Husbands and Wives (1992)

Directed by Woody Allen. Starring Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Sydney Pollack, Judy Davis, Juliette Lewis, Liam Neeson, Lysette Anthony, Ron Rifkin, Cristi Conaway, Timothy Jerome, (voice) Jeffrey Kurland. [R]

Woody Allen’s astringent dissection (and dissolution) of long-term pairings that have, ahem, lost that lovin’ feeling is one of his harshest and most self-analytical efforts. The temptation is to study it under the proverbial microscope considering the life-imitating-art circumstances (Allen and Farrow play a married couple whose relationship falls apart in a film that was released right after the performers went through their own public split), but there’s not much there; more surprisingly, there’s less at any level of truth here than there ought to be, as the film makes its points with intelligence and credibility, yet the ingenuity and character depth one has come to expect from the filmmaker’s output is harder to find. Indeed, while it hits upon universal truths with refreshing candor and his trademark jolts of scalding humor and vulnerable insight, the “fresh” angle here is in structural concept and visual strategy. The former aspect works, as the story of two marital relationships in turmoil is presented in faux-documentary style with talking heads interspersed among the dramatic “recreations,” but the latter fails badly, as the action is captured by cinéma–vérité-style handheld camerawork that wobbles and swoops across the characters’ profiles—in-your-face intimacy so distracting that clips of dialogue tend to spill away as the viewer struggles to decide where to focus. Rescued almost singlehandedly by Davis, perhaps never better as an understandably bitter and dissatisfied woman whose separation from her husband (Pollack) in the opening scene tugs on the precarious threads of the other couple’s “happiness.” The end of Allen and Farrow’s personal relationship also severed their long-standing professional cooperation, making this the last of thirteen films they made together. The voice of the unseen narrator/interviewer was also the film’s costume designer, Jeffrey Kurland.

63/100