Director: John Cassavetes
A Woman Under the Influence is what I like to call a one-monther. It's the sort of film that one receives from their Netflix account and groans upon seeing that it is a 2 hour and 30 minute John Cassavetes film. It takes a month to mount the resolve to watch the film.
I don't know if A Woman Under the Influence deserves 5 stars, as it is rough around the edges and probably has at least ten minutes that could be trimmed. It is, after all, a Cassavetes film. However, the film tricked me - I thought it was going to be about one thing, when it turns out that it's about something else entirely. I think it might need that time to perform this trick, to have this alteration come about organically.
When writing, it's very tempting to put something in a character's mouth, to have him or her say the thing he or she is thinking. However, Cassavetes understands that that's not generally how people act - they react emotionally, but they keep their thoughts guarded; they say other things. A Woman Under The Influence avoids being on the nose - it lets the characters' emotions speak for them.
The performance of Gena Rowlands as the titular woman is staggering - she avoids caricature in a part where that's almost impossible.
rowlands is staggering in this.
ReplyDeletei was just thinking about this movie the other day, and cassavetes in general, when i heard that he played the title role in a tv series about a jazz pianist / private eye called Johnny Staccato.