Cinema Revisited: Husbands and Wives (1992)

Directed by Woody Allen. Starring Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Blythe Danner, Judy Davis, Juilette Lewis, Liam Neeson, Lysette Anthony Sydney Pollack. Released September 18, 1992. Running time: 103 minutes.

One of Woody Allen's finest and most unusual films, "Husband and Wives" is a movie in which the director breaks all the rules. Allen swishes and swoops with a hand held camera, shoots characters speaking from the back of their head, loses visual focus when a character moves closer to the camera --- and somehow it all still works. He drops scenes and switches to another with a jarring abruptness, and still the rhythm of the film is never upset. Furthermore, the scandal involving Allen, Farrow, and Soon-Yi happened during filming, when Mia had four days left to work, but she did, professionally, finish her days. And the movie never loses its artistic focus or its aesthetic brilliance. Allen shoots in semi-documentary style with characters speaking to a would-be interviewer to break up the narrative structure.

The comedy is brutal, dealing with long term breakups, underlying suspicion, guilty dalliances, and taboo encounters. Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis are Jack and Sally, who show up at the home of their good friends Gabe and Judy (Woody Allen and Mia Farrow) to announce their separation. Gabe and Judy are shocked. The film then explores the confusion and experimentation of Jack and Sally along with the introspection of Gabe and Judy, who are forced by the separation to examine their own relationship. Jack attempts to recapture some level of his lost youth by dating Sam (Lysette Anthony), a young aerobics instructor roughly 30 years his junior. This angers Judy, because it happens too quickly after their breakup. Jack is filled with rage when he discovers that Judy is seeing someone (Michael, played by Liam Neeson). Meanwhile, Gabe develops a friendship with one of his students, Rain (Juliette Lewis) who approaches him romantically, but Gabe doesn't let it go too far.

It is fascinating the way Allen explores each character and their relationship. Judy's first date after the breakup is with Paul, a co-worker who always liked her. But her constant phone calls to Jack, and her hostile behavior, turns him off and their first date is cancelled before it begins. During the scenes when Judy is yelling on the phone, Woody the director circles the hand-held camera around Judy as she yells on the phone in a most effective series of shots. And when she rants about her age to Paul, who has lost interest due to her behavior, her voice and stance is positively chilling. It is also impressive how Rain's parents are so casually open minded and accepting of Rain's interest in much older men (a wonderfully unsettling scene has a middle aged ex-lover waiting outside her home begging her to return to him).

Each of the characters in "Husbands and Wives" is prone to introspection, wallowing in skepticism and self-doubt, and teetering on an emotional edginess that wavers between amusingly absurd and chillingly dangerous. The dialog is sharp and funny, the New York locations fill the negative space, and the film is challenging, absorbing, literate, and satisfying. From the brown/sepia pallor to the color photography, to the fact that the film offers nobody to root for, "Husbands and Wives" offers elements that are found in perhaps no other Woody Allen movie. It is a good example of how his art experimented, and grew, artistically and continues into the 21st century.