Alice

Any film with the title of “Alice” immediately conjures up the ghost of Lewis Carroll and with Allen, a lifelong appropriator as writer and wide-eyed Mia Farrow in the lead, even more so. It is, however, a glancing connection as the latter plays a well-to-do but mousy Manhattanite whose husband (William Hurt) neglects her for other women. She in turn seeks out the assistance of a Chinese herbalist to cure her ailments, which are of course, psychosomatic. And so she goes on a strange out-of-this-world adventure in search of the truth about her life.

It’s typical Allen territory - well-heeled New York WASPs, played by an ensemble cast including in addition to Farrow and Hurt, Joe Mantegna, Blythe Danner, Judy Davis, Bernadette Peters, Cybill Shepherd and Alec Baldwin go through the usual ups-and-downs of their class. The literal idea of metaphysical transubstantiation, which Allen had already used in a reverse direction to good effect in The Purple Rose Of Cairo (1985) is whimsically entertaining but, despite being well-made, it never really amounts to much and for the small thing it is it is painfully drawn-out. Partly this could have been helped by some relatively easy editing to remove redundant scenes but the core of the problem is Farrow's endlessly dithering and repetitiously self-flagellating character who is simply not as endearing as Allen, at that stage of their relationship at least, seems to have thought.

 

Want something different?