Denholm Elliott has the hots for Mia Farrow, who has the hots for Sam Waterston, who has the hots for Dianne Wiest. Mia's ex-film-star mother and her physicist husband descend on them, insult everyone and then go away again. All this is set in a house in New England during a storm and power-cut.
Some critics see this as Allen in Bergman mode again but to me its claustrophobic country-house atmosphere is more reminiscent of Chekhov with one important exception: Chekhov has jokes. This is tedious stuff. No wonder Soon-Yi (in Wild Man Blues) says that she walked out of it.
Fact and fiction got confused in my mind when Mia Farrow's character started talking about shooting her mother's gangster lover when she was a teenager. This may be an allusion to the real-life shooting of Johnny Stompanato by Lana Turner's daughter. Elaine Strich, playing the mother, is reminiscent of Farrow's real mother Maureen O'Sullivan in Hannah And Her Sisters.
Some critics see this as Allen in Bergman mode again but to me its claustrophobic country-house atmosphere is more reminiscent of Chekhov with one important exception: Chekhov has jokes. This is tedious stuff. No wonder Soon-Yi (in Wild Man Blues) says that she walked out of it.
Fact and fiction got confused in my mind when Mia Farrow's character started talking about shooting her mother's gangster lover when she was a teenager. This may be an allusion to the real-life shooting of Johnny Stompanato by Lana Turner's daughter. Elaine Strich, playing the mother, is reminiscent of Farrow's real mother Maureen O'Sullivan in Hannah And Her Sisters.