Josh Brolin co-stars as unsuccessful writer Roy who seeks inspiration in the arms of a woman who is not his wife. "It is not the most redeeming character out there. When I watch it I just want to slap him a lot. You know, 'the grass is greener on the other side' and he is constantly looking 'over there' for notoriety and fame and all of that," he said.

Allen says Roy will seem familiar to fans of his movies. "That's a typical kind of character that I would write: someone who fancies himself an artist and struggles with it and doesn't live up to his promise. I feel that's the autobiographical strain in the movie. I also feel it is autobiographical with Anthony Hopkins. I'm older, probably close to his age, and these problems of a life more in the past than in the future torment me all of the time. That is a problem that recurs in all of my movies …or many of them …since I got older," he said.

Allen turns 75 this year (December 1), making him two years older than co-star Hopkins. "We have all gone through our mid-life crises. I'm just glad I don't have to do that again, but I understand poor Alfie. He is just caught up in this nightmare, but he makes a big mistake and then everything is taken from him: a marriage is destroyed, his wife is very upset by it. That happens. That's life. People do that and men are dogs. I have to say it: we are a rum lot. Never trust a man," he said.

But writer-director Allen trusts the audience to accept his somewhat unorthodox decision to end the film by not ending its multiple stories. "I feel that life, unlike Hollywood movies, does not tie up all the loose ends. Life is unresolved, confusing, bewildering, puzzling, ambiguous …and that you don't really know what's going to happen. The future is uncertain for everybody, so that is how I had seen the end of the picture. I didn't want everybody to neatly wrap up his or her story with a nice "MGM" ending. I wanted the people to wander around in agonizing limbo …like in real life, really," he said.