{"id":18822,"date":"2022-09-14T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-14T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=18822"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:12:02","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:12:02","slug":"woody-allens-husbands-and-wives-the-storm-after-the-calm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/woody-allens-husbands-and-wives-the-storm-after-the-calm\/","title":{"rendered":"Woody Allen\u2019s Husbands and Wives<\/i>: The Storm After the Calm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Over the past three decades, it has become increasingly difficult to watch Woody Allen\u2019s films \u2013 both old and new \u2013 without thinking of his private life, in particular the accusations of child sexual abuse leveled at him by former lover Mia Farrow and their adopted daughter, Dylan. This has been doubly true in the wake of the #MeToo movement and the renewed focus on the evidence presented in last year\u2019s HBO docuseries Allen v. Farrow<\/em>. It wasn\u2019t that long ago, however, that his films still received general releases, were cast with major Hollywood stars, and garnered serious attention at awards time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years, Allen lived a charmed existence. He had the freedom to make whatever films he wanted, with minimal interference or concern for their marketability. He turned them out with such regularity his fans could count on at least one new Woody Allen project a year. The period from 1982 to 1992, when Farrow was his leading lady on- and off-screen, was especially fertile, producing 12 features and one omnibus segment. The lone hiccup was the collapse of Orion Pictures, which had distributed his features following the Heaven\u2019s Gate<\/em>-hastened downturn of United Artists. TriStar Pictures was prepared to pick up the slack for 1992\u2019s Husbands and Wives<\/em>, though, and took to heart the adage that there\u2019s no such thing as bad publicity by moving up the US release to September 18 (just four days after its TIFF premiere) and giving Allen his widest-ever opening and biggest opening weekend to capitalize on the media frenzy surrounding the child abuse allegations he felt compelled to respond to with a rare press conference the month before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What got lost in the fray was one of Allen\u2019s most challenging and stylistically daring films, made in quasi-documentary form with handheld camerawork, jump cuts (sometimes in the middle of sentences), and even some zooms, as well as interviews with the actors in character. Those looking for signs of art imitating life (\u201ca voyeur\u2019s treasure hunt,\u201d per Jami Bernard in the New York Post<\/em>) had to ignore that Husbands and Wives<\/em> had been scripted and filmed long before Allen\u2019s breakup with Farrow, and Gabe and Judy Roth, the married couple they play, are conspicuously childless. Even so, the moments where Judy asks Gabe, \u201cDo you ever hide things from me?\u201d and \u201cDo you think we\u2019d ever break up?\u201d did gain extra layers of meaning (as evidenced by the way clips from the film are deployed in Allen v. Farrow<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Both questions are posed in response to the bombshell that Gabe and Judy\u2019s close friends Jack and Sally (Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis) are splitting up, though they\u2019re not sure how much of a \u201ctrial\u201d the separation really is. Some of the most painful \u2013 and painfully funny \u2013 sequences in Husbands and Wives<\/em> detail Jack and Sally\u2019s misadventures on the dating scene after being married (if not necessarily monogamous) for years. Jack moves in with his unsophisticated aerobics instructor and Judy sets Sally up with her soulful co-worker Michael (Liam Neeson, not having to mask his Irish accent), but neither finds lasting satisfaction with their new companions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, in light of Allen\u2019s gossip-worthy fling with Farrow\u2019s college-aged adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, most critics and viewers focused on the subplot involving college professor Gabe\u2019s infatuation with one of his writing students, Rain (Juliette Lewis), who has had a string of relationships with older men. It starts innocently enough, with him praising one of her stories, to which she responds, \u201cYour approbation means more to me than anybody\u2019s.\u201d Before you know it, they\u2019re taking long walks after class, he\u2019s giving her lifts home in his car, and her parents are inviting him to her 21st<\/sup> birthday party. It\u2019s there that they share their one romantic moment, during a power outage when Rain asks for and receives a kiss (cue the ominous thunder and lightning), at which point Gabe nips things in the bud before they go too far. Tellingly, he\u2019s the only one of the four main characters left uncoupled when the film circles back to them a year and a half later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, Farrow was the one left in a lurch while Allen carried on with Soon-Yi, a situation considered suitable fodder for a Mad TV<\/em> sketch<\/a> just a few years later. As for Husbands and Wives<\/em>, it garnered Academy Award nominations for Allen\u2019s screenplay and Davis\u2019s supporting performance, a typical outcome that continued for the next two decades, with Allen personally racking up eight further writing and directing nods (and one win). The tide started turning, though, after his tribute at the 2014 Golden Globes, when Ronan Farrow (his one biological child, with Mia Farrow) entered the fray. As David Sterritt wrote in the Christian Science Monitor<\/em> at the time of Husbands<\/em>\u2019s release, \u201cOne looks forward to a time when Allen and Farrow have gotten their lives in order once more, and all of us can concentrate on the cinematic work that gave them their only claim to public attention in the first place.\u201d Clearly, we\u2019re not there yet. \"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHusbands and Wives\u201d isn\u2019t streaming anywhere, but is available for <\/em>rent or purchase<\/em><\/a> by the curious.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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