Husbands and Wives

A film about relationships set in New York. Gabe and Judy are married. One evening their friends come over. Sally and Jack are separating. They say so calmly, before dinner. Gabe and Judy are shaken. The couple splitting up are certain; the ones shaken are the audience. From there the film follows two marriages at once. Jack takes up with a younger woman. An aerobics instructor; he brings her among his friends and the evening ends badly. Sally tries seeing someone. Michael; he is interested, she cannot be. Judy in fact wanted this. She moves closer to Michael and the narrative slowly opens how long she had been planning it. Gabe teaches at a university. His student Rain is twenty and he takes her interest seriously. What the narrative is interested in is not divorce but self-deception: its idea is that everyone is innocent in their own version, and the film dismantles each version in turn. The form is harsh. The camera is handheld, constantly moving, the cuts are made roughly and some scenes are cut off in the middle. That is deliberate. The narrative is built like a documentary. Interviews cut in. The characters sit for the camera and defend themselves, and what they say does not match what we have seen. Judy Davis was nominated for the supporting actress Oscar for her part; the screenplay was nominated as well. The film opened in the days when the separation between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow was in the press, and its release date was moved forward. Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Judy Davis, Sydney Pollack, Juliette Lewis and Liam Neeson are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes hard, talk-driven films about relationships. Who it is not for: anyone wanting an easy watch; the camerawork bothers some viewers and the narrative forgives nobody.