The narrator in “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” quotes Shakespeare in the opening minutes, telling us that the story we’re about to see is “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
 Woody Allen’s latest film doesn’t signify “nothing” (though it certainly is told by a gaggle of idiots) and, while a slight, unfussy entry in his filmography, set to a breezy soundtrack and populated with a vivacious cast, it is also lean and nimble, a pointed drama masquerading as a flirtatious domestic comedy.

“Tall Dark Stranger” is about the human propensity to always look for the greener grass on the other side of the fence. Little do we know that it’s just Astroturf. Be careful what you wish for, you can almost hear Allen saying, you just might get it.

Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) was married to Helena (Gemma Jones) for 40 years before a midlife crisis drove him to divorce. While Alfie finds solace in the arms (and legs) of Charmaine, a call girl half his age, Helena’s comfort is in the increasingly fruity prophecies of a tarot card reader.

Alfie and Helena’s daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) isn’t doing much better. She’s married to a has-been novelist named Roy (Josh Brolin) who is obsessed with their neighbor Dia (Freida Pinto), while Sally pines for her art gallery boss (Antonio Banderas).

“Tall Dark Stranger” finds Allen back in Europe. No matter the city — London or his cuckolded geographic mistress, Manhattan — the tone is blessedly the same.

“Tall Dark Stranger” is about the dangers of dissatisfaction. The folly of these characters is that they try to transform their fantasies into reality. This being a Woody Allen film, the moment they get what they think they want, reality becomes intolerably worse. Life acts as a sort of whirling centrifuge, spinning out bodies that land in crumpled heaps, which then begin crawling over the shattered, razor-sharp debris of their lives to get back to where they started from.

“You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger”

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Jones, Lucy Punch, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Freida Pinto, Antonio Banderas

Director: Woody Allen

Rated: R (for some language)

Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes

GRADE: B

Photo by 2010 Keith Hamshere / Sony Pictures Classics