In the photogenic fantasy world of “Café Society,” couples dance and glasses clink at a 1930s Manhattan nightclub that could pass for El Morocco; an agent in Hollywood has booked a Thursday lunch with a prospective client named Judy Garland; and “Swing Time” is playing at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. The story line of Woody Allen’s 46th feature as a director mimics the perfunctory plots of Depression-era musicals: Boy meets girl, complications ensue, boy meets another girl and all goes well until the night when his past walks in, lovelier than ever. The whole film feels charmingly insubstantial, just as it’s meant to, with beautiful settings, amusing people and, for philosophical context, a classic Woody Allen one-liner: “Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living, but the examined life is no bargain.”  The life under consideration is that of Bobby Dorfman ( Jesse Eisenberg), an ambitious Bronx native and arm-waving Woody surrogate. Breaking out of his borough for the first time, Bobby heads for Hollywood and the initially unwelcoming arms of his uncle Phil ( Steve Carell), a big-time talent agent who speaks in muffled barks. Bobby’s first love, a Veronica known as Vonnie ( Kristen Stewart), is Phil’s adoring and more or less adored secretary; thus those complications, and a performance by Ms. Stewart—a career best in my book—that makes neurotic indecision alluring. The second love of Bobby’s life, a New York Veronica known as Veronica (Blake Lively), brings a sudden and uncomplicated radiance to the tale; Ms. Lively takes the spotlight when there’s no spotlight. (The exquisite cinematography is the work of the peerless, and evidently ageless, Vittorio Storaro.)  Anyone familiar with the filmmaker’s taste in psyches can guess which one of the two Veronicas exerts the strongest pull on the conflicted hero, who declares, in a one-liner both classic and glib, “Life is a comedy written by a sadistic comedy writer.” No sadism surfaces here, though there’s plenty of delicate rue about time passing, life slipping away. Bobby’s brother Ben, a gangster played with terrific verve by Corey Stoll, tries to cut his losses by converting to the Catholic faith because, he says, Jews don’t believe in an afterlife. Neither, by his own account, does Mr. Allen, which may be why, as production looms for his 47th feature, he keeps the filmmaking faith in this life.  Write to Joe Morgenstern at Joe.Morgenstern@wsj.com
In this Woody Allen film set in the 1930s, a Bronx native goes bicoastal, and romance beckons on both coasts; starring Jesse Eisenberg, Steve Carell, Kristen Stewart and Blake Lively