Another Woman (1988)
An outstanding director’s misfire can be a bit like a relationship that has suddenly lost footing: everything you admire about that person becomes grating, an unintentional self-parody. As I watched a character casually expound on the latest Brecht production she caught over a glass of wine with long lost friends in Woody Allen’s Another Woman, I wondered, “Do people drink beer in Woody Allen movies?” Actually that’s unfair, a character drinks beer in that very scene, but do Woody Allen characters eat that pizza that supposed to be so good in New York? Do they shit? Do they screw? Do they read a, gulp, best seller, even behind doors that are safely locked so their friends couldn’t possibly uncover the truth? Maybe that’s why marriages are always disintegrating in Allen’s pictures: the people seek Brecht connoisseurs only to find that they’ve married Michael Crichton fans.
Another Woman aspires to address emotional cowardice, but it’s really about Allen’s ongoing fear of anything that could be interpreted as common or middle class, his occasional joyless atonement for making people laugh. The film concerns an intelligent, intimidating, successful upper crust intellectual named Marion Post (Gena Rowlands) who recently turned fifty, and, while renting a loft to start her latest book, begins to overhear the patients of the psychiatrist in the neighboring apartment. One patient in particular fires Marion’s imagination, a pregnant young lady called Hope (Mia Farrow) who speaks of her woes with a terror and confusion that has remained unknown to Marion her entire life. Marion is polished, urbane, never saying the wrong thing (depending upon your definition of wrong) and utterly miserable. Memories flood back to Marion, family members magically appear to essentially tell her they hate her and, for once, Marion finds herself vulnerable, regretful and human.
Many critics have compared Another Woman, positively, to Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, and, while that comparison is unavoidable, Allen wouldn’t really get his Wild Strawberries right for another ten years with the underrated Deconstructing Harry. Harry is alive, and profane, playing to Allen’s authentic inner torment and surreal wild comedy. Another Woman is insecure and self-conscious, hypocritical even, as terrified of anything messy as its protagonist. The picture desperately needs contrast, instead it has Allen’s relentless, one note plea for Major Artist status: control and contrivance masquerading as brilliance.
This film has its moments though, and the one misery after another hammering eventually wears you down. The casting was a canny move on Allen’s part, it’s jarring to see Rowlands, normally so sensual, embodying such a suffocating character, she’s terrific in an unsentimental, tightly coiled performance, we feel the waste of life. Gene Hackman, as a would be lover who got away, is too forceful of an actor to submit to the repression; the second to final scene of the film, revealing how Rowlands and Hackman became close, achieves the electric longing the entire picture has been laboring for. Sandy Dennis, as a friend who has always privately resented Marion, is even harder to forget, she’s bravely, embarrassingly raw.
As with most Allen films, the picture is beautiful and meticulously crafted (it was shot by Bergman cinematographer Sven Nykvist) but that only highlights the fact that we’re essentially stuck in an occasionally moving tour through a very pretty wax museum.
★★½
April 8th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Great thoughts, Chuck. In my film vocabulary, Allen is severely under-represented. I’ve seen a handful of his films and none of the ‘greats’ (except, perhaps, for Crimes and Misdemeanors). Every time I try to approach his work I always feel obligated - it’s something I need to watch, but not something I necessarily want to.
I had never heard of this one (which isn’t surprising - the guy has directed, what, 523 films?), but you have some great observations. “stuck in an occasionally moving tour through a very pretty wax museum.” Bingo. That perfectly sums up Allen for me.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Who doesn’t want to watch ANNIE HALL or MANHATTAN? Come on Evan! These aren’t chores!
April 8th, 2008 at 10:27 am
*bows head in shame* I know, I know, I have failed my fellow cinephiles. Perhaps after I work my way through Tarkovsky I’ll fill in my Allen gaps.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I revere Woody Allen, he’s made about as many movies that I dearly love as anyone in the business in any era. But all the greats are entitled to their weak sauce, and ANOTHER WOMAN is one of Allen’s. I look forward to hearing what you think when you get into him Evan.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Middling or below average Allen falls flat, particularly if you don’t live on the Upper East Side. It’s funny though how Allen seems to occassionally be aware of that shortcoming, play off of it, and transcend it. Look at Hannah and Her Sisters, to cite an example I recently revisited. And Annie Hall is practically cinematic candy it’s so entertaining.
Do yourself a favor and buy the dvd sight unseen. That’s what I did…and I’ve probably watched it twenty times since then.
April 8th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Allen’s worse is superior to most. I don’t find him as removed from reality as others, and it’s his insights that make him fascinating. His later films have gotten more raw, more real and he’s still our Bergman.
April 8th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I stand by the claim that some of his films don’t work, but I’m comfortable calling Allen our Bergman. And even his bad films have moments. I, for example, don’t care for Melinda and Melinda, but Ejiofor’s scene with Sevigny in the restaurant is electric, and worth seeing the movie for.
April 12th, 2008 at 11:40 am
I fall squarely in the pro-Allen camp, though I’ve often called him, the Pete Rose of the movies. (At least since the early 1990s.) He just doesn’t have the Reggie Jackson power that a healthy number of the A-list directors do so he usually fights to hit *A LOT* of singles and doubles, keeping a normally solid batting average.
Sometimes his failures are very interesting, sometimes they’re not (most recently, Scoop and Cassandra’s Dream left me entirely ice cold, for instance, and redeemed my position on Match Point, which was that it was decent but severely overrated).
That all said, I like Another Woman. It’s flawed and feels like an academic exercise more than most of Allen’s films–and it’s a less vibrant take on Bergman than Interiors to be sure–but Gena Rowlands makes it worth it somehow. Usually Allen films live and die not by their casts, which are usually populated by a number of movie stars working for less money than usual because they want to be directed by him, but in this special case I find the cast saving a fairly routine or mediocre Allen film. Gene Hackman, Ian Holm, Blythe Danner, and longtime Allen star Mia Farrow all do some pretty impressive (and for several of them, different) work here.
It’s a somewhat sluggish picture, which doesn’t really get rolling until, as you say, Chuck, the “electric” last bit with Hackman and Rowlands, but that last part matters a lot. If Another Woman is a grade C+/B- version of Wild Strawberries, then to me it’s fitting that its conclusion packs the most pointed punch, because I think Wild Strawberries naturally becomes stronger and more emotionally powerful in its final extended coda.
April 14th, 2008 at 8:15 am
I love Allen, though I can be hard on his pictures, but I thoroughly enjoyed Scoop. It was light, stupid, self-aware and delightful. It’s also the least self-conscious work that Scarlett Johanssen has done since her intiation into the sex symbol club.
Another Women should be seen at least once for the performances, but I tire of the cold, self-consciously academic grip that Allen has in some of these wannabe Bergman pictures. The film continually scores points off of the Rowlands character and never lets her win a round, and I found that to be schematic and predictable.
All that said, Allen is still probably the greatest working american filmmaker (though we could probably even delete the qualifier “working”).