More like a painter than a movie director, Woody Allen can be broken down into distinct `periods.' He broke wholly (if temporarily) from comedy in 1978 with the Bergmanesque Interiors, a departure which failed to net him expected acclaim. In 1987, with September, he returned to somber, introspective drama unencumbered with mirth, and followed it up the next year with Another Woman. Whatever else can be said about these three works, they show more integrity and hold more interest than the soured, indifferent movies he began to issue in the late 90s. But, even earlier, the canker was gnawing at the rose.
In Another Woman, Gena Rowlands plays an academic on sabbatical trying to write a book. Money seems no problem to her, as to most of the characters in Allen's universe (when construction noises outside her huge, pre-war uptown apartment disturb her concentration, she just leases a smaller one downtown, in the high-rent Manhattan of the late-Reagan boom years). But faulty ventilation enables her to eavesdrop on the clients of a psychiatrist whose suite lies next door. One of them (Mia Farrow, in a peripheral role) begins to obsess her, but, again as with most of Allen's characters, the obsession is not so much with another human being but with her own reactions, moods and memories; Farrow merely primes the pump.
Rowlands' life is replayed through her own voice-over narrative, flashbacks, and dreams (in which staged theatrical productions are mounted). Her second husband (Ian Holm), another cool cucumber, is carrying on with a mutual friend (Blythe Danner), much as Holm carried on with Rowlands when married to his first wife (Betty Buckley). Rowlands' older first husband, her professor at Bryn Mawr (nobody gains entry to Allen's world without a prestigious sheepskin), may have killed himself, possibly as a late reaction to the abortion she secured against his wishes (he had already arrived when she was just starting out). Her brother (Harris Yulin) never made much of himself he works in a crummy office on a metal desk and so is shunned by her and by their crusty, success-conscious father (John Houseman).
Rowlands finally encounters Farrow in a `cluttered and dusty' antique shop that paradoxically dazzles with freshly polished lustre; they go to lunch together, and the younger woman accelerates Rowlands' ordeal of self-assessment. Taking many long walks to clear her head, she runs into people who are none too thrilled to see her or she them (Sandy Dennis, as a former best friend, steals her two brief scenes). The short movie ends, rather abruptly, with Rowlands claiming finally to be at peace after reading a novel by an old flame (Gene Hackman). Completing the self-referential circle, it's one in which she had inspired a character.
Socrates' maxim about an unexamined life not being worth living may be good advice to hoi polloi, but certainly not for those who've made it. Memories start churning, the detritus of past relationships, past mistakes floats up, and Rowlands and her set are flabbergasted deeply offended that such unseemly happenings should befall them. They're in such bad taste. It's as though the creative, richly remunerative careers they've contrived to attain, as well as the connoisseur's lifestyle (Klimt, Mahler, the `original French production of La Gioconda') that comes in their wake, justify and negate all the trimming and compromises and self-delusion that went before. It's only the warm and comfortable destination that counts; the arduous journey there is best forgotten.
It's a credo Allen seems in full sympathy with he's long since stopped celebrating where he came from (as artists generally do) in order to celebrate where he fancies he's risen to (and though his penthouse may be on the East Side, he's still not an old-money WASP and like John O'Hara, another arriviste snob, he never went to college). And yet more keenly than any other film-maker, Allen remains a merciless satirist of smug intellectuals, destructive solipsists and careerist phonies, although it's not entirely clear he knows it.
In Another Woman, Gena Rowlands plays an academic on sabbatical trying to write a book. Money seems no problem to her, as to most of the characters in Allen's universe (when construction noises outside her huge, pre-war uptown apartment disturb her concentration, she just leases a smaller one downtown, in the high-rent Manhattan of the late-Reagan boom years). But faulty ventilation enables her to eavesdrop on the clients of a psychiatrist whose suite lies next door. One of them (Mia Farrow, in a peripheral role) begins to obsess her, but, again as with most of Allen's characters, the obsession is not so much with another human being but with her own reactions, moods and memories; Farrow merely primes the pump.
Rowlands' life is replayed through her own voice-over narrative, flashbacks, and dreams (in which staged theatrical productions are mounted). Her second husband (Ian Holm), another cool cucumber, is carrying on with a mutual friend (Blythe Danner), much as Holm carried on with Rowlands when married to his first wife (Betty Buckley). Rowlands' older first husband, her professor at Bryn Mawr (nobody gains entry to Allen's world without a prestigious sheepskin), may have killed himself, possibly as a late reaction to the abortion she secured against his wishes (he had already arrived when she was just starting out). Her brother (Harris Yulin) never made much of himself he works in a crummy office on a metal desk and so is shunned by her and by their crusty, success-conscious father (John Houseman).
Rowlands finally encounters Farrow in a `cluttered and dusty' antique shop that paradoxically dazzles with freshly polished lustre; they go to lunch together, and the younger woman accelerates Rowlands' ordeal of self-assessment. Taking many long walks to clear her head, she runs into people who are none too thrilled to see her or she them (Sandy Dennis, as a former best friend, steals her two brief scenes). The short movie ends, rather abruptly, with Rowlands claiming finally to be at peace after reading a novel by an old flame (Gene Hackman). Completing the self-referential circle, it's one in which she had inspired a character.
Socrates' maxim about an unexamined life not being worth living may be good advice to hoi polloi, but certainly not for those who've made it. Memories start churning, the detritus of past relationships, past mistakes floats up, and Rowlands and her set are flabbergasted deeply offended that such unseemly happenings should befall them. They're in such bad taste. It's as though the creative, richly remunerative careers they've contrived to attain, as well as the connoisseur's lifestyle (Klimt, Mahler, the `original French production of La Gioconda') that comes in their wake, justify and negate all the trimming and compromises and self-delusion that went before. It's only the warm and comfortable destination that counts; the arduous journey there is best forgotten.
It's a credo Allen seems in full sympathy with he's long since stopped celebrating where he came from (as artists generally do) in order to celebrate where he fancies he's risen to (and though his penthouse may be on the East Side, he's still not an old-money WASP and like John O'Hara, another arriviste snob, he never went to college). And yet more keenly than any other film-maker, Allen remains a merciless satirist of smug intellectuals, destructive solipsists and careerist phonies, although it's not entirely clear he knows it.