Woody Allen's Match Point serves up a tale of sexual gamesmanship in upper-crust England, as a poverty-striken tennis pro, Chris (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), woos the British establishment and a passel of women intertwined with the tea-and-crumpets set. After marrying country club cutie Chloe (Emily Mortimer), he stars an affair with lusty American Nola (Scarlett Johansson)-who happens to be engaged to his new brother-in-law (Matthew Goode).

But this isn't the Allen who gave us Annie Hall's wacky romance. In his first London-based movie, the filmmaker meditates on the British class system and the restrictions it imposes. "We're so neurotic about class in England," Mortimer says. "[Chloe] is this perfectly nice girl, but she has this innate arrogance of her class-the assumption that everything will turn out all right in the end. She doesn't even acknowledge that anything untoward could happen. She just gets what she wants, because she's always got what she wants."

The character of Chris, who is shown at one point reading Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, has sacrificed "his passionate feelings and his yearnings in life," says Allen, "so he can lead this comfortable lifestyle. And he is willing to go to extremes to preserve it." There is no denying that Rhys Meyers's tennis whites turn a shade of gray as he grasps his way into posh comfort. "There's a great unity in poverty that doesn't exist in wealth," the actor says. "You drive up the Hollywood Hills, and there's all these gated communities and big mansions with big, high walls and barbed wire around them and security patrolling. It's not until he's in so deep that Chris realizes his loneliness."