Even more claustrophobic than Interiors, taking place entirely in Vermont home, and therefore like a filmed stage play (there isn't a single exterior shot - this film should have been called Interiors).
Ex good-time girl Elaine Stritch and new husband Jack Warden come to visit her daughter Mia Farrow, an unhappy creature who may have killed her mother's gangster boyfriend. Farrow fancies writer Sam Waterstone but he fancies her (married) friend Diane Wiest. Meanwhile widower Denholm Elliott wants to be more than Farrow's protector.
Nice low key lighting by Carlo di Palma; (jazz) music is all diegetic. Slight carp - the thunder and lightning are always together and that's not how thunder and lightning works. Unless things happen differently in Vermont, of course.
Um, I still think that Woody's 'dramas' (as opposed to 'comedies' like Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Blue Jasmine) work better than this precisely because they do contain funny lines and irony (the latter especially) and this very straight-faced stuff simply does not bring out the best in Mr Allen (Husbands and Wives contains perhaps his most powerful moments).
Has a good ear for fractured, selfish people and situations.
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