While Brian De Palma was in his part of the Park Avenue section of Manhattan making the curious disaster that was Bonfire of the Vanities, Woody Allen was in his section making something of a lighter story, satirical but less barbed and not quite as outrageous. It's about an upper-class housewife who has pretty much anything she could want, and is pampered: high-rise apartment, high-paid massages and clothes and jewelry and whatever, but she also has a boring husband and a back that is aching. So she's sent to a sort of mystical Chinese doctor who gives her a hypnotizing trick, and starts to give her herbs. This spurs on a different way of thinking, or, at least, an affair with a musician, and she also revisits painful memories of her past: a broken relationship with her older sister, and a her former lover who died when she was younger.
The film addresses an interest that can be found in many of Allen's films, something one wouldn't expect from a filmmaker usually associated with therapist couches and satire on neurotics and intellectual New Yorkers, which is magic. One saw it in Purple Rose of Cairo, and one sees it here manifested in a fable structure. Alice (a charming and sometimes affecting Mia Farrow) has to change by her own accord, but is assisted by these 'herbs' that make her invisible, see her dead lover (Alec Baldwin in a great supporting role) in the same room with her, fly high in the sky, and speak with her sister at their old family home in her mind (whether that part is from the opium, if it even is opium, is hard to say), and a potion that will make any men fall desperately in love with her, which makes for the climax of the picture.
Meanwhile, she tries to find herself, her creative spirit as a writer (if it's even there) and a possible lover in musician Joe Mantagna plays. There's some whimsy that Allen is dealing with here, and some intentionally obvious cinematic tricks (a spotlight on Baldwin, the choice in the music like out of a 40's escapist movie, the use of red tint when Alice is being hypnotized), but there's also a smart-serious undercurrent for Alice as a character. What will she do with herself? Will she stay with her husband in a complacent existence, or go with Joe, who may have his heart elsewhere? The resolution to this all is the kind of ending that wouldn't usually come in a fairy tale (I suspect it may have been inspired by Farrow herself, and her dedication to helping out third-world poverty-stricken children). But the film is satisfying as something light and fluffy, some satire of the rich and their petty concerns thrown in, and some existential 'Woody' angst thrown in for good measure.
It's not a major work by any means, and I think Allen is content with it that way. It's also a fine showcase for Farrow (what films in the 80's weren't, i.e. Broadway Danny Rose) and her skills as a comedienne and as a serious actor, in equal measure.
The film addresses an interest that can be found in many of Allen's films, something one wouldn't expect from a filmmaker usually associated with therapist couches and satire on neurotics and intellectual New Yorkers, which is magic. One saw it in Purple Rose of Cairo, and one sees it here manifested in a fable structure. Alice (a charming and sometimes affecting Mia Farrow) has to change by her own accord, but is assisted by these 'herbs' that make her invisible, see her dead lover (Alec Baldwin in a great supporting role) in the same room with her, fly high in the sky, and speak with her sister at their old family home in her mind (whether that part is from the opium, if it even is opium, is hard to say), and a potion that will make any men fall desperately in love with her, which makes for the climax of the picture.
Meanwhile, she tries to find herself, her creative spirit as a writer (if it's even there) and a possible lover in musician Joe Mantagna plays. There's some whimsy that Allen is dealing with here, and some intentionally obvious cinematic tricks (a spotlight on Baldwin, the choice in the music like out of a 40's escapist movie, the use of red tint when Alice is being hypnotized), but there's also a smart-serious undercurrent for Alice as a character. What will she do with herself? Will she stay with her husband in a complacent existence, or go with Joe, who may have his heart elsewhere? The resolution to this all is the kind of ending that wouldn't usually come in a fairy tale (I suspect it may have been inspired by Farrow herself, and her dedication to helping out third-world poverty-stricken children). But the film is satisfying as something light and fluffy, some satire of the rich and their petty concerns thrown in, and some existential 'Woody' angst thrown in for good measure.
It's not a major work by any means, and I think Allen is content with it that way. It's also a fine showcase for Farrow (what films in the 80's weren't, i.e. Broadway Danny Rose) and her skills as a comedienne and as a serious actor, in equal measure.