“As far as con man stories go, I think I’ve heard them all.” So goes the first line of The Brothers Bloom, delivered via narration by magician/character actor Ricky Jay. This narration may be controversial, but with the very first words of his second film, filmmaker Rian Johnson cops to the daunting task he’s set out for himself: to try to breathe new life into a genre older than movies, marked (no pun intended) by tropes and beats as familiar to any savvy viewer as they are to the archetypal grifters with hearts of gold that populate them. There’s no question that it’s derivative — it’s a story about stories that have already been written — but you’d have to be more cynical than I not to be charmed by what it does right.

The Jay-narrated prologue introduces us to childhood versions brothers Stephen (to be played as an adult by Mark Ruffalo) and his younger brother, known only as Bloom (played later by Adrien Brody). That one brother got the first name and the other the last should give an indication of the indivisible nature of their relationship, which is apparent even at ages 13 and 10. They go from one town (and foster home) to the next, with Stephen coming up with new, elaborate schemes to make money off the “playground bourgeoisie”, and the pliable Bloom serving as his lure. 25 years later, the Brothers Bloom are still at the same racket, but on a much larger scale; now they trot the globe within a single scheme, and celebrate each score with all-night wrap parties instead of popsicles.

Stephen is a magnanimous showman who blocks, casts and stage designs each con like a backyard filmmaker whose backdoor opens on to dilapidated theaters in St. Petersburg and beach cabanas in Mexico. Of course, he has a catchphrase: “The perfect con is the one in which everyone involved gets just the thing they wanted.” At the end of a successful blow-out in Berlin, all Bloom wants is to quit, to hide out in Montenegro and look for “an unwritten life” in a succession of bottles. It’s understandable that Stephen would have trouble buying his brother’s stated desire — after all, movies like this exist to make the viewer wish their own life could play out as if in a movie, and The Brothers Bloom is nothing if not self-conscious of its cinematic construction. And so Stephen and his weapons consultant/consigliere Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi) swiftly track Bloom down and talk him into One Last Con. They find their One Last Mark in Penelope (Rachel Weisz), an obscenely rich orphaned shut-in who, at age 33, is starving for romance and adventure. Bloom, always a mark for pretty girls but resistant to their charms unless romance is part of his brother’s plot, falls instantly and hard.

The group think that’s been growing on this one since its premiere last year at Toronto has largely vilified Johnson for “ripping off” Wes Anderson, which seems at least shortsighted, and on one very key point, completely inaccurate. The Anderson comparison stops at the surface and ignores the DNA. Leaving aside its color palette, its use of whimsical score alternating with vinyl nerd vintage rock, and the fact that it finds a way to get Adrien Brody on a train (and it should be noted that Bloom went into production, and even had footage screened for buyers in Cannes, long before Darjeeling Limited was unveiled), Johnson’s follow-up to Brick has less in common with the Anderson “canon” than it does with the family of con classics that it seeks to join, particularly films like Trouble in Paradise, The Lady Eve and Paper Moon, where the con itself is a vehicle for the romance of shared deception. When it comes to the mechanics of the con, Bloom trips over its own meta a bit, leaving the question of who’s zooming who to fall by the wayside more often than it really should. But the romance works, both in the lure of the life that Johnson conveys, and in terms of its actual love story.
The courtship of Brody and Weisz feels vital, both first time and last chance in a very classical Hollywood sort of way. Each touchstone in their romance is alive with multiple possibilities; not in a gimmicky way, but in a way that mirrors everyday romantic paranoia. There’s one moment that left an impression both times I saw the film: at the end of their first meeting, there’s a close shot of Brody taking advantage of a handshake to slip his thumb just under the cuff of Weisz’s cardigan sleeve. The camera holds on their hands like this for awhile, as they exchange goodbye pleasantries, long enough for both the viewer and the participatpants to potentially mull over the possibilities: is this a sincere gesture on Bloom’s part, his secret code, perhaps not decipherable by anyone but himself, that he really is a besotted suitor and is not just playing such? Or is this just something he pulls out of his bag of subtle seduction tricks on every job? You don’t know what gestures like this mean — nor would you, nor would Penelope, in all likelihood, even if Bloom weren’t a con man. If this was an ordinary meeting between a man and a woman who could potentially mate without professional deception getting in the way, a gesture like that thumb slip would be almost as opaque, and definitely not less interesting.
A shot like that is pure Lubitsch, and this is where the Wes Anderson comparisons seem most off the mark: romantic love is something that the more established filmmaker has never been able to convincingly create on screen. If Johnson doesn’t reinvent the con man wheel, he pulls off a magic act in the romance department, reinvigorating the fiction that first love can be the last/best/only love ever needed.