Saw A Woman Under the Influence, a film about a woman, Mabel, who is a devoted mother and wife and is, it quickly becomes apparent, a high-functioning maniac. She runs about jumpily and childishly. At one point she is so impressed with a dinner-guest's singing that she peers, smilingly, into his mouth. Later, she aggressively harasses pedestrians for the time but only because she wants to know when her kids are coming out of school. When the bus arrives she as deliriously full of kindness and love as a Disney princess. She races the kids home and asks them if she ever seems crazy to them. The film is full of these poignant little kitchen-sink moments. It always feels very intimate.
Her husband, Nick, is a foreman at some kind of construction site. He is brusque and shouty. He wants his wife to behave normally (they married, we find out via Mabel's ramblings, that they married due to pregnancy) and fears what she might do. The climax occurs after a wild, apropos-of-nothing party where Mabel tells the kids to make costumes. One of the guest kids' parents come to find their child amidst strewn clothing, nude. Nick comes home, the parent freaks out at Nick, and Nick, fearing the worst, freaks out at Mabel. Soon doctors and mothers are called and the whole thing spirals into awesome, painful spectacle. The scene is a tour de force of acting. It lasts only 20 minutes but feels like an eternal, horrible, life-ending argument, the sort that rages on for hours and never really ends. The film is strongest in these edgy moments. I think my affinity for melodrama may be informing my enjoyment a bit, but I believe the scenes have a sincerity about them that saves it from true camp. We (or I anyway) care too much about Mabel and Nick to laugh. We know they can work together if only they had a little more time.
No comments:
Post a Comment