lithely charming ode to the movies is a thing of gleaming wonder, with Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, and a superbly clever script casting a genial spell over the proceedings. The movie within this movie literally comes alive, and even if that is something of an impossibility in real life, we somehow fully understand how it feels. Farrow’s face during the closing shot, starting at devastation then slowly lighting up under the healing strength of the film she watches, manages to capture it all so well; the passion and catharsis delivered by the movies that can, momentarily, ease the disappointing reality we can’t quite live them.