Rifkin's Festival

Woody Allen's latest is a drab, reductive reflection on aging, fading love, loss of relevance and fear of death -- in other words, the storied filmmaker's well-worn groove.

“Rifkin’s Festival” is about an aging film expert who doesn’t function well anywhere outside of New York City and is consumed by neurotic thoughts about fading love, loss of relevance and the fear of death. In other words, the very well-worn groove of writer/director Woody Allen.

Allen’s been up and down in his seven-decade-long filmmaking career, morphing from jokemeister to romantic talkies to (overly) serious director of dramas. Even his worst stuff usually has something about it to recommend, though you might have to search harder than usual to find it in his latest, “Rifkin’s Festival.”

Playwright/actor Wallace Shawn plays Mort Rifkin, a semi-retired film professor who is attending the San Sebastian film festival in Spain with his much-younger wife, Sue (Gina Gershon). She’s a prosperous publicity executive there to represent several clients, chiefly Philippe (Louis Garrel), a young and handsome French director premiering his antiwar drama, “Apocalyptic Dreams,” which Mort considers to be shallow, middlebrow fare.