Woody Allen's serio-tragi-quasi-semi-comedy switches between two concurrent plotlines, one about an eminent ophthalmologist with romantic problems (for one, horrible, heart-stopping moment, when the opening awards dinner is interrupted by flashback, we fear that this could turn into a knockoff of Bergman's Wild Strawberries), the other about an obscure documentary filmmaker also with romantic problems. The two lines intersect in only a couple of places, but they are tied together throughout by their mutual great themes of Happiness, Love, Morality (nature of, search for -- that kind of thing). Almost all the overt comedy comes in the documentarist's line: Allen is generally meticulous about keeping his peas separated from his mashed potatoes, his funny stuff from his stuffy stuff, his Fellini from his Bergman. The other plotline, no less funny but less overtly (one could not say less intentionally) so, is something rather new for Allen: something in the thriller vein, with a vaguely Fatal Attraction problem of a mistress (Anjelica Huston) who won't stay discreetly in her place, and a solution to it of cold-blooded, premeditated murder. The details of this murder, particularly the details etched so excruciatingly on the face of Martin Landau as the amateur murderer, seem very true to the tales of True Crime that come to light on A Current Affair and in TV docudramas. Up, anyway, to a point. Allen moves into airier territory when he bends this plotline to his penchant for philosophy (or philosophizing, or philosophicality). With Mia Farrow, Alan Alda, Sam Waterston, and Allen. (1989) — Duncan Shepherd
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