Husbands and Wives (1992)
Directed by Woody Allen

Film Review

Few would dispute that Husbands and Wives is Woody Allen's most brutal, most blisteringly authentic account of the breakdown of a romantic relationship. Whilst making the film, Allen was experiencing for himself the trauma of a relationship collapse and by the time the film was released, in the late summer of 1992, his acrimonious separation from Mia Farrow had become old news, tarnishing the reputations of both participants in a very public falling out. It was Allen's clandestine affair with 21-year-old Soon Yi Previn, Farrow's adopted daughter, that ended the couple's twelve-year long relationship, but the fault lines had already begun to show before then. Few things in life are more devastating to the individual than the experience of living through a dying relationship, the slow and irreversible undoing of the bonds of intimacy, and in possibly the greatest film of his 'mature phase' as a filmmaker Allen convinces us what a painful thing the death of love is. It's as if someone has snatched a treasured, essential part of your life, scrunched it up and thrown it into the trash can.

In several of his previous films, notably Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Allen goes out of way to convince us that he is not one who believes in happy ever afters. Relationships are as much a matter of compromise as commitment, and only those who are wilfully deluded or have the tolerance of a saint stand a chance of being totally happy in a long-term relationship. Yet, even if we admit this to ourselves, we are still all victims of the cruel delusion of love which nature has created for the sole purpose of ensuring the propagation of the human species. The one thing that the four central characters in Husbands and Wives share (before experience convinces them otherwise) is that the perfect romance is available to all, if you are prepared to go out and look for it. In the course of the film, these hapless New Yorkers each come to realise the fallacy of this and end up accepting a less ideal  state of affairs, wiser although by no means happier in the acceptance that true romance is pure delusion.

One of the two couples is played by Allen and Farrow, and you can't help wondering how closely their own relationship is mirrored in that of their on-screen alter egos Gabe and Judy. Tellingly, Farrow is the one who drives the relationship onto the rocks, a 'passive-aggressive' who (according to her embittered first husband) cleverly arranges things so that she gets what she wants, with the result that Allen ends up being cast as the wronged victim, the man who wisely pulls back from an ill-judged affair with a much younger woman only to end up alone and badly bruised. It's surprising that Farrow agreed to make the film, given that it is an obvious slanted caricature of her own failing relationship with Allen. It looks as if Allen made the film not so much as personal therapy but as a calculated attempt to keep the public, or at least his fans, on his side by casting Farrow as the villain of the piece, the selfish, deceitful woman who can never be satisfied. It is surely no accident that the character Allen plays in the film is a wiser and far more sympathetic version of himself - perhaps the man he wishes he had been in retrospect.

Jack and Sally - superbly played by Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis - are the other couple in the film, a kind of control experiment against which the collapse of Gabe and Judy's relationship is to be examined. Jack and Sally's separation is more understandable than that of Gabe and Judy. They are no longer compatible emotionally or physically and, in the throes of mid-life crisis, succumb to the desire for one last great fling with younger flesh. Both strike lucky and end up with their wish for a romantic second wind being granted almost immediately after they separate. But neither finds any meaningful satisfaction in their second taste of bachelorhood - Gabe discovers that his dream partner is an empty-headed bimbo, Judy still finds sex (even with a dishy Liam Neeson) nauseous. Gabe and Judy soon realise that their sexless marriage, for all its imperfections, it is the nearest thing to heaven they will find on Earth. They accept the compromises, bury their delusions, and become once more the rock solid married couple, just as their supposedly more rational, well-adjusted friends Gabe and Judy decide that they must go their separate ways.

Throughout, Husbands and Wives feels like a confessional piece, an impression that can only be reinforced by the documentary-style passages in the narrative (such as the over-done cinéma verité-style intro) and scenes in which the main players in the drama talk-to-camera and try to shift our sympathies in their favour. It's not a film that Woody Allen could have made unless he himself was being put through the mill of a relationship meltdown and it is only because it rings so harrowingly true that we avoid reading it as a cynical attempt by its author to re-write his personal history in his favour. So much has been said and written about the breakdown of Allen and Farrow's relationship that you hardly know what is truth and what is fiction, but unlike the acres of gossip fodder served up by sensation-seeking journalists in the messy aftermath of the couple's separation, Husbands and Wives has an unmistakable ring of truth about it. It is the most crushingly tragic of Woody Allen's films and like Mahler's Ninth Symphony (the piece of music it refers to in one memorable scene) it leaves us with a heart aching with a profound sense of sadness over the injustice of life.

Film Synopsis

Gabe and Judy are a happily married middle-aged couple living in New York City. He is a respected writer and university professor; she is an editor on an art magazine. When their closest friends, Jack and Sally, casually announce they are going to get a divorce they cannot believe their ears. Jack and Sally have been together for years and Gabe and Judy take it as a personal affront that they should decide to separate without so much as a by-your-leave. The truth is that Jack and Sally's marriage has been a sham for many years and the only thing they can agree on is that the time has come for them to part and make a fresh start. But when Jack immediately hooks up with his 20-something aerobics teacher after splitting with his wife, Sally becomes incensed and suspects her husband may have been cheating on her before they broke up. As Jack experiences a new lease of life with his much younger partner, Sally struggles to make a go of her affair with Michael, a likeable colleague of Judy on whom the latter has a secret crush. Meanwhile, Gabe finds himself attracted to Rain, a promising student of his who is half his age and pathologically drawn to older men. Just when Jack and Sally realise that they are much better off together than apart, Gabe and Judy discover that their own relationship has run its course...