September

Plot synopsis:
After a failed suicide attempt, Lane has moved into her country house to recuperate in Vermont. Her best friend, Stephanie, has come to join her for the summer to have some time away from her husband. Lane's brassy, tactless mother, Diane, has recently arrived with her physicist husband, Lane's stepfather. Lane is close to two neighbors: Peter, a struggling writer, and Howard, a French teacher. Howard is in love with Lane, Lane is in love with Peter, and Peter is in love with Stephanie.
Diane, once a well-known actress, wants Peter to write her biography, primarily because, many years earlier, a teenage Lane supposedly shot her mother's abusive lover. Lane does not want this painful event to go back in the spotlight, but Peter thinks it would make a great story.
One evening, Diane decides to host a party, ruining Lane's plans with Peter. Peter arrives early and confesses to Stephanie that he has wanted to be alone with her for a long time. Outside, there is an electrical storm, and the lights go out. Candles and piano music create a romantic setting. Diane finds her old Ouija board and talks to the spirits of her previous lovers. A very drunk Howard finally reveals his feelings to Lane, who does not return them. Peter tells Lane that he does not share her feelings. Lane seems to take the rejection well. When everyone else has gone to bed, Peter tries seducing Stephanie, but she is conflicted, later following him back to his house.
The next morning, a real estate agent is showing a couple around the house; Lane is counting on the money from the sale to move back to New York. Lane is feeling depressed: she has not taken Peter's rejection well after all, exacerbating Stephanie's guilt. Soon after, Peter arrives and kisses Stephanie, just as Lane opens the door to show the room to prospective buyers, and Lane is shocked. Stephanie insists that it meant nothing, while Peter tells Lane that the two of them have deep feelings for each other. Diane comes downstairs, announcing that she and her husband are going to move into the house permanently. Lane becomes even more distraught, insisting that Diane gave Lane the property a long time ago. Diane dismisses it as one of her own drunken whims. Lane experiences a breakdown, accusing her mother of being fake and insensitive.
The film's climax comes when an anguished Lane cries, "You're the one who pulled the trigger! I just said what the lawyers told me to say", thus revealing that Diane was actually the one who shot her abusive lover. Presumably Diane's lawyers thought it would be better if Lane took the fall, as she would be treated leniently. The ordeal has obviously been hugely detrimental to Lane. Diane finally concedes that if she could go back, she would behave differently.
Everyone leaves except Stephanie and Lane. The film ends with Stephanie encouraging Lane to move on and "keep busy".

Tags: romantic, boring, murder, melodrama

Review:
Wasn't in the mood to watch a film last night, but couldnt remember seeing Denholm Elliot in a Woody Allen movie before, so realised this was one I hadnt seen before.Can't say as I was 'entertained' - but I was gripped and rooted to the sofa for the duration, which could say something about my sofa of course, but was really down to this film.
Between his serio-comic reminiscence Radio Days and the searing adult drama Another Woman, Woody Allen made September, a reflective, introspective chamber-piece on his favourite themes of childhood, adultery, love and loss.
One imagines that the chilly critical and public response will shift to one of admiration and wonder as the years shift, such is the haunting power of this masterpiece.Mia Farrow plays Lane, an unsuccessful photographer recovering from a breakdown in her autumnal apartment, the golds and rusts of the season chiming with the forlorn tone of the story.
Denholm Elliot rounds out the principal cast as a kind family friend, his love for Lane unspoken.There are many great moments in this complex, brilliant film, but two in particular remain long in the mind.
Woody Allen tried to duplicate the success of Interiors with this movie, which is just as downbeat but well acted, especially by Mia Farrow.
Not a pleasant experience (any movie with a suicidal main character is not going to be), with most of the action taking place in a large farm house (which makes the film a little more stagy than most of Allen's works).
Made by Woody Allen in his serious mode, the drama "September" is not as impressive and fine as "Another Woman" but it is still an interesting movie.
The film takes place inside a country house in Vermont where several characters, friends and relatives of Lane (Mia Farrow), a fragile and troubled young woman recovering from a nervous breakdown, get together for a rainy weekend in the end of the Summer.
Along with the characters, we will reflect on love, mother-daughter complicated relationship, family secrets, aging, loneliness, longing, emotional crises, and self doubt as six cultured and intelligent individuals will try to find the meaning and the purpose in their lives.
