Woody Allen’s career has always fascinated me – over the course of over fifty years, he’s made dozens of films, demonstrating a longevity and versatility very few filmmakers have been able to match, at least in terms of quantity. His career can also be segmented into different periods, with the 1980s seeing Allen slightly step away from the broad comedies that kickstarted his career, and instead venturing into the realm of more dramatic material. This is best exemplified in the quiet, brooding Manhattan-based dramas that he made, where intelligence overtook comedy to create something utterly mesmerizing. One of the pivotal works made during this period of Allen’s career was Another Woman, a cerebral psychological drama that brings together many of the director’s more noteworthy qualities – a strong story, incredible character development and an ensemble tasked with bringing these individuals to life and conveying the depths of Allen’s powerful story. It is a film that has been somewhat lost in time when considering the director’s career, as is often the case with highly prolific artists, but it stands as one of his most enduring works, a series of philosophical musings that feel earnest and intelligent, without becoming pretentious or overly complex. While his output in the 1980s may have been defined by films such as Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors and numerous other fascinating attempts to add nuance to his interesting vision, Another Woman stands as one of his most poignant looks into the human condition, and a film sorely in need of another evaluation as one of his masterworks.

Marion Post (Gena Rowlands) is an extremely lonely woman, she just doesn’t realize it yet. She has spent her entire life rising to become one of the most respected academics in her field, influencing many students throughout the year and achieving eminence in her field, which has continued to propel her to pursue her perpetual ambitions. However, she doesn’t realize how this has come at the expense of her relationships with those closest to her – whether it’s her husband (Ian Holm), who has tried to be a loving partner despite their clear differences, her friends (Sandy Dennis and Blythe Danner), who she has grown distant from, or her own father and brother (John Houseman and Harris Yulin), who have had to sit idly by and watch Marion develop into an exceptionally smart person who lacks the basic self-awareness required to forge meaningful relationships. This only becomes clear to her when she overhears a conversation between a psychologist and a patient (Mia Farrow) in the apartment next to her – suddenly, Marion is forced to reflect on the past, revisiting the memories she’s shared with a variety of people in her life, while also encountering many in her daily activities, including the mysterious woman, whose confessions have driven Marion to this existential crisis, and who hold the solution to preventing Marion’s slowly degrading mental state – so it only seems fitting that she bears the name “Hope”, as its the one thing that Marion is desperate to hold into, in the wake of everything going wrong around her.

After having amassed the status of one of the more interesting directors of his generation, Woody Allen seemed to be in search of something different, and he took a break from the broad, parodic comedies that were undeniably excellent, but also not all that challenging to a director whose curiosities extended far beyond the confines of what he was making before. One of his artistic idols was surprisingly Ingmar Bergman, who Allen often used as inspiration for his films. Another Woman has often been considered a pastiche of Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, insofar as both films are about people looking back at their life, comparing their success in the academic world to their inability to form meaningful connections in their personal life. Allen once again completely abandons the comedy, and mercifully so, as while his brand of humour is often exceptional, it has no place in a film like this, where the story hinges on a kind of ethereal dourness that allows the story to penetrate the mind of one of the director’s more compelling protagonist, venturing below her hardened exterior and finding the depth in what could have easily been a flippant archetype. Serious but never vapid, Another Woman is one of Allen’s most mature works, the kind that many artists flirt with after decades in the industry, but sometimes struggle to avoid infusing with metaphysical commentary that is all too often overwrought or moralizing. Allen composes a gorgeous character-study that is cold and harrowing at times but has a certain warmth that is indicative of the director’s style, and this particular period in his career, where he was in search of something deeper and more profound, and he just may have found it in Another Woman.

