Husbands and Wives

Released in the hype of Allen and Farrow’s breakup in the wake of his infamous Soon-Yi scandal, HUSBANDS AND WIVES archly and topically plumbs into the marital conundrums of two couples, Gabe (Allen) and Judy (Farrow, bookends her collaboration with Allen to the tune of 13), and their best friends Jack (Pollack) and Sally (Davis).

For one thing, the film adopts a jittery cinematographic style (aided by handheld cameras and Steadi-cams) which certainly is not Allen’s modus operandi, and lets rip the neurotic, taxing, unrelieved relationship squabbles to full throttle, inflamed by Jack and Sally’s abrupt declaration of their separation after being married for over 15 years. Two different reactions ensure, Gabe retains his sangfroid facing a bolt from the blue but Judy apparently loses it, thinking that her closest friend has been keeping her marriage snags to herself, that seems to be a big blow to their time-honoured friendship, but on a more intuitive level (as later Sally astutely dissects), there is something deeply self-serving in Judy’s reaction.

Gabe and Judy are jolted to scrutinize their own 10-year-young matrimony, where crevices start to crack open, here, Allen deploys another gimmick, a faux-documentary with character revealing their inner feelings in the form of an interview, Gabe confesses he is a sucker for “kamikaze women” (with trying smugness) until he meets Judy, whom he deciphers is a mastermind of passive-aggressive manipulation, aka. she always gets what she wants in the end. That is what happens, Allen, a professor in literary, becomes increasingly attracted by one of his student Rain (Lewis) while being self-aware of the clichéd professor-student entanglement. Meanwhile, Judy, lends a helping hand by introducing her newly single colleague Michael (Neeson, a disarmingly pleasurable presence) to Sally, who is fumed when she finds out Jack has moved in with his new lover Sam (Anthony), a young aerobics trainer, merely three weeks after the...

One of Woody's best, subordinate pretty much only to Hannah and Her Sisters. I'm never taken by 'great performances' - always been more of a writing/direction guy. But the acting here floors me every time, so much so that I can't pay much attention to 'the filmmaking' as I normally do. Just straight entranced from the first scene. There's this line, towards the middle, where Gabe is narrating a bit from one of his novels:

"Was the notion of ever-deepening romance a myth along with simultaneous orgasm? The only time Rifkin and his wife experienced simultaneous orgasm was when they were granted their divorce"

All time favorite, this one