Mia Farrow plays suicidal Lane, a child-like woman hoping to sell off the family cottage in Vermont so she can start life anew in New York City; she's surrounded for the weekend by her married friend (Dianne Wiest), a charming, struggling writer (Sam Waterston), an elderly neighbor who harbors a crush on Lane (Denholm Elliott), and Lane's demonstrative mama (Elaine Stritch) and her latest husband (Jack Warden).
Claustrophobic Woody Allen drama was one of the writer-director's biggest commercial and critical failures (he filmed it twice with two separate casts--this is the second version, the original remains unseen).
Allen's languid pacing nearly comes to a halt during an electrical storm (at just 85 minutes, "September" doesn't exactly utilize its time wisely); however, this group of privately-tortured souls is as fascinating as the family in Allen's "Interiors." In fact, of the two films, this may be the better effort.
From there on in, there is lifeless and at times pointless drama between the characters as they all deal with love and evaluating their lives, each one more annoying than the last, completely lacking any power or conviction.The concept of the film is fascinating, and suits a filmmaker like Allen, who focuses primarily on characters and their thoughts and feelings above all else, particularly in his dramas, down to the ground.
Also, Allen's main idea is to film in the style of a play as much as possible, using long, un-broken shots and keeping any unnecessary camera movements like close-ups to a minimum.
Nothing feels natural about this film, and it doesn't feel like it was made to be good, it just seems like Allen's attempt to be as different and as "indie" as possible, with no effort at actually making it good.What doesn't help is that an experienced and talented cast turn in drab and lifeless performances, though one of the main reasons for this is that they all find themselves stuck with boring, one-dimensional and frankly whiny characters that spend the entire film upset or sad about their lives, but lacking any real emotional depth or personality, instead just doing it because Allen wants the film to be as bleak and dramatic as possible.
Taking the lead role, Mia Farrow as Lane begins as probably the most human of all the characters, and the one that seems most real, but by the end has become the most boring and whiny of them all, with a pretty lacklustre performance.
On a par with Waterston's awful performance is that of Dianne Wiest as Stephanie who is about as interesting and emotionally engaging as a doorknob, and whose story of her failing marriage is as short on depth and insightfulness as her head is of hair.Luckily there are a few worthwhile performances, notably Denholm Elliott who gives a very interesting and subtle performance as Howard, the man in love with Lane, who is one of the only characters with any real appeal or feeling in the whole film, but who unfortunately is barely used.
Another god performance comes from Elaine Stritch as Lane's mother Diane, who although gives a convincing and at times genuinely emotionally engrossing performance, is also saddled with an uninteresting and unengaging character.
Strong support comes also from Jack Warner as Lane's stepfather Lloyd, an enjoyable and interesting character with intelligent and intriguing insights into life.As regards the poor performances, it would be unfair to say that it's totally the actors' fault, as they were dealing with a director who was after nothing more than ponderous melodrama and banal story-telling, and although conceived an unusual and interesting idea, was incapable of avoiding pretentiousness and one-dimension.
The creepy thing about Woody Allen's September is that this totally make-believe house is more realistic than the characters who gather inside.September is another of Woody's beautifully detailed, sensitively written, lovingly acted and utterly annoying "serious" films.
The end result of this achingly insincere sincerity is an intense desire by the viewer to want to give each and every cast member a sincere slap across the face.During their years together, Allen gave to his partner Mia Farrow some of the best roles of her career -- as well as some of her worst.
The feelings of guilt, shame, animosity, bitterness and envy shared between Lane and her mother, Diane (played by Elaine Stritch), would seem to be sufficient to sustain an interesting drama.
But Allen uses the dirty little secret behind the old scandal as a minor plot twist, and instead focuses most of the film on a trite four-sided love triangle, in which passion is secondary to unrelenting discussions about each characters' unrequited passions.Howard (Denholm Elliott) loves Lane, who loves Peter (Sam Waterston), who has a thing for Stephanie (Diane Wiest), who is married but returns Peter's feelings even though she knows that she is betraying Lane, blah, blah, blah.
I came across it in the video store (I forget which category I found it under, but it should have been 'Horror'); I hadn't heard of it but was attracted by the cast - Mia Farrow, Sam Waterston, Denholm Elliot and Jack Warden among others.We are dumped abruptly into a summer house in Vermont where four neurotic, repressed, and emotionally constipated people are discussing with each other how miserable they are.
