Thoughts on Another Woman

 

via Giphy/Courtesy Orion Pictures

" ... I began having troubling thoughts about my life. There was something about it not real, full of deceptions, but these, these deceptions had become so, so many and so much a part of me now, like I couldn't even tell who I really was. ..."

It's ballsy, asking an audience to feel for a character without feelings. Won't someone please pity the poor victim of her station, ambitions and time? What does a better-than-you WASP have to do for some respect? She's lived her life how she was supposed to, except now that she's 50, she realizes that it hasn't brought her fulfillment. Surely, that's worth some sympathy, eh, moviegoers? A lifetime of what a male writer and director, Woody Allen, considers to be callous, alienating behavior (and often is) can be easily forgiven so long as she's repeatedly placed in or remembers situations showing just how wrong she's been, right? Another Woman is 81 minutes of Marion (Gena Rowlands) receiving "The reason why you suck" speeches.

A philosophy professor, Marion is the kind whose lectures from 20 years ago are still remembered by pupils. Because, you know, that happens. She's the child of a Smithsonian board member (John Houseman) and a member of both Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union. Again, better than you. So, so much more better than you. Married for the second time to Ken (Ian Holm) and stepmother to Laura (Martha Plimpton), Marion's writing her latest book. Because Marion's on sabbatical and there's construction at her place, she writes in an apartment next door to a psychiatrist. Marion is able to overhear the sessions. One patient, nearing-her-due-date Hope (Mia Farrow), catches Marion's attention. Hope has been slowly, methodically killing herself, the doctor tells Marion in a dream. Marion's writing and occasional pursuit of Hope (ugh, that name) partially fill her days. There's also socializing with Lydia (Blythe Danner). No points for guessing why Ken's so fond of Lydia. Marion also has free time to get wounded by her inferiors.

Marion and Ken married after their affair, which devastated his then-wife, Kathy (Betty Buckley). Laura loves and respects Marion, but she also dislikes her condescending attitude. In her youth, Marion accepted the wishes of her father (David Ogden Stiers in the flashback), that brother Paul (Harris Yulin as an adult) take a job he hates so that the family would be supported while she attended Bryn Mawr. Her now-widowed father cannot love Paul. Lynn (Frances Conroy), Paul's wife, is open about her feelings that Marion has never really approved of her and about Paul hating Marion. Claire (Sandy Dennis), a childhood friend, is still hurt that a man preferred Marion over her. And Marion's first husband Sam (Philip Bosco), her former professor, who later had a maybe-suicide, maybe-accident substance-related death, was devastated by her abortion. I give Paul the edge over Sam and Kathy for the title of Most Thoroughly Destroyed by Marion.

"Do you remember, some years ago, when I, uh ... I showed you something I'd written? You remember what you said?"

"No, I don't remember. I was probably just trying to be truthful."

"Yes, I'm sure. You said, 'This is ... overblown. It's too emotional, it's maudlin. Your dreams may be meaningful to you, but to the objective observer, they're ... It's so embarrassing.'"

"I said that?"

"Exactly your words. So I tried not to embarrass you ... anymore."

"... I should go."

Woody looked down on soap operas but still wrote one. This time around, his exposition is clumsy and it's obvious when someone isn't saying all that they need to say*. Critics had no mercy when describing Woman's script, and for good reason. Vincent Canby: "Feelings, for all of the importance the film gives them, are more frequently announced than experienced, and when they are announced, they are contained in sentences that no one (except characters played by Woody Allen) could get away with." Woman was written by someone who desperately wants you to know how smart he is. And if you have to say so ...

*Woody allegedly feared intending to write Long Day's Journey Into Night and getting The Edge of Night.

The movie builds to Marion finally encountering Hope. Again, ugh, that name. "Or if you prefer, Device," Sheila Benson wrote. Okay, so Marion can relate to Hope, or at least thinks she can. Marion ends up taking Hope to lunch and talking about her woes. Not surprisingly, this scares off Hope, who later shares her disdain for Marion with the doctor (and, of course, an eavesdropping Marion). Later, after ending her marriage, making up with Paul and making sure that Laura's okay, Marion learns that Hope is no longer a patient and she has no way of contacting her. It's for the best, really. Besides depression, what did they have?

*Marion reads a book by Larry (Gene Hackman), who failed to convince her not to marry Ken*

"I remember thinking how wonderful she was, and how beautiful she looked at that moment. And I wanted to tell her so many things, because my feelings were swirling so. And I think she knew everything, and that frightened her. And yet some instinct told me that if I kissed her, she would respond. ... Her kiss was full of desire, and I knew I couldn't share that feeling with anyone else. ... And then a wall went up and just as quickly, I was screened out. But it was too late, because I now knew that she was capable of intense passion, if she would one day just allow herself to feel."

Not Recommended.

Thoughts:

-- "I was just returning some things. ... You can stop staring. I'm not a ghost. ... Although we did spend a few years together, had a child together in this house. "I wish you had called." "I'm not staying. Although, uh, some of these people used to be my friends, too." "Would you like a drink?" "Kitty --" "Don't panic, I'm not accepting. These are artifacts from more civilized days between us." "I think perhaps you should just leave them and go."

-- Box Office: This grossed nearly $1.6 million on an unknown budget.

-- Critic's Corner, the movie: "Ostensibly about passion, the movie has less real emotional content than a lounge lizard's rendition of 'Feelings,'" Rita Kempley wrote. The characters "discover so little that is either emotionally or dramatically urgent," Canby wrote. Aside from Hackman and Conroy, "the actors seem stifled, as stiff and muted as their surroundings," according to Benson.

-- Critic's Corner, Gena: "Riveting ... for the ravaged beauty and genuine pathos she allows the camera to find in her face and figure," according to Canby.

-- Critic's Corner, Woody: He "no longer writes English as if he enjoyed the language -- or even spoke it," David Denby wrote, before wondering why Woody keeps "bothering with 'intellectuals'" and observing that if it's do dangerous to be emotionally cold, Woody should "stop making antiseptically chilly movies." Kempley: "He's as tiresome as the movie line snob he ripped in Annie Hall. ... If only he'd learn to relax with the fact that he's Bergman in the mask of comedy, a classic on his own." Benson: "(He) has pulled the cloak of Ingmar Bergman closely around him, only to get his feet tangled in the hem and the hood down over his eyes."

-- Hey, It's ...!: Dana Ivey and Josh Hamilton.

-- Yes, Mia was actually pregnant. She gave birth to Ronan Farrow apparently after filming concluded.

-- "Which one's Marion?" "... I am." "Kathy, this is in terrible taste, you know." "Oh, my ex-husband is an authority on taste! Now what does Emily Post say about adultery with a philosophy professor in a Holiday Inn while his wife is in the hospital having her ovaries removed?" "Okay, that's enough. Please leave. I realize that you've been hurt, and if I've done anything wrong, I'm sorry. Forgive me. I accept your condemnation."

-- Next: Beetlejuice. On deck: Patty Hearst.