Sweet And Lowdown

By EWAN McDONALD

(Herald rating: * * * * * )

Sometimes a movie strikes the right chord. With two of the past century's greatest artists at its heart - Django Reinhardt and Woody Allen - this one strikes all the right chords.

Allen is in playful, nostalgic, bittersweet mode in this mockumentary about a fictitious 1930s jazz guitarist that evokes the master filmmaker-neurotic's earlier Zelig, The Purple Rose Of Cairo, Radio Days and Broadway Danny Rose.

Sean Penn plays "the second-best jazz guitarist in the world," Emmet Ray, the role that Allen might have taken if (a) he played guitar and not clarinet; (b) his offscreen roles had not limited his onscreen ones.

Allen appears as one of the expert witnesses recalling Ray's "life and times" along with jazz experts such as critic Nat Hentoff. He describes Ray as "funny, pathetic, flamboyant, boorish and obnoxious." The fake star was also a thief, pimp and major drunk whose big problem was that he knew he was only No 2 to "that gypsy in France" - Reinhardt, the real-life No 1 of the 30s and 40s.

Penn, who seems to love playing slimy characters that no other actor would touch (he's doing another, less successfully, in Up At The Villa) looks like Reinhardt in an oversized white suit and brilliantined hair parted in the middle. Offstage his life is a mess (apart from the traits listed above, his hobbies are shooting rats at the dump and watching trains go by). Only on stage is he in control.

Romance enters Ray's life in the form of Hattie (Samantha Morton), a sweet, not-too-bright and mute laundress he meets on a double date. Hattie travels with Ray across the country, enduring insults, infidelities and excesses until he dumps her for the socialite Blanche (Uma Thurman). His new wife is fascinated by him - until she meets a killer (Anthony LaPaglia) who excites her even more.

A great soundtrack, featuring Reinhardt and Howard Alden playing Ray's tunes (Penn mimes him superbly), some funny bits, especially when three "witnesses" disagree about an incident involving Ray in a gas-station holdup, but mostly bittersweet as Ray lives to regret what he does to Hattie, and, inspired, goes on to create his finest work.

Running time: 95 mins

Rental: Today