LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.
Starring Woody Allen and Mia Farrow
Y
An honest and frequently devastating account of two marriages falling down, held up high by four great performances and a sparse, controlled script; he’s back to the funny stuff. Watching only Allen movies makes you forget how empty the rest of the film world can seem in terms of real emotion, leaving you only to compare one of his pieces with another in an endless cycle of harsh realism and wacky death-chat interludes. Stepping out of Allen’s private multiplex for just a little while reminds you how few people actually make decent films like this, films where the action comes from drunken late night visits, awkward phone calls and well-rounded characters. Allen finally accepts his strengths at realism here by framing the whole thing as a documentary, and it’s all the more traumatic for the use of straight-to-camera confessions and emotional outpourings, drawing on a life spent confessing secrets to strangers in exchange for money. All four of the main actors slap it out of the park, whilst Liam Neeson and Juliette Lewis provide a welcome breath of air away from the constant revolving misery of marriage make-ups and break downs. When he tries real emotion he can do it, he can push past the stereotypes and pretentiousness that ties a lot of his work into balls of knitted urine and create something that’s affecting and thought-provoking and relatable. And he does it here.
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