Like he has before with Midnight In Paris and Radio Days, in Café Society Woody Allen steps backward through time to luxuriate in an epoch that’s close to his heart. Jesse Eisenberg is this film’s Allen stand-in, playing a young romantic who relocates from New York to ’30s Los Angeles to learn about the film industry from his uncle (Steve Carell), a seemingly successful Hollywood player who “eats with Fred Astaire and Gary Cooper.” Once there, he strikes up a romance/infatuation with an attractive woman (a surprisingly upbeat Kristen Stewart) and gets caught up in what columnist Lucius Beebe called the “chromium mist” lifestyle of the times. Meanwhile, his decidedly more lowbrow brother (Corey Stoll with a full head of hair) wants him to return home and help him run a mob-connected nightclub.
The gorgeous imagery on display in this trailer can be attributed to Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Last Tango in Paris, The Conformist), who’s working with Allen for the first time on this film. Café Society will premiere out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival on May 11 and open in U.S. theaters on August 12.