Stardust Memories

Over one weekend, the director Sandy Bates attends a festival showing his own films. Everyone wants something from him: fans want autographs, producers want a happy ending, former lovers want an explanation. Meanwhile he is carrying three women in his head and a film he cannot finish. The subject is not art but the ugliness of the relationship built out of admiration. The fans' faces are distorted through wide lenses, their voices overlap, and they all say the same line: I prefer your earlier, funnier films. Woody Allen heard that sentence for years in real life, and when the film came out the same criticism came back louder. The form looks directly at Fellini's 8½: black and white, cutting between the real and the imagined, an opening on a train. The cinematographer is Gordon Willis. It was among the worst received films of Allen's career; critics read it as an expression of contempt for his audience. Allen argued that Sandy is not him but a man in the middle of a breakdown. Charlotte Rampling, Jessica Harper and Marie-Christine Barrault play the three women. Who it is for: viewers who like self-directed, formally ambitious Allen. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a likeable protagonist; the narrator pities himself and the film does not correct him.