Out of all Woody's film's I still find this the most difficult to watch,and after seeing Bergmans's 'Autumn sonata' I noticed some striking similarities.For example,this may only be coincidence but the way that Mia Farrow's character looks (Her glasses,her hair) bears a striking resemblence to the daughter in 'Autumn sonata' played by Liv ullmann.In both films we have a dominant mother who the daughter hates for something that she had done in the past.I think when you know that Woody took two attempts to film this there was definitely something wrong somewhere..
The two parents (whose names I cannot even recall) seem like their in a different movie - a Woody Allen film.
Woody Allen in this movie brings to us the story of a group of people all staying at a summer home in the country.
If you could take several scenarios of requited and unrequited love from assorted times in your life and merge them all for an interior weekend in the country, it would be in the same vein as Woody Allen's very subtle chamber drama.
Woody Allen directed this film which is more character driven with six leading roles starring his then-partner in life, Mia Farrow, Oscar winner Dianne Wiest, Jack Warden, Emmy Winner Elaine Stritch, before Law & Order Sam Waterson and the late Denholm Elliott CBE.
While this time around its more about the personal relationships as opposed to more-so with the mother character in Interiors, in September Allen paints a very well drawn out character with Diane, who has probably screwed up her daughter's own emotions in a certain way, and though she feels love and feels responsibility she can't control.
And Farrow has rarely been better here, having to go sometimes through emotional tidal-waves (not to sound pretentious about it but you'll see what I mean), and makes Lane such a tragic character where the amount of loss and romantic disconnectedness (and with her mother to be sure) that comes along for her ends up giving her the most horrible of headaches.
Character actor pros like Warden and Elliott don't stand too idly on the sidelines either, even if Warden's character is given the least to do emotionally.September, which had its cast changed around a couple of times, and filming stopped and re-started and so forth, and coming in probably a lot over-budget, is all the better for what ends up coming out.
Woody Allen's cringe-inducing "September" comes across as something a film student would make if he were given the assignment of making a movie in the style of Ingmar Bergman.
Though the film is filled with good actors, like Mia Farrow, Elaine Stritch, Dianne Wiest and Denholm Elliott, none of them gel as a cast, and the pacing is repetitive.
Flowing like a play, "September" takes place in a summer house in Vermont where three couples are vacationing in a relative tranquility that is about to be disturbed a little when some of them fully realizes they married the wrong partner and they want to live the right one.So, we have Lane and Peter (Mia Farrow and Sam Waterston), Stephanie and Howard (Dianne Wiest and Denholm Elliott) and the veterans Diane and Lloyd (Elaine Stritch and Jack Warden) and here's how things turn between part of them: Howard loves Lane and she seems connected with him but she can't leave her husband, who is deeply in love by Stephanie, who is trying to resist his attempts for her.
Who can tell?It's a minor work by Woody, who seemed to be looking for perfection with such fine material that he filmed one version with different actors (Sam Shepard, Charles Durning and Maureen O'Sullivan replaced by Waterston, Elliott and Stritch) to later make this final version cause he saw things weren't working the way he wanted with that cast.
I don't know why such demands (it cost a lot in his budget and the movie failed at box-office, and now it's one of his more obscure works, his least known); the script is well written, Allen at its best with dialogs and inspired dramatic moments (exchanges between Stritch and Farrow are amazing, the whole cast is brilliant).
This is a good film, and would make a truly GREAT theatrical performance.The low IMDb rating is attributable to the moments when the film slipped a little, and Woody Allen's effort, instead of his genius, comes through.But this film is made by Lane's slowly crumbling edifice and her mother's brash incompetence.
Mia Farrow, Dianne Wiest, Sam Waterston, Elaine Stritch, Denholm Elliott, and Jack Warden make up the cast of Woody Allen's dramatic film September.
If you've only seen Woody Allen's comedies, you'll be very surprised by how heavy he can get.Elaine Stritch plays Mia and Dianne's mother, and they make up a typically dysfunctional family, with lots of secrets, resentments, betrayals, and unfortunate love that binds them all together.
Like many Woody Allen films, September involves relationships with partner switching and a healthy dose of heartbreak.
Judging from not liking it very much on first viewing(not been used to how the characters were written and being exhausted after a hard week being the biggest reasons) and that there are people who judge it as one of Woody Allen's worst, re-watching it could have gone either way.
