BEFORE: I'm hitting a milestone tonight, after this film gets crossed off the list there will be just 200 films left on it. Loving round numbers, I'm comfortable with this as the new stasis point - I usually add one new film for each one that I watch, and if that's the case, I'm OK with holding here for a while. The number held at 202 for all of February, and before that it spent some time at 204, and most of last year hovering around 230. But occasionally I don't find a film to add, and that's how some semblance of progress takes place. Considering that I started with 435 films, getting the list down to 200 is a big deal, but it took much longer than I first expected.
Mia Farrow carries over yet again, and I'm almost halfway through the Woody Allen chain. But these are the tougher ones to slog through...
THE PLOT: Facing a mid-life crisis, a woman rents an apartment next to a psychiatrist's office to write a new book, only to become drawn to the plight of a pregnant woman seeking that doctor's help.
AFTER: More writer's block tonight - at least this time it's a woman with the condition, for a bit of a change of pace. (Could she be the stand-in for Woody, who does not play a character in this film, either?)
But other than that, it's more of the same. People having affairs, or mid-life crises, or both. I've been really tough on Woody for continuing to mine the same territory, but truth be told, I'm quite jealous. If I ever get around to writing my screenplay, it would also be about a group of NYC friends who are writers and filmmakers, and the affairs and attractions that take place within that group. However, I'd focus on younger people, and I would try my darnedest to not make it as boring as "September" or tonight's film.
Once again, there is a main storyline, but parts of the backstory are revealed via dreams and flashbacks - eating away at any chance of putting together a totally linear timeline. And again the day is saved by narration - a voice-over explaining the connections between the scenes suggests to me that scenes were perhaps written and filmed before a logical way to connect them all had been established - because this violates the "show, don't tell" rule.
I had an odd idea about 2/3 of the way through - what if the central character was having a nervous breakdown, and the patient she was overhearing was not only imaginary, but represented herself as a young woman? Or, better yet, what if she was somehow able to bend the laws of time and actually overhear herself, as a younger woman visiting her analyst? She could then take herself out to lunch, and perhaps convince her younger self to take a different path, follow through with her pregnancy rather than terminate it, and (hopefully) change her life for the better?
If this had been a film directed by David Fincher or M. Night Shyamalan, then maybe that would have worked, but alas, it was not to be. But I think I'm sort of on to something, because both characters had backgrounds in painting, so their similarities were sort of highlighted, so I think in some way the younger woman does represent an aspect of the older woman, just not in the way I had envisioned.
The IMDB suggests that Mia Farrow could be playing the same character she played in "September", who talked about moving to New York at the end of that film. This is another interesting idea, and it leads me to wonder why the Allenverse doesn't work like the Kevin Smith universe, with characters from older films popping up again in new ones. However, the characters have different names - but I suppose it's possible that Laine from "September" could have changed her name upon moving to the city, if she was really looking for a fresh start, or hiding from the baby's father.
This is the first appearance in the project of Martha Plimpton - someone I happen to have met in the real world. Her "cousin" is my employer, and we both served as producers on an animated feature titled "Hair High". It's not like we had much contact, I worked on the day-to-day production and she worked on casting other actors to provide voices - obviously she had many more acting connections than me. But we spoke at the cast party - I had no idea she had been in a Woody Allen film. Weird that it took so long for her to pop up in this project.
Also starring Gena Rowlands (last seen in "The Notebook"), Ian Holm (last seen in "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey"), Blythe Danner (last seen in "The X-Files"), Martha Plimpton, Gene Hackman (last seen in "Welcome to Mooseport"), Betty Buckley (last seen in "Wyatt Earp"), John Houseman, Sandy Dennis (last seen in "The Four Seasons"), David Ogden Stiers (last heard in "Pocahontas"), Philip Bosco, Harris Yulin, Frances Conroy, with a cameo from Dana Ivey.
RATING: 3 out of 10 anniversary gifts
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