CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

POGO (PogoNeo) Around half its time, this movie is as pleasant and entertaining as watching an unedited tape from a psychiatric ward. Gena Rowlands does deliver a very good performance and Peter Falk also does a good job. But what about the rest that constitutes as a movie?Yelling, yelling, yelling. And some more yelling plus slapping in the face. Little to no action. For 15 minutes we are forced to watch actors eating a meal. That's right, that is what that scene near the beginning is all about: the cast is just eating, cameras rolling, script not existing. It is just an improvisation with a little editing done afterwards, with totally boring end effect. And something similar is repeated at the end: they are just cleaning the table for four minutes. How fascinating and mind openingThere is almost no musical score; which is always a risky move, because it makes the movie more realistic but at the cost of being less appealing to the audience. So on the one hand, we have a "realism of no music". But on the other, we have a scene with a rope at the dig site: one of the characters (while being angry) manipulates (probably without bad intentions) the rope, while other character uses it at the same time to go down a slippery hill; and falls down. At there are two problem with this event. The first one: there would be no way to manipulate the rope with such ease (especially with one hand), because of the weight of that (fallen) character. The second one: the issue of perpetrating the accident is later on never addressed by authorities or even the rest of the work crew. So that is quite unrealistic roll of events. And so, a mixture like that just makes you think of the whole movie as a chaotic endeavor; a movie with modus operandi of "My name is John Famous-Actor-Slash-Independent-Director Cassavetes and I am taking a serious subject of mental illness, but I do not care about the rest, because I have already used up seriousness on being an self funded independent director". And on the technical side of this picture there are problems with bad lighting and bigger problems with even worst soundThis movie is so boring and hard to digest, that unless you are a film (or medicine) student, you should not approach it

quinimdb "A Woman Under the Influence" is an unrelentingly harsh film, much like "Requiem for a Dream" or "Leaving Las Vegas", but unlike those, this one is shot like a documentary, and while both of those are a little exaggerated to give a stronger impact, this one is a depressingly realistic portrait of mental illness. Since the film is shot so bluntly, it mostly relies on the performances of the actors for its power, and, man, do they deliver. Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk give 2 of the best performances that I have ever seen as a mentally ill, and possibly alcoholic and morphine addict (although this is only implied), woman and her angry husband who desperately wants her to be normal, to the point of trying to force this upon her.The film starts with Mabel sending her children to her mother in law's house, expecting her husband to come home since he promised her a "love night". He ends up not making it home for the night and Mabel gets black out drunk and takes home a man, seemingly unconsciously. It is implied that she is raped and when she wakes up in the morning she thinks the man is her husband, Nick. It is implied that she has been like this for a while during the next scene at a dinner table. Nick loves her, yet he is very reluctant to get help for her and he doesn't want to believe she needs it ("she cooks, she cleans, what's crazy about that?"). One moment she will be crazy and the other she will be calm. This attachment to her and desperation from her husband has caused her to go unhelped for a long time. Finally when she does get help, Nick becomes incredibly stressed and everyone at his job tries to confront him about it. This only makes him more agitated until eventually he pushes his coworker down a large hill of dirt, on accident (they're construction workers). He breaks many of his bones and Nick leaves to bring his kids to the beach to "have fun", but he is very on edge and is just as forceful to his kids. He eventually gives his kids beer on the ride back because they will "sleep like a rock", and it's this desperation that only makes his wife worse and his kids more attached to his wife. Once his wife comes back, we are very aware of how fragile the whole situation is for both Nick and to a greater extent Mabel. Our greatest fears come true however when we learn that Mabel is still crazy and Nick is still just as angry. The film subverts our expectations and hits us hard with the reality of the situation, and even though Mabel goes back to normal after her breakdown at the very end, we know that she could go right back to being crazy in the next few moments. The fact that Nick can't tell her that he loves her makes this even worse.

MartinHafer I know that among film snobs that the films of John Cassavetes are considered amazing works of art. And, of all of Cassavetes films, this is his most famous because it was nominated for two Academy Awards. Yet, despite this and some very positive reviews, I felt that watching this film was like SLOWLY chewing on broken glass! It was thoroughly unpleasant and seemed to be in need of massive editing. As a play, this might have worked....as a film, I see it as something that the average film viewer couldn't possibly enjoy.The film consists of what appear to almost be home movies that last a very, very long time. The camera work is better than home movies but the graininess of the print and the complete lack of even minor editing made it seem like a movie not yet ready for the movies. There isn't a lot of story. Instead it's full of scenes were Gene Rowlands screams and yells--acting at times like she's mentally ill but at others like she's just a very nasty and occasionally self-destructive person (more like a person diagnosed with a Borderline Personality Disorder than anything else). And, as for her husband (played by Peter Falk), mostly he's impassive...until he blows up and screams at her. If you like this sort of thing as well as knowing that it is an art house favorite, you'll probably enjoy the film. As for me, it was a major chore to finish it.

Artimidor Federkiel "A Woman Under the Influence" - like other Cassavetes films - is a difficult one to put into any specific drawer. Which is a good thing as it is able to push different buttons for different people and keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat and actively involved throughout. Not in the Hollywood kind of way, mind you, full with overblown drama, enhanced with musical cues and a heart-warming love story at the core, but rather in a way that makes you care, feel that it matters, that gets under your skin as a person, not just as a movie consumer. The main reasons why the film is so engaging and absorbing lies in the fact that it draws from convincingly portrayed lives rooted in a Seventies reality, the lives of a blue collar husband and a housewife with two kids. It's a familiar constellation with the ordinary domestic mayhem between troubles, challenges and duties, the need to show emotions and to suppress them at the same time, and there's always the urge to escape. It all comes down to a life on the edge, where people as partners in marriage are trapped in the confines of their everyday existence.On the surface "A Woman Under the Influence" is about a woman going mad and people in her environment having to deal with it. But thanks to the characterisations of Gena Rowlands (Cassavete's wife in the part of Mabel Longhetti) and Peter Falk (as her husband Nick) a rather simple story like this gets complex and multi-layered. Cassavetes delivers cinéma vérité the way it is meant to be. The film shamelessly shows us our fears, the emotional abysses between people, confronts us with the resulting traumas, all based on the influences we have on each other. It makes us suffer with both protagonists and their efforts, their eventual helplessness to deal with the situation, to find the common ground of the relationship. And in a struggle things go overboard. "Will you please stand up for me?" Mabel asks in one crucial scene, and if we don't judge first but listen, we might also hear what she's trying to say.