Mia Farrow as Lane
In a frame flooded with darkness, two people are barely visible in the low light. If they could vanish together into the shadows, escaping their obligations, they likely would. Meanwhile, an older couple cling to each other in an upstairs bedroom. She’s a former pin-up model, but the lavish looks that once gave her what she thought was confidence have long faded. In her man, she finds dependable love and acceptance. Things she can’t give herself.
And then there is Lane (Mia Farrow), owner of the house in which all these people have congregated over a stormy night in Vermont. Her infatuation with Peter (Sam Waterston), a struggling writer, shines a spotlight on her painful insecurities. She craves the challenge of his creative nature. If only he could be intrigued enough to cut through her difficult veneer as he is with Stephanie (Diane Wiest).
Woody Allen’s 1987 film September is a chamber piece. Never stepping outside the walls of the Vermont country house, it’s precisely as Allen intended – a play on film. Giving the story what a stage setting could not, however, is the camera direction that Allen does so well. If dialogue is his strong point, its power would be nullified without the superb framing of his actors and their expressions at just the right moment.
Though his serious films in particular pander to the art-house-going crowd, Allen does not necessarily subscribe to a lot of their criticisms. One regular theme is that he gives too much away – the characters cannot appear to be feeling or thinking anything without actually saying it. Regardless of your viewpoint on that, it cannot be debated that Woody Allen has his own brand of film.
In September, Allen has created a simmering drama of infatuation, longing, regret, and misunderstanding. Short of one particular screen moment that Elaine Stritch (as Mia Farrow’s mother) truly owns, there are no thumping moments of dramatic glory here. The drama is in-keeping with the lighting; low key.
But there is something about September. Despite the claustrophobic setting, a strange sort of coldness distances the characters. Paul is clearly smitten by Stephanie, yet they are never given enough time to truly explore their feelings, leaving only a chilly mood of unrequited… something. And at the centre of it all, Lane appears to be just barely keeping her head above the blackness she has apparently just crawled out of. It almost seems that the people surrounding her, gathered at her house, are merely in her life out of sympathy for her tragically introverted and lost persona.
Indeed, the film does have a mood of loneliness. Not physically of-course. But emotionally, everyone is distanced.
Fascinatingly enough, Allen actually shot the film in its entirety with Maureen O’Sullivan, Charles Durning and Sam Shepard, only to find he didn’t like it. With films like Melinda and Melinda and Anything Else under his wing, I’ve never really thought of Woody Allen as Stanley Kubrick-esque perfectionist. I have to wonder why he reshot an entire film, yet thought Radha Mitchell was doing a perfectly acceptable job (?!?!?!).
September has been described as “difficult”. Maybe. It certainly is a film for Allen fans; taking away any interest you might have specifically in the work of Woody Allen, there’s probably little interest. That’s not to take anything away from the film, it’s just that September is very much an expression of its director.
I watched this film in the middle of the night with a glass of red wine, lots of chocolate, and the object of my affection asleep on my lap. I suggest you do the same. For the willing, Woody Allen’s September will invite you inside its chilly Vermont walls. It’ll tempt you with thoughts of what might happen if you acted on your desires, instead of compressing and storing them in a high cupboard.
It’s always the most emotionally fragile that find those stormy Vermont nights the hardest.
