In one of the final scenes of Annie Hall, Woody Allen captures an important truth about the agency of the writer. Alvy Singer has written a play based on his relationship with Annie, but he has changed the ending so to speak, concluding with the Annie and Alvy characters resolving their differences and living happily ever after. As Alvy puts it when he breaks the fourth wall and rationalizes his writing to the spectator, “You’re always trying to get things to come out perfect in art, because it’s real difficult in life.” It’s one of the great powers of the writer: the ability to seize reality and reshape it to better fit his own tastes and whims. Allen’s newest film Melinda and Melinda also explores this transformation of reality into fiction, but, interestingly and cleverly enough, it also does the opposite.

Melinda and Melinda presents a story—or rather two stories—within a story. The film begins in an intimate bistro in New York’s meat-packing district on a rainy night. A group of four friends are debating—somewhat heavy-handedly—whether the nature of life is essentially tragic or comic. The two most passionate participants in the discussion are playwrights and, ironically, the one who writes comedies (Wallace Shawn, in a clear nod to My Dinner with André) is arguing for the tragic element of life, while the tragedy writer (Larry Pine) argues for the comic side. To settle the debate, one of the other diners offers the bare bones of an anecdote about a dinner party interrupted by an uninvited guest—the titular Melinda (Radha Mitchell)—and demands of the two playwrights that they decide whether the story is essentially tragic or comic, and so the stories begin. Treating the anecdote as the foundation of a play, both flesh out their respective storylines at the dinner table; Shawn develops a romantic comedy while Pine concocts a tragedy, and the film cuts back and forth between these two interpretations as they’re being “written.”

In the tragic account, Melinda is an old college friend of married couple Laurel (Chloë Sevigny) and Lee (Jonny Lee Miller). The comedy sets her as the downstairs neighbor of Susan (Amanda Peet) and Hobie (Will Ferrell). In both cases, the dinner party Melinda interrupts is business-oriented and the business in question is the entertainment industry. Lee is an actor attempting to wine and dine his way into a part in a play, while Susan is a director trying to find funding for her newest film venture “The Castration Sonata.” All three narratives—the tragedy, the comedy, and the “real-world” story of the playwrights at dinner—then, are in some ways grounded in the dramatic arts, lending a sense of theatricality to the stories and reaffirming the viewer’s understanding that this is all decidedly fiction.

Accordingly, in addition to simple differences in plot, the two storylines are couched in entirely different styles, settings, and contexts. Allen’s camera presents the tragedy as if everything is being viewed by candlelight; these scenes are shot in lush tones that are far richer, deeper, and sexier than the simple, unstylized vision offered by the lighting and camerawork Allen employs in the comedy. Allen further underlines this distinction in tone through the gender of the character on whom he chooses to center each narrative; in the tragedy, Laurel is the central character, giving the story a subtly emotional, feminine tone, while the comedy’s focus on Will Ferrell’s spot-on imitation of Woody Allen minimizes the anguish Hobie experiences due to his extramarital attraction to Melinda.

However, just as both interpretations of Melinda’s story are in some way connected to the dramatic arts, there are other overlaps—both major and minor—that tie the tragedy and comedy to one another. In addition to small symbolic leitmotifs—single-malt scotch, a discussion of passion, “obsequious banter,” a French bistro, and a long meaningful look into a mirror—that permeate both storylines, there are major plot twists and introductions of pivotal characters that parallel one another in the opposing two narratives.

Consequently, elements of comedy work their way into the tragedy, and vice versa. While the tragic Melinda’s depression comes across as very real, her melodramatic and verbose treatment of it—along with the exceedingly odd names of the cast of characters she invokes in telling her story—provide a darkly comedic edge. Conversely, Hobie’s use of humor, although light-hearted, is a thin-veil of self-protection behind which he can nurse his inner turmoil. Although each playwright purports his story to be entirely opposed to his opponent’s, the nature of the dispute necessarily acknowledges that all the same elements are there, and it’s really just a matter of perspective.

If the stories ultimately feel unfinished and incomplete, that’s because they are. Both story lines are only the musings of two playwrights over a relaxed dinner out, and as a result, loose-end tying is not as essential as it might be otherwise. One might be inclined to call this creative laziness, but it’s not. Melinda and Melinda is about Woody’s own creative career as a filmmaker and, for this reason, it’s necessary that the film maintain a rough, fictional tone. It’s a clichéd position to argue the autobiographical nature of Allen’s work, but that does not make the point invalid. Although it may just be an act, over the past forty years Woody Allen has developed a dramatic persona whose behavioral tropes and idiosyncrasies are as recognizable as those of a close personal friend. One can find these easily identifiable traits in Hobie and, to a lesser extent, they’re present in a number of the other characters as well.

More importantly, however, elements of this dramatic persona and his oeuvres appear in the texture of the actual stories concocted by the dining playwrights, who—while their personalities in no way resemble Allen’s—represent the two opposing sides of Allen’s own creative personality. Like Melinda and Melinda, Allen’s career is marked by the division between comedy and tragedy, and this movie shows that, in the end, they are not as disparate as one might think. When he made Annie Hall, Woody Allen was still fairly new to the game, so he only had reality to work with. On the other hand, Melinda and Melinda, by focusing on the process of storytelling and not the story itself, expertly portrays Allen’s artistic life which, although technically fiction, has so pervasively influenced our culture as to become a reality.