Husbands and wives

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Movie
German title Husbands and wives
Original title Husbands and Wives
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1992
length 108 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Woody Allen
script Woody Allen
production Robert Greenhut
music Gustav Mahler , various jazz songs
camera Carlo Di Palma
cut Susan E. Morse
occupation

Husbands and Wives is an American film from 1992. The comedy , written and directed by Woody Allen , is about the relationship crises of two couples who question their life plans.

action

Gabe and Judy Roth, a writer and professor of literature at Columbia University in New York , she an editor of an art magazine , are puffed up when their best friends Sally and Jack tell them they are going to split up. Since the separation apparently takes place by mutual agreement, Gabe and Judy initially have greater difficulties with this than the couple themselves.

That same evening, Judy begins to question her own relationship and starts a discussion with Gabe, during which he mentions that Jack had indicated to him that he had slept with a call girl. However, Gabe says that he has never thought of anything like this and that he still loves Judy.

Three weeks later, Sally tries to distract herself with a date with a colleague, but finds it difficult to hide her jealousy after learning that Jack is having an affair. Her seemingly hysterical rage about it and about all the men she takes out on her completely helpless colleague.

Gabe, for his part, has one eye on Rain, one of his students. At first, however, he is far from seducing her, as many of his university colleagues would. However, years ago he had a liaison with a younger, sexually insatiable woman named Harriet who later ended up in a mental institution.

One day, Gabe, Judy and Sally are out and about in town, they meet Jack and his new girlfriend Sam, an attractive, intellectually poor aerobics trainer ("Mexican? I love couscous!"). Sally then flees and Gabe accuses Jack of throwing away his long-term marriage to Sally for such a woman.

Judy, who was previously married to an architect and has a daughter from this marriage, confronts Gabe with the accusation that she is portrayed in his new novel as an inferior copy of the protagonist's great love, to which Gabe reacts with excuses that the novel is ultimately very much bad. Judy is then offended because she believes Gabe does not respect her judgment.

Sally is apparently over the breakup and Judy would like to couple her with Michael, a new colleague, which also works, whereby Judy is almost disappointed that it went so smoothly and immediately. Plus, in reality, she is in love with Michael herself.

Gabe spends more and more time with his student Rain, to whom he feels very drawn. Jack, on the other hand, enjoys his mentally rather under-demanding, but easy-going relationship with Sam. Judy, who always wanted a second child, something Gabe was reluctant to do for a long time, reacts suspiciously when her husband suddenly speaks of a child. She thinks he's just trying to distract from their relationship problems.

When Sally and Michael spend an evening together, he tries to approach her. However, she reacts dismissively because she is not ready yet. Michael, however, is madly in love with her.

Rain introduces Gabe to her parents and tells him that she has had several relationships with older men before she says she has come to her senses and now has a boyfriend of the same age. Her parents have given Gabe to come for their daughter's birthday.

At a party, Jack learns about Sally and Michael’s relationship and reacts concerned and angry. When the drunk Sam embarrassed himself in a conversation with others whose intellectual horizon she is unable to cope with, he begins to mourn his marriage and takes out his anger on Sam. She reacts disappointed and hysterical because she feels treated from above by the other guests. There was a fight between the two in the parking lot.

When Sally and Michael spend a night together at their house, they are surprised by Jack, who has had enough of his affair with Sam and wants to return to Sally. Sam, who was waiting in the car, walks in and makes a scene to Jack.

While Gabe does not value his wife's judgment regarding his novel, Rain's opinion about it is very important to him. However, he reacts disappointed when Rain praises his work, but criticizes the figure drawing and character management. However, the fact that Rain is confident in her voice is what draws Gabe to her.

Two weeks later, Jack and Sally are reunited, which they tell their friends over dinner. Back home, an argument breaks out between Gabe and Judy about their marriage, triggered by the fact that Judy has kept her poems from Gabe, but showed them to Michael. Eventually the two separate and Gabe moves out. While Judy then meets with Michael to help him over the separation from Sally, Gabe attends the birthday party of his student Rain. During a power outage caused by a thunderstorm, the two grow closer. However, he does not want to get involved in an affair.

In the end, Jack and Sally are back together, but Gabe and Judy are divorced. Judy eventually marries Michael and Gabe is left alone.

background

  • In this extremely dialog-heavy film, Allen used hand-held cameras extensively for the first time, which took the pictures almost casually, without the respective speaker or protagonist being seen in the picture or from the front, for example. In addition, some scenes were cut seemingly arbitrarily so that dialogues were broken off in the middle. Allen justified this procedure with the desire to break the current rules of turning.
  • The plot of the film is repeatedly interrupted by short interview scenes in which the protagonists talk about their feelings and motivations. The interviewer, also the narrator, who can only be heard off- screen, was played by Jeffrey Kurland, who is also the film's costume designer .
  • In order to benefit from the scandal of the separation of Allen and Mia Farrow, the film started on 865 screens in the USA. This was the most widespread distribution of a Woody Allen film to date. The audience honored the film with proceeds of $ 3.52 million on the opening weekend, the highest sum ever grossed by a Woody Allen film.

Awards (selection)

Reviews

  • film-dienst : “Basically a bitter comedy about the constant search for love and happiness. At the same time a reflection on the conditionality and changeability of subjective life plans, which finds its correspondence in an ironic stylization of 'objective' filmic means of expression. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ trivia. Internet Movie Database , accessed May 22, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Husbands and Wives. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used