Woody Allen has never had a problem with the idea of himself in a relationship with a significantly younger woman, either on screen (Manhattan) or in real life. Yet his latest film, Whatever Works, might be the first of his films in which Woody Allen actively defends his position, that is, he addresses his ideas on intergenerational love relationships by satirising wider society’s uptight sexual morality.

Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm) plays Boris Yelnikoff, a former nuclear physicist who, following an existential crisis, divorces his wife and retires to teach kids to play chess. He has an outsized opinion of his own intellect and a dim view of the rest of the world. One day, he arrives home to find a simple, nubile 21-year-old woman, Melodie, (Evan Rachel Wood) on his doorstep having run away from her conservative family in Mississippi. They’re terribly mismatched but they see something in each other, and a relationship develops. Then Melodie’s mother (Patricia Clarkson) turns up with her own crisis and everything is thrown out of order once again.

Your tolerance for Whatever Works may be determined by how open you are to accepting a relationship that stands outside social norms. Allen pointedly contrasts Boris’ relationship with a healthy ménage à trois and a heathy gay couple and it’s a successful (if forced) strategy to align cross-generational relationships, so widely regarded as “creepy”, with the much more highly-championed gay relationship that has had to fight its way to gain the (limited) acceptance it has today.

Allen is also smart enough not to overly idealise Boris’ relationship with Melodie. We aren’t asked to accept them because they are perfect for one another. Melodie doesn’t fulfil Boris’ needs intellectually and on the flipside Boris can be condescending and a misanthopic bore. But they make each other happy. And if that’s the case, who’s to judge them?

Still, with all the intellectualising, it has to be acknowledged that, in many respects, Whatever Works is “not good”. The film has the air of being lazily scrapped together. Allen seems uninterested in extracting a convincing performance from Larry David who is excellent in parts but who seems mostly awkward faced with the prospect of not playing himself. The performances throughout are overly theatrical. The camera compositions are carelessly framed with Woody Allen seemingly reluctant to even move the camera or cut to a reverse-shot when the occasion calls for it. The script is full of caricatures and Larry David is often asked to break the fourth wall to address the audience, a device which is neither intelligent nor funny but rather exists so that Woody Allen can tell you what the movie “is about”.

Yet it’s absolutely perfect that these flaws exist. The film, at its essence, is about being, without feeling a need to satisfy other people’s social mores. Boris feels like he can be in love with Melodie because he’s given up on trying to please other people. He dresses like a slob, lives in a dump and shows complete disregard for social niceties. It makes complete sense that the film, on a formal level, is completely unconcerned with satisfying classic Hollywood filmmaking rules or the pretensions of arthouse cinema. His only concern is in satirising sexual morality and making you laugh. Everything else be damned. Woody Allen has made a passionately mediocre film, and for that, you could almost call him a genius.

[Brad Nguyen is a co-editor of Screen Machine. He studied Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne, was the film reviewer for Triple R Breakfasters and is currently based in Tokyo.]