September

Inspired this time by Chekhov, Woody Allen here gives us a claustrophobic story of six people at a beach house that could have been, and maybe should have been, done on the stage. Mia Farrow is the daughter of an old has been warhorse actress (Elaine Stritch, who is about as abrasive a character as I’ve ever seen; she brays every line, and I hated her intensely). When she was fourteen she shot and killed her mother’s lover … or so the story goes. She’s been living with that all her life, and recently attempted suicide. Stritch is with her fairly new wimpy husband, Jack Warden, and Diane Wiest and Denholm Elliot and Sam Waterston fill out the rest of the cast. Without warning, Mom tells Mia that she intends to move into this house, which Mia always thought was her own. And then the sparks really fly. There were so many romantic cross-connections, so much angst between frustrated lovers, that I just can’t recall, only a few weeks later, who had the hots for who. Just not my kind of movie.