Jack Warden has one of the more interesting subsidiary characters and has fun with it, Denholm Elliot is at his most subtle and sympathetic and Dianne Wiest while not as good as she was in Hannah and Her Sisters(which is one of the greatest performances in a Woody Allen film) is fine as well.
September benefits also from being wonderfully shot, it looks beautiful and stylish and reflects Autumn very well, and from having an evocatively orchestrated and beautifully written music score(one of my personal favourites from a Woody Allen film actually).
Two other important characters are Lane's mother Diane and her stepfather Lloyd."September" may have been written and directed by Woody Allen, but it is not what we have come to think of as a Woody Allen film.
The best way I can describe it is a play written by a would-be Chekhov adapted for the screen by a would-be Ingmar Bergman.Indeed, Allen described it as "a play on film", and it certainly comes across like a piece of filmed theatre, set entirely indoors with a great number of long takes and few close-ups.
It might only last for eighty minutes; it felt more like eight hundred.Mia Farrow gave some wonderful performances during her association with Woody, but here she as Lane and Dianne Wiest as Stephanie seem to be competing as to which of them can seem more whiny and miserable.
It turns out that Peter (Sam Waterson) and his wife Lane (Mia Farrow) are going through some problems, which means that Peter is falling for another married woman (Dianne Wiest).
It turns out that Lane is loved by the much older Howard (Denholm Elliott) and some of her problems might go back to her famous mother (Elaine Stritch) who is at the house with her new love Lloyd (Jack Warden).
I've read that Allen shot this film two and possibly three times and replaced various cast members throughout the production because he was never happen with the end result and one wonders what he feels about this finished product.
Howard (Denholm Elliott) loves Lane (Mia Farrow), Lane loves Peter (Sam Waterston) and Peter loves Steffie (Dianne Wiest).All the people in 'September" - so true-to-life I wouldn't call them characters - vehicle a certain idea of love, as a living form that grows or diminishes with time, as a desire to be loved and love to be desired.
Basically, "September" is a film about hearts swinging back and forth, guided by the random and no less exciting ballad of life, and like the stars, just because their randomness doesn't deprive them for their beauty."September" is Woody Allen's second drama after "Interiors", another movie where people meet and share different views on life together, in a house, isolated from the rest of the world, as if only isolation could provide enough perspective from the world to let us contemplate our inner condition.
There, visiting for the weekend at the summer's end are Lane's mother Diane (Elaine Strich), her husband Lloyd (Jack Warden), Lane's best friend Stephanie (Dianne Wiest), a man who lives in the guest cottage, Peter (Sam Waterston), who has spent the summer trying to write a book; and a friend of Lane's, Howard (Denholm Elliot).
Like many other Woody Allen movies, this film is based around troubled relationships and couples falling in and out of love with each other.
Years ago, I loved Woody Allen films.
At a summer house in Vermont, neighbor Howard (Denholm Elliott) falls in love with Lane (Mia Farrow), who is in a relationship with Peter (Sam Waterston), who is falling for Stephanie (Dianne Wiest), who is married with children.This film was Woody Allen's biggest financial failure, bringing in less than $500,000.
For all of those Woody Allen critics, September will likely be another film to add to your arsenal.
Stritch plays Diane Frazer, a one time movie star who now descends on her daughter Lane's (Mia Farrow) house, with baggage in the form of Lloyd (Jack Warden), a new husband, in tow.
This is made worse by Lane's own history of depression and debt and the obvious fact that neither mother nor daughter really care for each other any more comes to the fore very soon.Also present are Howard (Denholm Elliot), a neighbour who's in love with Lane, Peter (Sam Waterston in the best role I've seen him in), a would-be author who's staying in the guest house and is the object of Lane's affection and Steffie, Lane's best friend, played with great vulnerability by Dianne Wiest, who had just won her first Oscar for Hannah and her Sisters.
(Peter doesn't count, I suspect Stephanie might've continued their affair.) Also, at the end when Stephanie assures the suicidal Lane that she's gonna go back to New York and really get her life together, I don't believe anyone bought that - the characters, the actors, Woody Allen, the crew, no one.
Mia Farrow plays Lane, a mousy woman who is spending some time alone to nurse some inner hurts, has been harbouring a love towards Peter (Sam Waterston) who is considering writing a book based on her mother Diane (Elaine Stritch) who has come to visit with her husband Lloyd (Jack Warden).