"What I am is sexy." When aspiring actor Nola (Scarlett Johansson) makes this observation over drinks with Irish tennis pro Chris (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), he's briefly taken aback. He's just told her she's beautiful, after all, and she didn't bite. And then he gets it (or so he thinks): "So," he says, leaning back, "You are aware of your effect on men."

She is, of course, because she's a woman in a Woody Allen movie. This one, Match Point, is set in London rather than New York, and its murder plot unfolds more slowly than his comedies, but its thematic focus is unmistakable. The emblematic (or is that symptomatic?) male, Chris, is bewildered by women, particularly the vivacious, sensuous, and at least initially radiant Nola. This even as he's engaged to be married to Chloe Hewett (Emily Mortimer), a bossy if occasionally sweet heiress, and Nola is dating Chloe's brother Tom (Matthew Goode).

If the siblings are blandly self-absorbed and pleasantly ignorant, the outsiders want in. They bond over their similarly unhappy childhoods and imagine money will make their lives better; if it's old British money, accompanied by country estates and evenings at the opera, so much the better. This desire for a shift in class puts a damper on their own relationship, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and Chris devises ways to have his cake and eat it too.

Chris resembles any number of famous social climbers, Tom Ripley and Clyde Griffiths (An American Tragedy) among them. Chris' pondering of his options is rendered in warm-toned close-ups, even as his face grows harder, less plainly interested in the people he's manipulating. While Chloe's father Alec (Brian Cox) takes a liking to Chris ("He's not trivial. We had a very interesting conversation about Dostoevsky"), her mother Eleanor (Penelope Wilton) conveniently and blatantly disparages Nola, whose acting career never takes off, owing to her lack of confidence (at least according to her—her failed auditions occur offscreen).

Mummy's disapproval—"Especially for a woman, it's a particularly cruel business," she sniffs about the acting, "I'm a great one for facing up to realities"—underlies Tom's diffidence; he's a good upper-crusty boy despite his pretended rebelliousness. His lack of spine leaves Nola bitter enough to take up with Chris. This begins with a lively, rain-soaked tryst in a field near the Hewetts' country estate, where both Nola's and Chris' shirts cling prettily, if briefly, to their perfect torsos. But within days, Nola makes it clear that her interest was superficial, and her rejection leads directly to Chris' commitments: a career with Alec's company and fancy church wedding with Chloe.

Chris' slide into this standard soul-sucking vortex is not especially affecting. His grasping is so immature that it's hard to feel sympathy: During one moment of extreme crisis, he cries, briefly, then persists. He's a thuddish cad, perfunctory, predictably manipulative and lacking conscience or compassion. Maybe Chloe puts up with his vague cruelty because she can't imagine anyone would be so callous. Or maybe she's just so focused on having a baby, that bane of Allen's women, that she's only interested in Chris' man juice. His resentment of her presumption and privilege is made visible repeatedly, as when they walk through the fabulous South Bank loft Chloe has selected. Stepping onto the ledge of floor-to-ceiling windows that look out on the Thames, Chris shudders, noting his fear of heights. Ah, smiles Chloe, it's something he'll have to get over.

Once Tom marries a new girl (pregnant as soon as he mentions her), Nola and Chris' relationship becomes more urgent: They meet in her teeny Shepherd's Bush flat, where Chris feels large. They make dates in breathless bits of conversation on their mobiles, their desire couched in terms at once sophisticated and dishonest, thrilling and juvenile. Chris is right where he wants to be, and he's feeling claustrophobic: His office space, his opera box, his home, even his planned Greek islands vacation are all functions of his wife's money and history. Because he's the indecisive, unhappy, inarticulate protagonist in a Woody Allen movie, you can pretty much guess what happens next.

Chris' infidelities and insatiable yearnings are no more familiar than the crisis that makes him act. The women around him can't stop talking about pregnancy and babies: Tom and his wife chatter on about their infant, Eleanor presses for more grandchildren, Chloe is taking her temperature each morning to determine the best moments for sex with her husband, and his difficulties with the increasingly needy Nola come to a head over this question as well. Though the film opens and closes with Chris' meditations on luck versus effort, he ends up without any "measure of hope for the possibility of meaning." Perhaps it's incidental that women represent that lack.

Match Point Written and directed by Woody Allen A DreamWorks release Opens Friday at Ritz Five