The Nanny Diaries
Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
In Hollywood history, no actress has been humiliated as consistently as Scarlett Johansson in Woody Allen’s recent movies. She was killed off in Match Point without Allen allowing her the likable life-force of Martha Raye in Monsieur Verdoux. Then he doused and dishonored her as a selfish birdbrain in Scoop. Allen seemed to be punishing Johansson for her young and sexy girlishness. It’s one of the blessings of The Nanny Diaries that the directing/writing team Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini restore Johansson’s humanity.
Berman and Pulcini cast Johansson as Annie Braddock, a Jersey girl too shy to go-for-it (in the 1980s parlance that inspired Melanie Griffith in the noxious Working Girl). But Annie’s reasons are engaging. She runs out of a Wall Street job interview panicking: “I didn’t really know who I was or where I fit in!” Most movie characters never ask that key question suggesting self-examination to audiences. Critics praise Matt Damon in the mindlessly violent The Bourne Ultimatum for simply discovering his real name without ever understanding who he really is or what world he comes from. But Berman and Pulcini focus on Annie as an unrealized social figure. The Nanny Diaries dramatizes a young woman’s attempt to figure out her humanity by observing the world of the rich and powerful. Putting herself on the market as a nanny to wealthy, self-infatuated Park Ave. women, Annie understands “I was the Chanel bag of nannies—white, college educated.”
With that thought, The Nanny Diaries—though basically a light entertainment—breaks movie culture’s unspoken taboo against class consciousness. Recent reviews of Portuguese director Pedro Costa’s career retrospective at Anthology Film Archives never even mentioned that his high-art, poverty-stricken subjects are black people. Yet, Berman and Pulcini comfortably deal with how race and class affect their characters’ ambitions and romantic lives. They give needed substance to The Nanny Diaries’ comedy, first through a mock sociological framework: Annie, an anthropology student, likes to visit the Museum of Natural History. And a recurring visual gag introduces each of the film’s characters as a contemporary social type, memorialized in a MNH diorama. This is a thousand times better than The Squid and the Whale, which used the museum in a Woody Allen way, for class points. Only Whit Stillman could have made a sharper movie of this material.
Disappointingly, The Nanny Diaries never shows Annie’s coming-to-consciousness. She simply retaliates against her deluded boss’s insensitivity (Laura Linney as a pathetic Wasp matron). Despite mention of sex-role specific behavior, there isn’t enough critique of Annie’s class-specific reticence to explain why she is intimidated by figures of social power. But at least Berman and Pulcini’s anti-“Sex and the City” approach soft-pedals Annie’s infatuation with a Harvard-grad scion (Chris Evans). She isn’t rescued into the world of the rich; rather, Johansson and Evans seem a movie-natural match.
Outfitted in dark hair, Johansson is no less fetching than in her memorable roles in The Man Who Wasn’t There and A Love Song for Bobby Long. Paired with Evans, she gets back the sensual rapport Woody Allen disgraced. Alicia Keys makes a striking impression as Annie’s bi-racial best friend—a race/class mixing ideal. This anthropological fact connects to the physical resemblance between Evans and the nanny’s adorable charge (Nicholas Reese Art). Berman and Pulcini offer rare, psychosexual evidence of the unconscious appeal of the Other. When Johansson and Evans’ full pink lips meet, it is a scintillating event in humanist cinema.
Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
In Hollywood history, no actress has been humiliated as consistently as Scarlett Johansson in Woody Allen’s recent movies. She was killed off in Match Point without Allen allowing her the likable life-force of Martha Raye in Monsieur Verdoux. Then he doused and dishonored her as a selfish birdbrain in Scoop. Allen seemed to be punishing Johansson for her young and sexy girlishness. It’s one of the blessings of The Nanny Diaries that the directing/writing team Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini restore Johansson’s humanity.
Berman and Pulcini cast Johansson as Annie Braddock, a Jersey girl too shy to go-for-it (in the 1980s parlance that inspired Melanie Griffith in the noxious Working Girl). But Annie’s reasons are engaging. She runs out of a Wall Street job interview panicking: “I didn’t really know who I was or where I fit in!” Most movie characters never ask that key question suggesting self-examination to audiences. Critics praise Matt Damon in the mindlessly violent The Bourne Ultimatum for simply discovering his real name without ever understanding who he really is or what world he comes from. But Berman and Pulcini focus on Annie as an unrealized social figure. The Nanny Diaries dramatizes a young woman’s attempt to figure out her humanity by observing the world of the rich and powerful. Putting herself on the market as a nanny to wealthy, self-infatuated Park Ave. women, Annie understands “I was the Chanel bag of nannies—white, college educated.”
With that thought, The Nanny Diaries—though basically a light entertainment—breaks movie culture’s unspoken taboo against class consciousness. Recent reviews of Portuguese director Pedro Costa’s career retrospective at Anthology Film Archives never even mentioned that his high-art, poverty-stricken subjects are black people. Yet, Berman and Pulcini comfortably deal with how race and class affect their characters’ ambitions and romantic lives. They give needed substance to The Nanny Diaries’ comedy, first through a mock sociological framework: Annie, an anthropology student, likes to visit the Museum of Natural History. And a recurring visual gag introduces each of the film’s characters as a contemporary social type, memorialized in a MNH diorama. This is a thousand times better than The Squid and the Whale, which used the museum in a Woody Allen way, for class points. Only Whit Stillman could have made a sharper movie of this material.
Disappointingly, The Nanny Diaries never shows Annie’s coming-to-consciousness. She simply retaliates against her deluded boss’s insensitivity (Laura Linney as a pathetic Wasp matron). Despite mention of sex-role specific behavior, there isn’t enough critique of Annie’s class-specific reticence to explain why she is intimidated by figures of social power. But at least Berman and Pulcini’s anti-“Sex and the City” approach soft-pedals Annie’s infatuation with a Harvard-grad scion (Chris Evans). She isn’t rescued into the world of the rich; rather, Johansson and Evans seem a movie-natural match.
Outfitted in dark hair, Johansson is no less fetching than in her memorable roles in The Man Who Wasn’t There and A Love Song for Bobby Long. Paired with Evans, she gets back the sensual rapport Woody Allen disgraced. Alicia Keys makes a striking impression as Annie’s bi-racial best friend—a race/class mixing ideal. This anthropological fact connects to the physical resemblance between Evans and the nanny’s adorable charge (Nicholas Reese Art). Berman and Pulcini offer rare, psychosexual evidence of the unconscious appeal of the Other. When Johansson and Evans’ full pink lips meet, it is a scintillating event in humanist cinema.
