From: reiher@FICUS.CS.UCLA.EDU (Peter Reiher)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: HUSBANDS AND WIVES
Summary: r.a.m.r. #01555
Keywords: author=Reiher
Date: 1 Oct 92 19:40:09 GMT
Article-I.D.: cbnewsj.1992Oct1.194009.15538
Reply-To: reiher@FICUS.CS.UCLA.EDU (Peter Reiher)
Followup-To: rec.arts.movies
Organization: University of California at Los Angeles


			     HUSBANDS AND WIVES
		       A film review by Peter Reiher
			Copyright 1992 Peter Reiher

     The press has been suggesting that more filmgoers will see Woody
Allen's new film, HUSBANDS AND WIVES, than any of his recent films.  If
that's true, it's a pity, because few of them are likely to come back
for a second helping.  HUSBANDS AND WIVES is definitely not one of
Allen's stronger efforts, though certainly he's done worse.

     The film concerns two couples who are going through trying times in
their marriages.  One couple is (predictably) played by Woody Allen and
Mia Farrow.  The other, less predictably, is played by Sidney Pollack
(better known as a director than actor) and Judy Davis, a fine
Australian actress not terribly familiar to the typical American
filmgoer.  At the outset of the film, Pollack and Davis announce they
are splitting up, after twenty-five years of marriage.  Their breakup
has traumatic effects on Allen and Farrow's marriage, as does the fact
that both Allen and Farrow begin to find themselves attracted to other
people.

     This scenario should bring to mind certain other films Allen has
done--ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN, HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, perhaps INTERIORS
and SEPTEMBER.  It does share some characteristics with those films, in
that Allen builds the film out of seemingly random incidents in the
characters' lives.  Some of the incidents are momentous moments in the
characters' lives, some are everyday and serve to contrast the
characters' normal lives to their more stressful moments.  But HUSBANDS
AND WIVES has a different structure than Allen's earlier films.  It's
built like a pseudo-documentary.  In some scenes, the characters are 
being interviewed by an off-screen voice, talking directly to the
camera.  Allen's cinematographer, Carlo DiPalma, uses a handheld camera
that visibly shakes and wobbles throughout the film.  Allen uses other
stylistic touches borrowed from the world of the documentary, as well.

     Clearly, Allen had a particular effect in mind, since this isn't
the way he ordinarily shoots his films.  The whole approach of HUSBANDS
AND WIVES is somewhat sociological, as if Allen wanted us to accept the
film as a case study of certain marital behaviors, rather than as a
story.  In addition, the photographic techniques he uses clearly attempt
to make the viewer a participant in the film, by never permitting him to
forget that there is a camera there.  So criticism of the style of
HUSBANDS AND WIVES should be based on a failure of execution or
conception, rather than incompetence or lack of purpose.

     In some ways, just as INTERIORS was Allen's Bergman movie, and
STARDUST MEMORIES was his Fellini movie, HUSBANDS AND WIVES is his
Cassavettes movie.  But, just as INTERIORS was bargain basement 
Bergman, and STARDUST MEMORIES was faux Fellini, HUSBANDS AND WIVES is
clunky Cassavettes.  Allen isn't Cassavettes, just as he isn't Bergman 
or Fellini, and he has too strong a personal style to merely copy them.
Unfortunately, his personal style clashes with his model in each of
these films, to the detriment of the finished product.

     In particular, HUSBANDS AND WIVES suffers from problems in the
script, in the acting, and in the cinematography.  Cassavettes tended to
focus on people who were in the working class, or the middle classes.
Allen, as usual, focuses on New York intelligensia.  Cassavettes-style
grit and realism do not work nearly as well with in that milieu.
Allen's script also fails in the characterization.  The primary couple
are just plain dull, and their problems and concerns are hard to
sympathize with.  The secondary couple are better drawn, but are also on
the screen less.  

     The problems with the central characters is exacerbated by the
performers.  Woody Allen himself is an actor of limited range, the John
Wayne of New York urban angst.  In more challenging roles, his
limitations begin to show themselves, and the part he's given himself in
HUSBANDS AND WIVES is beyond his range.  He lacks the ability to show us
any depths to the character he is playing.  We can accept that he is the
person he is stated to be, but we cannot see anything beneath that
character's surface.  Since opacity is not part of the character's
conception, Allen's performance is a failure.  Mia Farrow does little
better with her role, falling back on her rather wan acting habits,
rather than creating a character.

     The two secondary players are much better.  Sidney Pollack, a fine
director whose acting has previously been limited to small parts, shows
tremendous talent in the rather cliched part of an aging husband who
leaves his wife for a young blond airhead.  Pollack's vitality suggests
that there is much more to the character than the cliche.  He tends to
take over every scene he is in, especially those with Allen.  Of course,
his is a showier part, but he outacts Allen even in smaller things.  For
instance, we see both characters in their workplaces.  Pollack looks at
home behind his desk, while Allen's professor looks like he's never
stood up in front of a class in his life.  (Of course, I knew professors
like that, too....)

     Judy Davis is probably the most talented performer of the leads,
and she does very well with a somewhat thankless part.  Her Australian
accent seems completely replaced with a New York one, she looks
perfectly at home in the city, and she establishes a rapport with
Pollack that makes the fiction of their characters' lengthy marriage
seem true.  But her performance and Pollack's are not enough, especially
given the amount of time they aren't on the screen.

     The only other major characters are the other partners in the
principal couples' lives.  Liam Neeson and Juliette Lewis have the
largest of these parts.  They're fine, but the script doesn't allow them
much opportunity to be anything but wish-fulfillment figures.  They lack
reality.

     The cinematography doesn't help the film.  As mentioned earlier,
DiPalma uses a handheld camera throughout, so the frame is perpetually
jiggling.  DiPalma further emulates the documentary style with
semi-controlled zooms into performers' faces, bringing them closer than
normal Hollywood photography does and chopping off the top and bottom of
their faces; and by jogging around with the camera when characters move,
rather than cutting to a new angle that frames them better.  These
techniques are annoying, but might have worked if Allen and DiPalma had
not undercut them with a lighting style that doesn't match them at all.
DiPalma uses the same rich, golden lighting used in most of Allen's
later films (and by most American films shot by European
cinematographers, for that matter), sort of the Dutch masters school of
lighting.  The studied, careful lighting simply doesn't match with the
pseudo-casual handheld framing and camera movement.

     Allen is too good a director to produce a complete bust, and
HUSBANDS AND WIVES is by no means Allen's worst film.  It has some
energy (unlike INTERIORS), a few funny lines and situations (unlike
ANOTHER WOMAN), and some interesting scenes (unlike SEPTEMBER).  These
virtues are enough to make HUSBANDS AND WIVES worthwhile for Allen fans,
but not nearly enough to convert those who do not know or like his
films.
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