Scarlett Johansson: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

4. Nola Rice - Match Point (2005)

You could have been forgiven for meeting the news of Woody Allen's Match Point with trepidation: it was billed as Allen's first film without humour, and came after a run of three mediocre, and frankly forgettable movies from the director, and worst of all, it seemed oddly familiar thanks to the release of Richard Locraine's horribly sweet Wimbledon the year before. Mercifully, the surprisingly dark film exceeded all of those expectations and proved a return to form for Allen, thanks in no small part to the central pair of Johansson and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and a delightfully gripping story about romance, deception and ultimately murder. As the exotic romantic object (as there invariably is in any Woody Allen film,) Johansson's role and impact are two-fold, she has to be demure and alluring enough to attract the attention of Rhys Meyers, but in a way that makes us actually empathise with his philandering, and also troublesome enough to make us even more perversely sympathise with his ultimate decision to shoot her (and their unborn child.) Allen rightly identifies Match Point as one of his greatest "A films," and pleasantly (considering the future casting of Johansson in a certain biopic) there is something very much Hitchcockian, not just about the storyline, but aboue the way Allen and Johansson present ideas of exotic and "real" femininity.