The role of Marion Post is one that would likely be coveted by every actress in search of a very complex, challenging character – and the decision to cast Gena Rowlands, perhaps the greatest American actress of her generation, was certainly an impressive decision, albeit one that seemed so obvious in hindsight. Rowlands’ entire career, whether in her historically-significant collaborations with John Cassavetes or in the many other fantastic roles she acquired throughout the years, proved herself time and again as a force to be reckoned with. Collaborating with Allen, a director who has written some of the most complex female characters in cinema history, was inevitable once he started venturing into more hefty narrative territory. Rowlands does not disappoint – and while she may not hit the dizzying heights of some of her more well-known work, Another Woman is one of her most exciting performances, another opportunity for her to play a complicated woman undergoing an existential crisis, which only compounds with every realization that she isn’t where she is supposed to be. Rowlands is an actress who commands the screen in a way very few English-speaking actresses have ever been able to do – she eviscerates the cinematic membrane, and with a single glance places the audience right before her, making us companions as she goes through whatever metaphysical journey she is embarking on. The combination of her immense talents, and Allen’s knack for creating such memorable characters, makes Another Woman one of her finest performances. Its beautifully poetic work from an actress who never rested on her laurels, and continued to challenge herself throughout her career.

However, like a majority of the films Allen was making during this period of his career, Another Woman employs a fantastic ensemble, with many familiar character actors and veterans of the industry being woven into this compelling drama. Highlights include Sandy Dennis, who is simply exceptional as the main character’s former best friend from childhood, who has always stood in the shadows and failed to be recognized on her own merits. Dennis, who only has two scenes, is absolutely extraordinary, delivering a vitriolic performance seething with rage and despair, and she commands the screen, relaying some of the most heartbreaking words Allen ever wrote. Ian Holm and Gene Hackman play Marion’s love interest – the former is her husband, a lovably dull upper-class physician who is happy to live a very simple life of no excitement, contrasted sharply with the latter, who takes hold of the limited screen time he is given to play man driven by his impulses, and the object of desire for a woman who didn’t realize how much she needed to think of someone other than herself until Hackman’s character reminds her of what could’ve been. Blythe Danner, Frances Conroy and Betty Buckley have individual scenes that add both humour and heartbreaking nuance to a film that relies almost entirely on the characters and their individual quandaries. However, Mia Farrow leaves the most significant impression as the titular “another woman”, who is only glimpsed momentarily, but heard regularly, her feeble explorations of her broken soul often impinging on Rowland’s self-assured, almost-academic musings. When he finally enters the film, her scenes are brief but memorable, bringing the film together and delivering the final bout of emotional impact that set off the gorgeous, but haunting, resolution to the story of a woman that had been frantically searching for one, and may have found it in the most unexpected place of all.

What makes Another Woman such a remarkable achievement is that Allen understands the value of saying the most through doing the least – this is a slow-burning, character-driven drama that does in some surprising directions in terms of the story, but never wavers in its more simple approach to the theme of memory. Allen was using the most invaluable resource – experience – which had been afforded to him over three decades in the industry and composes an elegant metaphysical drama about a woman descending into an existential crisis as a result of realizing the depths of her own soul, or rather what remains of it. A mature and scintillating voyage into the human condition, Another Woman presents audiences with someone of the director’s most interesting work to date, being both a sophisticated drama that deals with some serious matters in a manner of distinct poise and gracefulness, while slowly unravelling as a deceptively complex subversion of popular conceptions of existence. It’s difficult to fathom Allen making something so distant from his comedic roots, but as this film proves, even when working in the realm of sincere drama, the director produces something incredibly poignant, a resilient tale of the importance of addressing the past as a way of creating a future that isn’t defined by uncertainty. The film exudes an intelligent warmth that makes it such an enthralling excursion into the mind of a group of ordinary people, bolstered by extraordinary performances and a wealth of stark images, Another Woman is a truly exceptional constituent in the career of an artist whose refusal to play by the rules throughout his artistic endeavours often resulted in outright masterpieces, of which this is without a doubt one of the most fascinating, and truly in need of another look from a modern perspective.