Woman<\/em> was originally conceived as a play, but the script Cassavetes wrote was too intense and emotionally demanding for Rowlands to perform eight times a week. The two received pushback on it every step of the way; \u201cNo one wants to see a crazy, middle-aged dame,\u201d he was reputedly told when seeking financing for the project. Cassavetes ended up mortgaging their house while co-star and friend Peter Falk invested $500,000 after reading the screenplay. They shot in a real Los Angeles property with a limited crew, many culled from the American Film Institute where Cassavetes was serving as their first filmmaker-in-residence. Several cast members were also relatives, including both Rowlands and Cassavetes\u2019s mothers and one of their children. Once complete, it struggled to find a distributor and only began gaining attention when it won awards on the festival circuit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, of course, it\u2019s viewed as one of the couple\u2019s crowning achievements, and a staggering showcase for Rowlands\u2019s singular talents. But it also can\u2019t be denied that watching it is a distinctly grueling endeavor. It runs one-hundred and forty-seven minutes, and pretty much every second is fraught with tension. Aside from a handful of scenes set at Nick\u2019s workplace, the film rarely leaves the hermetic seal of the rooms where he and wife Mabel lob their domestic bombs at one another. It\u2019s the sort of immersive cinematic experience that could genuinely provoke PTSD, even in viewers who didn\u2019t grow up in homes as riven by conflict as the Longhetti\u2019s. The only real chance the audience gets to breathe is during the \u201cSix months later\u201d intertitle that flashes between its uneven halves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When we meet Nick and Mabel, they already seem on the precipice of disaster, even as we sense it\u2019s one they\u2019ve dealt with before. They have a date night planned. Mabel has shuffled off the three kids to her mother\u2019s. But Nick, who works as a construction foreman, is waylaid by a municipal accident, keeping him out all night. Abandoned to her own devices, Mabel goes to a bar, drinks too much, and lets a stranger take her home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What follows, though, is not the expected scene of marital strife. Instead we\u2019re treated to the first of several extended sequences set at the Longhetti dinner table as Nick, without notifying Mabel ahead of time, brings his entire crew home for a meal of spaghetti. Cassavetes\u2019s camerawork here is intimate and observant, like their most attentive guest. Nick and Mabel sit at opposite ends of the table and his framing keeps them separated as the conversation unfolds in real time, lingering on the dawning alarm on the men\u2019s faces as Mabel\u2019s behavior becomes increasingly inappropriate until Nick finally explodes at her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a challenging scene in both length and content, but it never feels indulgent. While many films of similar runtime \u201cearn\u201d their length by being crowded with incident, Woman<\/em> is brimming with character moments. Earlier on, Nick tells a coworker, \u201cMabel\u2019s not crazy. I don\u2019t know what she is, but she\u2019s not crazy.\u201d What Cassavetes and his actors are doing is helping us understand what Nick can\u2019t. Rowlands plays Mabel with a childlike guilelessness that might be charming in other circumstances. Whether wandering the empty house or crowded streets, she often seems to be following along to music no one else can hear. She makes spastic gestures as if her body is trying to leap out of its skin. While the men are eating, her idea of making polite conversation is to ask each of them their names, even the ones she\u2019s apparently met before. For her there are no boundaries between the world of adults and that of children, which makes her dangerous to both. Her kids adore her, but grownups regard her with suspicion, even disdain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This includes Nick, who eventually has Mabel committed to a psychiatric hospital. \u201cWe\u2019re supposed to be on the inside,\u201d she pleads with him before she\u2019s taken away, which is both an appeal to happier times and an admission of their co-dependence. Nick, too, has his issues, as Falk\u2019s aching performance demonstrates. He has a hair-trigger temper, which can cause him to simultaneously defend and abuse his wife. Once she\u2019s gone, he seems lost at sea \u2013 screaming at his co-workers and causing an accident at a work site; pulling his kids out of school to take them to the beach, giving them sips of beer. Cassavetes\u2019s intent with this interlude is to place Mabel\u2019s \u201cmadness\u201d in context by contrasting it with Nick\u2019s, which is also frightening to witness but considered more socially acceptable, steeped as it is in a masculine anxiety for domestic stability. Nick has the support of friends and family, even as he continually pushes it away; Mabel, in comparison, is isolated and alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Woman <\/em>culminates in a stunning \u201ccoming home\u201d sequence, which takes up the final fifty minutes of the film. Now Nick and Mabel sit together at the head of the dinner table, surrounded by an uneasy gathering of people buckling under the weight of strained normalcy. Mabel is \u201ctrying very hard not to get excited.\u201d Nick upbraids her to \u201cbe yourself.\u201d It ends in a precarious stalemate as the couple clears up the latest mess they\u2019ve made. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In these final moments, A Woman Under the Influence<\/em> brings us back to the question of winning and losing. Wars are fought for complex reasons, and Mabel and Nick are no different. She\u2019s survived this skirmish. For Cassavetes, cinema\u2019s begrudging optimist, that counts as victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “A Woman Under the Influence” is streaming on the Criterion Channel<\/a> and Max<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/woman2-1024x768.jpg\")
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