Another Woman is another serious drama, only his third drama by this point. He would become a lot better at it, but this film suffers from a truly sleepy, almost boring pace. A lackluster film, with an interesting premise, but ultimately Allen’s least lovely film to this point.
Gena Rowland stars as Marion Post. A professor on a writing sabbatical, she rents an apartment next to a therapist. An air vent allows her to overhear the patients, and one woman’s story (Mia Farrow) really touches her, and she starts to notice the failings in her own life.
No subplots, no subtext, and not even an hour and a half, this film feels slight. Once again if it wasn’t for Allen’s year-a-film pace, you would wonder what he did with his time. Only Rowland’s Marion is fleshed out to be a three dimensional character, with the rest being metaphors in her life.
Allen uses one of his fallback tricks to tie a film together, which is narration. But part of the problem of this film is Roland. Perhaps it’s the script or the directing, but she coasts through the film with little emotion, much like the character she portrays. Than monotone narration doesn’t help.
We also feel little compassion for Marion. We spend a lot of time hearing and seeing how horrible she is, but she does nothing to redeem herself. She’s not as heartbrokenly needy as the mother from Interiors. If anything, the film’s message is that she brought this onto herself. Farrow is fine in her very few scenes, but overall this is not a film with major performances. Ian Holm and Gene Hackman are otherwise wasted.
It’s hard to believe this is the same director who created such visual flair in Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex. The dream sequence is dry and unadventurous, and he even has Ingmar Bergman‘s cinematographer Sven Nykvist on board. Allen’s done more than any other director to bring out the beauty of New York, something he bypasses completely in this film.
Yes, it is Bergman-esque. But the humanistic compassion Bergman has is gone, swapped for Allen’s typical cynicism. Most interesting is that Allen thought so little of this film himself that he took the film’s entire premise – eaves dropping on a therapist’s patients – and makes in a comedic subplot for Everyone Says I Love You.
This is a disappoiting film, with very little to love. Just about everything covered here is covered better in the rest of Allen’s work. No one seems to be having any fun, and many ideas are outright wasted. But as is typical of Allen, he almost makes one of his very worse films before he makes one of his very best.
Full cast:
Gena Rowlands, Ian Holm, Mia Farrow, Blythe Danner, Betty Buckley, John Houseman, Sandy Dennis, Frances Conroy, Philip Bosco, Martha Plimpton, Harris Yulin, Gene Hackman
3 Comments
I totally love and enjoy every second of this film. I don’t find it boring at all, the pace was suitable to the subject matter. Sure, there are no car chases in it. But that’s the kind of things I consider really boring and formulaic in films (try to find one in Woody Allen’s movies, ha). Seeing “Another Woman,” for first time literally changed the way I understood my life in relationship to the career I wanted to pursue. I’ll never forget the life lessons I have learned from it. I feel like we’re talking about two completely different movies.
You expect too much of the film without really seeing what’s there on the table.
“Only Rowland’s Marion is fleshed out to be a three dimensional character, with the rest being metaphors in her life.”
It’s apparent that the acting is too subtle for you to catch. From the way Ken deals with his daughter on the phone and ex-wife, nodding to the fact of his internal cold nature, to the way Marion lightly disapproves of her step-daughter, indicating a set of obligations that she’s bound to and not aware of – all these are precise human brushstrokes that DEMAND you to process them, and not feed the character information to you.
“But part of the problem of this film is Roland. Perhaps it’s the script or the directing, but she coasts through the film with little emotion, much like the character she portrays.”
This is a failure on your part to sense the character, and not a failure of the character. Furthermore, the moments when she reveals actual emotion, regret, and all that, near the ending, or in her dream sequence are hyper-magnified IF you had realized the innate tragedy of her character through the subtle web of character interactions above. Allen, also maps the emotions perfectly through the music, indicating the possible undercurrents even while Marion is outwardly distant from them. Once you realize how everything fits in the structure, rather than cave in to your own neediness, then you’ll see how Another Woman is one of Allen’s best films.
“We also feel little compassion for Marion. We spend a lot of time hearing and seeing how horrible she is, but she does nothing to redeem herself. She’s not as heartbrokenly needy as the mother from Interiors. If anything, the film’s message is that she brought this onto herself.”
It’s also telling that you fall in to the traps Allen sets, falling for surface emotion while missing internal emotion. The mother in Interiors is heartbrokenly needy and ALSO a nutcase who never changes. Marion brought everything on herself and CHANGES at 50 years old – a period when you’d think all of our lives would be hardened into stone. That’s a whole level above the excesses of drama that Interiors falls to.
“The dream sequence is dry and unadventurous”
Likewise the film, which is intimate and moderately structured, doesn’t demand adventure. Yet the camera-work delineates everything perfectly and naturally without resorting to such grandiosity that you’d see in something like Stardust Memories (which is also a great dream sequence, although the subject matter is different.
“But the humanistic compassion Bergman has is gone, swapped for Allen’s typical cynicism.”
Once again, while the premise is cynical, the ending is so completely revelatory that it actually needles the cynicism right in the heart.
“Just about everything covered here is covered better in the rest of Allen’s work. No one seems to be having any fun, and many ideas are outright wasted.”
While the other films may do things like relationships and comedy better, you’ll never find all of the elements fitting together to deal with the question of facing life itself any better, except in Stardust Memories.
Hey there. You’re right, maybe I am being harsh. I know people love this film. But it’s one that has never connected with me.
Maybe I’ll find more next time I watch it. I don’t hate it. The dream stuff, as a short film, or part of a larger anthology, would be amazing. Hopefully it grows on me.