September

I read that writer/director Woody Allen shot 1987's SEPTEMBER twice.  Distinguished actors  Maureen O'Sullivan and Sam Shepard were replaced with Elaine Stritch and Sam Waterston.  Allen stated that he would even liked to have a third whack at it.  I can understand this to a degree.  So many round robins of players, so many potential combinations.  Woody based the screenplay for his seventeenth feature film on Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, one of the templates for the exploration of unrequited love.   So timeless.  One could get lost in thought as to who could play each role.  One might, as Allen did, even switch up the genders.

And it is the cast that makes SEPTEMBER, admittedly one of Woody lesser efforts, worth watching.  Stritch as Diane, a former movie star with a scandalous past.  Waterston as Peter, a frustrated writer.  Mia Farrow as Lane,  Diane's trouble daughter.   Denholm Elliott as Howard, a lovelorn French teacher. Dianne Wiest as Stephanie, Lane's friend who has come to live with her for the summer.   Jack Warden as Lloyd, Diane's physicist husband.  Everyone is so good that any of the film's shortcomings can be brushed off easily.  For a story framed in a decidedly very theatrical style, it's all about the actors.

It's the usual Chekhov calculus - A loves B, B loves C, C loves A, etc.  Lane is smitten with Peter, who in turn can't hide his feelings for Stephanie, who has a husband and children back in Pennsylvania.  Howard falls hard for Lane.  An emotional wringer for character and viewer alike.  A bit too close to reality for some.  A story told many, many times.   Even the J.Geils Band covered this in their song "Love Stinks."  And so it is, unavoidably, the very familiarity of this material that could be considered a shortcoming.  That Allen does little to distinguish it from other tellings, to say nothing of many of his own previous films.  For those familiar with the privileged world of Allen's erudite but tortured characters, SEPTEMBER will likely be unimpressive and old hat.

Carlo Di Palma's cinematography accentuates golden hues through windows in daylight shots.  The film never leaves the Vermont country house (created on a soundstage in Astoria, Queens) in which the drama plays out.  Most impressive are the candlelit interiors following a power outage during a storm.  Yet the theatrical feel remains unavoidable.

Also working against the film is some of the dialogue, which comes off a bit too cute and self aware, as if the characters realize they are in a work of fiction.  This conceit sometimes works in pieces that try to be meta, but here it's often a distraction from the strong emotions this cast really puts across.