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MATCH POINT
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“There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn't, and you lose.”
Woody Allen's dark thriller is his most successful film in some time, despite some awkward dialogue betraying the transposition of the setting from Long Island's swanky Hamptons to upper middle class London. A bit of script polishing from, say, Tom Stoppard, could have resulted in a masterpiece. And if you've not yet seen the film, there are spoilers ahead.
The Queen’s Club, Palliser Road, W14, is the tennis club where ambitious Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is working as a coach when he meets upper crust Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode). Named after Queen Victoria, the club was established in 1886 as the first multipurpose sports complex in the world. As newer stadiums such as Twickenham, Wembley and White City took over rugby, soccer and athletics, the club focused on lawn tennis, and now hosts the world famous Stella Artois Championships and the World Rackets Championships.
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Match Point: a night at the opera: Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
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Socially climbing Chris is eager to accept the offer of an evening at the opera with the well-heeled Hewetts at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The theatrical backdrop to the London scenes of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes, also seen in sixties international espionage thriller Where the Spies Are, starring David Niven. While closed for radical refurbishment during the nineties, it became the ‘Fhloston Paradise’ opera house, where the blue alien diva performs, in Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element.
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Match Point film location: Chris gets a job in the City: the ‘Gherkin’, St Mary Axe
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In no time at all, Chris has taken up a job offer from paterfamilias Alec Hewett (Brian Cox) in the recklessly phallic Swiss Re Tower, 30 St Mary Axe. Initially dubbed the ‘Erotic Gherkin’ (US, read ‘Pickle’), the ‘erotic’ bit was quickly dropped as clearly redundant. Inevitably, in the movies, everybody wants to work in this photo-friendly icon (which is not open to the public). By 2006, fickle old Russell Crowe, who had reported to the Lloyds Building in Proof Of Life in 2000, traded up to work in its young neighbour, the Gherkin, in Ridley Scott’s A Good Year. But, best of all, police psychologist Dr Glass (David Morrissey) believes the Tower an appropriate place for his sessions with Catherine Trammell (Sharon Stone) in the hilarious Basic Instinct 2.
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Match Point film location: Chris bumps into Nola: Polo Ralph Lauren store, South Kensington
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After looking for that perfect cashmere sweater at the South Kensington branch of Ralph Lauren, 105-109 Fulham Road, SW3 , Chris bumps into Nola (Scarlett Johansson) on the way to her audition at the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, Chelsea. The English Stage Company at the Royal Court launched the original productions of many plays which have gone on to become equally famous films. Jimmy Porter first railed against the world here in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, and Laurence Olivier caught up with the new wave as Archie Rice in The Entertainer. Jessie (Jodie Whittaker) and Maurice (Oscar-nominated Peter O’Toole) have a drink in the Royal Court’s bar in Venus.
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Match Point film location: Chris waits for Nola in Sloane Square, outside the Royal Court Theatre
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In Match Point, Chris waits for Nola at the war memorial in the square opposite the theatre.
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Match Point film location: Chris and Nola get to know each other over a drink: The Audley, Mount Street, Mayfair
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Afterwards, Chris and Nola head for Mayfair, where they get to know each other a little better over a drink in The Audley, 41-43 Mount Street. Also in Mayfair, you'll find the Curzon Mayfair, 38 Curzon Street, the original Curzon Cinema (there’s now a Soho branch) specialising in first-run arthouse movies, where, in the seventies, you could catch the latest Bergman, Buñuel or Pasolini.
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Match Point film location: Nola is a no-show for The Motorcycle Diaries: Curzon Mayfair Cinema, Curzon Street
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Manhattan or London, you can always depend on Woody Allen to showcase the best indie cinemas and, sure enough, it’s here that Chris is seriously disappointed when Nola is a no-show to see The Motorcycle Diaries.
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Match Point film location: dinner for four: Brasserie Max, the Covent Garden Hotel, Monmouth Street, Covent Garden
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Caviar blini or roast chicken? The class divide opens up between well-heeled siblings Tom and Chloe (Emily Mortimer), and their ill-at-ease partners Nola and Chris in Brasserie Max, the restaurant off the lobby of the luxurious Covent Garden Hotel, 10 Monmouth Street.
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