BEFORE: I'm skipping over "Hannah and Her Sisters" and "Radio Days", because I've seen them both before, so as a result both Mia Farrow AND Dianne Wiest carry over from "The Purple Rose of Cairo". Both actresses appeared in the two films I'm jumping over, so this linking would have happened no matter what. Once you're in the Woody Allen acting troupe, you're set for work...
THE PLOT: At a summer house in Vermont, neighbor Howard falls in love with Lane, who's in a relationship with Peter, who's falling for Stephanie, who's married with children.
AFTER: The whole point of this project, at least at first, was to discover what could be learned by the proper positioning of one movie next to another. (And, yes, it's all based on my personal definition of what constitutes "proper".) So, in watching the errant Woody Allen films in chronological order and close together, I'm better able to discern the similarities between them. If "September" can be the more downbeat, dramatic version of "Hannah and Her Sisters", then this film can be the more downbeat, dramatic version of "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy".
In both films three couples are involved, and nearly every character is involved with one person and longing for another, circling back to the start. There's a similar chain here, with four characters forming a rough quadrangle, though it doesn't loop back upon itself this time. A neighbor loves the lead female character, who loves the writer staying in her guest house, who loves a married woman. Everyone is chasing the (more or less) unattainable, and nobody is satisfied with who they CAN get.
For that matter, nobody seems very satisfied at all, and life is ultimately meaningless, everything is pointless, and eventually the universe will collapse in upon itself, due to the excess gravity caused by everyone's extreme self-loathing. I mean, come ON. Can't we also justify a little happiness now and again? Isn't our ultimate demise also a double-edged whatsit, like if we're all going to die someday, can't we use that as a reason to enjoy ourselves, rather than be paralyzed with indecision?
To be fair, the lead character's mother is on the scene, and she does know how to party. She's led a full, interesting life and she's not done yet, she rolls with the punches, and seems to have overcome the family tragedy that's vaguely alluded to for most of the film, even though the lead character clearly has not. Obviously there's more to this backstory, which I shall not reveal here.
The writer character could be a stand-in for Woody himself, I suppose. If Woody does not appear in one of his films, part of the puzzle is determining which character is supposed to be him - this also lends more insight into "Interiors" because the same actor was in that film - did he play a writer there too? I'll have to check - but I didn't know he was in several Woody Allen films before spending so much time on "Law & Order".
I guess the general rule, though, for keeping one's marriage intact would be to never spend time in a country house with other couples. According to Woody's films, that's just asking for trouble.
A little investigation tells me this was loosely based on a Chekhov play, "Uncle Vanya" - which doesn't help me at all, because I know even less about Chekhov than I do about Bergman. And what I do know is filtered through other films, like this one. So again I just have to take the story that's presented to me here and make my judgment. This forces me to regard a power outage and a ouija board as contrivances, similar to those seen in films earlier in the week.
Also starring Sam Waterston (last seen in "Interiors"), Elaine Stritch (last heard in "Paranorman"), Denholm Elliott (last seen in "A Room With a View"), Jack Warden (last seen in "Guilty As Sin").
RATING: 3 out of 10 jazz records
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