Post by StevePulaski on Jun 18, 2018 22:00:27 GMT -5
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982)
Directed by: Woody Allen
Directed by: Woody Allen
Rating: ★★½
NOTE: Part of "Woody Allen Mondays," an ongoing movie-watching event.
From the title alone, Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy mines our psyches for Shakespearean images, dialog, and themes that we've likely been introduced to over the course of our academic years. Indeed, the film lives up to the promises of its title. Not only does it echo Shakespearean dialect and deceptively humorous situations but it also shows hints of Ingmar Bergman and Jean Renior, to name a few other more noticeable influences. The latter detail is noteworthy because it was during this same stretch of films where Allen made pictures that were blatant callbacks to his most inspiring teachers: Love and Death (1975), which mirrored the conventions of Russian literature in a delightfully satirical way, Stardust Memories (1980), which was essentially a feature-length homage to Federico Fellini's 8½, and Radio Days (1987), a tribute to the days where audio dominated.
In A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, Allen attempts a difficult hybridization of periods and attitudes that comes across as airy as anything he's ever done yet just as whimsical as any of the previously mentioned films. It's set in the countryside, and features typical archetypes who would predictably loathe the great outdoors much less willingly venture out there. Not only are they fishes out of water (competent, however, to the point where I only thought of the term while writing this paragraph), but they are fiercely practical in a period and setting that so frequently brings out the romantic in people. Imagine if William Wordsworth approached his famous work "Tintern Abbey" with the language of logic and positivism in which Allen's characters speak. Beyond that, someone like the bravely physical Charlie Chaplin would be sick to see the unfazed looks of intellectuals not even the least bit captivated by Allen's Andrew riding a bicycle airlifted by a propeller. Such a rigid, incongruous relationship between place and individuals has never before behooved the tireless filmmaker.
The plot: Andrew and Adrian (Mary Steenburgen) are an amiable couple in the 1900s, who invite four of their closest, most distinguished friends over to spend a weekend. They are: Leopold (José Ferrer), a professor and Adrian's cousin, Ariel (Mia Farrow), his shy wife, Maxwell (Tony Roberts), a doctor, and Dulcy (Julie Hagerty), a seductive nurse Maxwell with whom Maxwell has recently shacked up. The weekend flies by with an assortment of entanglements, nostalgic musings, and sexual tension flowing through the air like ragweed pollen. Andrew starts to have feelings for Dulcy all over again, frustrated at his inability to seize the moment so many years ago. Maxwell tries to seduce Ariel at an inopportune time, and Leopold is, too, all over Dulcy. Just as Andrew begins to second guess his marriage, Adrian enters one of her fits of uncontrollable arousal, which leads to two separate, humorous bits of her throwing him on several household appliances, the likes of which not the least bit comfortable for him nor his back.
The convoluted love-triangles and cliff-side relationships are almost secondary to the way in which these characters interact with one another. All six speak as if they were tasked to use a week's word of Webster's "Word of the Day" choices, or as if they spent the night reading complex philosophy by simply pulling books off a library's shelf and turning to a random page. Their consistently poised, pontificating demeanors contradict the setting in that this is a group of individuals entirely unamused by nature, and that observation alone is comically potent enough for some of the metaphysical, magical realist comedy to be entertaining in a muted way.
In trying to acclimate to the non-traditional setting and old-world sensibilities, it's very possible you might overlook the fact that this is one of Allen's only films to escape a big city setting. A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy was shot in upstate New York, Pocantico Hills more specifically, and the tranquility of the setting is impeccable. Sumptuous shots include the iridescent glow of the sun as it glistens on brooks and pastures that punctuate parts of the 400-acre land in what adds up to one of the most visually distinctive pictures in Allen's dense catalog. A famous homebody to the extent that Allen loves New York City so much he scarcely sees a reason to venture out into other parts of the country, seeing him embrace nature is not a small feat.
It's one of the feats that keeps A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy at least marginally interesting. In fact, this has to be one of the first times a film with the word "sex" in the title feels so tame and slightly anticlimactic (pun intended). Allen loves laughing at the idea of sex, which is why he made a film satirizing all things love-making and gave it an overlong title like Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask). With this Shakespearean farce, Allen does little besides crafting a soap opera with bygone costume design, rarely coming within striking distance of doing or saying anything meaningful on the topic itself. As a rambunctiously staged comedy of dueling wits and impulsive intellectuals, this film operates effectively enough. As a "sex comedy," it's limp to the point where one hopes it was conceived deliberately as such.
It's worth noting, at least for me, that A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy marks the last Woody Allen film I had to watch before I could say that I've seen all of his feature films. It's fitting I end on a film that came after a two-year "hiatus" for the director, a lengthy break by Allen's standards, let alone preceded Zelig, arguably the director's most experimental film to date. While lukewarm as a whole, this harmless, dated little ode is another brick in the wall against the repeated claim that Allen makes the same film over and over again. Some tropes stay the same. The themes, characters, settings, approaches, influences, moods, and visuals are ever-changing for the dynamic soul.
Starring: Woody Allen, Mary Steenburgen, Mia Farrow, Tony Roberts, José Ferrer, and Julie Hagerty. Directed by: Woody Allen.