Director/writer: Woody Allen
Photography: Sven Nykvist
Music: Erik Satie, Woody Allen’s record collection
Editor: Susan E. Morse
Cast: Gena Rowlands, Ian Holm, Gene Hackman, Sandy Dennis, Mia Farrow, Blythe Danner, Betty Buckley, Martha Plimpton, John Houseman, Harris Yulin, Frances Conroy
Director and writer Woody Allen’s movie about the bourgeois in New York City entering their 50s is surprisingly very good. I suspect a good deal of that, especially nowadays with his reputation in shreds, is because this is one of his rare movies in which he does not appear. It doesn’t hurt that the cast is stellar: Gena Rowlands and Gene Hackman are excellent, as usual. Others—Betty Buckley, Sandy Dennis, John Houseman—have small roles but make the most of them. I also got a kick out of seeing a youthful Frances Conroy, who went on to the TV series Six Feet Under more than 10 years later.
It's still a Woody Allen movie, specifically in his “serious” key, aping the greats of European cinema, usually Ingmar Bergman. For Another Woman he hired cinematographer Sven Nykvist, hailing from the Bergman stable (Scenes From a Marriage, Fanny and Alexander, Cries & Whispers). He throws a coat of brown / golden / sepia over the proceedings, which gives the picture an aura of something from the past. This was their first collaboration, but Woody and Nykvist ended up working on a few more films together. Another Woman draws on the reminiscing structure and wistful, nostalgic notes of Bergman’s Wild Strawberries with an interestingly complicated scenario. Gena Rowlands is Marion Post, a tenured professor of German philosophy who reads Rilke for pleasure. Her life has reached a point where it suddenly falls apart.
Director and writer Woody Allen’s movie about the bourgeois in New York City entering their 50s is surprisingly very good. I suspect a good deal of that, especially nowadays with his reputation in shreds, is because this is one of his rare movies in which he does not appear. It doesn’t hurt that the cast is stellar: Gena Rowlands and Gene Hackman are excellent, as usual. Others—Betty Buckley, Sandy Dennis, John Houseman—have small roles but make the most of them. I also got a kick out of seeing a youthful Frances Conroy, who went on to the TV series Six Feet Under more than 10 years later.
It's still a Woody Allen movie, specifically in his “serious” key, aping the greats of European cinema, usually Ingmar Bergman. For Another Woman he hired cinematographer Sven Nykvist, hailing from the Bergman stable (Scenes From a Marriage, Fanny and Alexander, Cries & Whispers). He throws a coat of brown / golden / sepia over the proceedings, which gives the picture an aura of something from the past. This was their first collaboration, but Woody and Nykvist ended up working on a few more films together. Another Woman draws on the reminiscing structure and wistful, nostalgic notes of Bergman’s Wild Strawberries with an interestingly complicated scenario. Gena Rowlands is Marion Post, a tenured professor of German philosophy who reads Rilke for pleasure. Her life has reached a point where it suddenly falls apart.
She’s on a second marriage with Ken (Ian Holm); it’s also his second and he has a teenage daughter, Laura (Martha Plimpton). The marriage has settled into the comforts of routine and numbness. It’s dying, and this picture takes it to its end. Marion has rented an office apartment to work on a book. Her office is next door to a psychoanalyst. She can overhear his sessions through the ventilation system. She can mute the sound with pillows blocking her vent, but the pillows don’t always stay in place. Eventually she becomes fascinated by a nameless young woman, one of the analysands, who is pregnant (Mia Farrow). Soon Marion is obsessed with this woman’s late afternoon sessions, listening to them spellbound.
One of the great points about Another Woman is its brisk dense pace. It moves along with lots of things going on. Marion’s brother Paul’s wife Lynn (Conroy) shows up for an uncomfortable conversation about borrowing money. Marion wonders why Paul doesn’t ask himself, and it emerges that he has hard feelings for Marion which Marion has never suspected. There’s a lot of revelations like that going on, people around Marion suddenly unburdening themselves of their views of her. Always negative, always unsuspected by Marion.
The language is often stilted and bombastic. It feels to me like Woody putting on airs, but maybe that’s the way all his friends talk in New York. “Do you deny it?” says Claire (Sandy Dennis), irked that Marion and Claire’s husband are hitting it off. “He’s been looking into your eyes now for over an hour.” Claire is an old friend Marion lost touch with until they randomly bump into one another on the street and go for drinks. It turns out Claire has a long-term beef with Marion over a one-time beau and now she turns on the flamethrower about it, with Sandy Dennis’s face putting on a gymnast show. “Your conversations were full of subtle flirtations, full of meaningful little looks and little gambits designed to seduce.”
I like the way Mia Farrow’s character is used in the story. Marion becomes obsessed with her—she represents some kind of doppelganger or road not taken. Marion seems to be listening in on most of the sessions. The implication is that the young woman is suicidal. I wasn’t particularly convinced. But no matter, she’s more like a device. When Marion sees her on the street one night she compulsively follows her at a discreet distance. And that’s when she bumps into Claire, as if Farrow’s mysterious young woman led Marion to her.
