Mia Farrow and William Hurt are a wealthy New York married couple. Her life revolves around shopping, arranging her husband's social life and supervising the servants who supervise her children, in whom she has only a cursory interest. Suddenly, she becomes sexually aggressive with Joe Mantegna, a jazz musician. Due to her "Catholic guilt," she is afflicted with odd back pains and consults Keye Luke, a weird Chinatown acupuncturist/herbalist, whose office doubles as an opium den. Supposedly inspired by Frederico Fellini's "Juliet of the Spirits" (1965) starring his wife, Giulietta Masina, director Woody Allen seems obsessed with forced visual trickery that is as unlikely as the actions of his characters. Allen made some superb films with Mia Farrow in 1984, 1985, and 1986. But in this box office flop, she is portrayed as a ditzy, frivolous, self-absorbed twit with artistic pretensions. Two more movies and two years later, their partnership ended, with "Blue Jasmine" (2013) providing the post mortem.
Review of Alice