Gene Hackman infuses the picture with romantic energy. He is Larry Lewis, a writer and friend of Ken. He is madly, foolishly, impetuously in love with Marion and she has feelings for him too. She can’t resist his kisses. He steals them from her by the barrel. I thought the chemistry between Rowlands and Hackman was sizzling. Much of the story is told in flashbacks (perhaps its main connection with Wild Strawberries) and many of the flashback scenes have arty theatrical flourishes. Marion will appear as her 50something self in flashbacks from decades earlier, for example. Some of the story’s key revelations come in a long dream sequence set in a theater rehearsal.
The script is clumsy in places. Marion learns things in the dream, for example, that turn out to be true in the real world, which is an unlikely way to learn things, even in dream sequences that feel less like dreams and more like another device. There’s another scene that confuses me, with no evident connections to reality. Marion is just suddenly privy to a conversation between Ken’s daughter Laura and a boyfriend she has just had sex with. Laura is saying that Marion is a little uptight, judgmental and rigid, which is devastating to Marion, per the usual pattern. Is this a vision or telepathy or what? Hard to tell. My hunch is Woody just got lazy about connecting narrative dots. Occupational hazard.
Rowlands and Hackman particularly put over something special in this stew of the usual Woody-addled Manhattan-flavored hijinks among the smug and well-heeled. Some of the touchy-feely stuff felt like icky shallow self-help, even if it is rooted in Rilke: “For here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.” I admit the line haunts me, but it feels close to trite the way it’s used here. Still, it resonates in a positive way as Rowlands puts over Marion’s object lessons in life breakdown, an experience many of us have had, not just affluent German philosophy scholars in Manhattan. Give Another Woman a chance.
One of the great points about Another Woman is its brisk dense pace. It moves along with lots of things going on. Marion’s brother Paul’s wife Lynn (Conroy) shows up for an uncomfortable conversation about borrowing money. Marion wonders why Paul doesn’t ask himself, and it emerges that he has hard feelings for Marion which Marion has never suspected. There’s a lot of revelations like that going on, people around Marion suddenly unburdening themselves of their views of her. Always negative, always unsuspected by Marion.
The language is often stilted and bombastic. It feels to me like Woody putting on airs, but maybe that’s the way all his friends talk in New York. “Do you deny it?” says Claire (Sandy Dennis), irked that Marion and Claire’s husband are hitting it off. “He’s been looking into your eyes now for over an hour.” Claire is an old friend Marion lost touch with until they randomly bump into one another on the street and go for drinks. It turns out Claire has a long-term beef with Marion over a one-time beau and now she turns on the flamethrower about it, with Sandy Dennis’s face putting on a gymnast show. “Your conversations were full of subtle flirtations, full of meaningful little looks and little gambits designed to seduce.”
I like the way Mia Farrow’s character is used in the story. Marion becomes obsessed with her—she represents some kind of doppelganger or road not taken. Marion seems to be listening in on most of the sessions. The implication is that the young woman is suicidal. I wasn’t particularly convinced. But no matter, she’s more like a device. When Marion sees her on the street one night she compulsively follows her at a discreet distance. And that’s when she bumps into Claire, as if Farrow’s mysterious young woman led Marion to her.
Gene Hackman infuses the picture with romantic energy. He is Larry Lewis, a writer and friend of Ken. He is madly, foolishly, impetuously in love with Marion and she has feelings for him too. She can’t resist his kisses. He steals them from her by the barrel. I thought the chemistry between Rowlands and Hackman was sizzling. Much of the story is told in flashbacks (perhaps its main connection with Wild Strawberries) and many of the flashback scenes have arty theatrical flourishes. Marion will appear as her 50something self in flashbacks from decades earlier, for example. Some of the story’s key revelations come in a long dream sequence set in a theater rehearsal.
The script is clumsy in places. Marion learns things in the dream, for example, that turn out to be true in the real world, which is an unlikely way to learn things, even in dream sequences that feel less like dreams and more like another device. There’s another scene that confuses me, with no evident connections to reality. Marion is just suddenly privy to a conversation between Ken’s daughter Laura and a boyfriend she has just had sex with. Laura is saying that Marion is a little uptight, judgmental and rigid, which is devastating to Marion, per the usual pattern. Is this a vision or telepathy or what? Hard to tell. My hunch is Woody just got lazy about connecting narrative dots. Occupational hazard.
Rowlands and Hackman particularly put over something special in this stew of the usual Woody-addled Manhattan-flavored hijinks among the smug and well-heeled. Some of the touchy-feely stuff felt like icky shallow self-help, even if it is rooted in Rilke: “For here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.” I admit the line haunts me, but it feels close to trite the way it’s used here. Still, it resonates in a positive way as Rowlands puts over Marion’s object lessons in life breakdown, an experience many of us have had, not just affluent German philosophy scholars in Manhattan. Give Another Woman a chance.
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