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Excellent, Without a doubt!!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

September (1987) ** (out of 4) Six people gather in a Vermont summer home where they talk about love, their failures in life and what things might possibly make life better. It turns out that Peter (Sam Waterson) and his wife Lane (Mia Farrow) are going through some problems, which means that Peter is falling for another married woman (Dianne Wiest). It turns out that Lane is loved by the much older Howard (Denholm Elliott) and some of her problems might go back to her famous mother (Elaine Stritch) who is at the house with her new love Lloyd (Jack Warden). It turns out that Allen wanted to make a film in one location with a limited number of actors but the result is certainly less than entertaining and in the end September turns out to be one of the director's weakest efforts. I've read that Allen shot this film two and possibly three times and replaced various cast members throughout the production because he was never happen with the end result and one wonders what he feels about this finished product. From the opening sequence all the way to the ending I really felt as if I was watching a movie by someone trying to copy an Allen film. I found the entire film to be rather dry of any sort of humor or drama and what really killed the movie for me were the characters because they're so unlikeable. The Waterson and Farrow characters are completely boring and not for a second does the viewer ever care about them or worry about their happiness. I found the Farrow character to be extremely underwritten as if Allen wasn't really sure what he wanted to do with her. The Wiest character isn't much better and it's never clear why Waterson would be so attracted to her. The Elliott character isn't all that well written either but at least the actor does a good job in the part. The same could be said for Warden and his character and one really wishes that Allen had written the film around the two elderly actors instead of the women. Stritch is also fairly good in her part but her character just isn't that interesting either. It's clear that Allen wanted this film to be about the various paths one life could have gone through and how everyone wants to be wanted by someone. I'm sure in his mind there were other reasons behind these characters but none of them transfer to the screen.

"September" is a 1987 film from Woody Allen, which he intended as a "filmed play." In that, it succeeds; in fact, one might assume that it was a play. It certainly could be performed on stage.The story concerns an unsuccessful photographer from New York, Lane (Mia Farrow) who is spending the summer in the family summer home trying to heal from a breakdown. There, visiting for the weekend at the summer's end are Lane's mother Diane (Elaine Strich), her husband Lloyd (Jack Warden), Lane's best friend Stephanie (Dianne Wiest), a man who lives in the guest cottage, Peter (Sam Waterston), who has spent the summer trying to write a book; and a friend of Lane's, Howard (Denholm Elliot). During the weekend, feelings come to the surface and secrets are revealed. Peter is in love with Stephanie, who is married; Lane is in love with Peter; Howard is in Love with Lane; and Lane and Diane have unresolved issues, which have caused Lane a great deal of anger and pain.This is a derivative story that draws on elements of "Autumn Sonata," though it is nowhere near as searing, and any number of ensemble pieces. The story of Lane and her mother is based on the Lana Turner-Johnny Stompanato scandal.The acting is terrific. Elaine Stritch is magnificent as a self-centered former (probably society) beauty whose selfishness has hurt her daughter; Sam Waterson's Peter exhibits a quiet disappointment in himself, and his desperate love for Stephanie is palpable; Dianne Wiest is brilliant as Stephanie, who is unhappily married, and her reluctance to betray Lane and move forward with her life is very poignant. Farrow is childlike and fragile with underlying rage erupting in small ways, and then finally exploding. Under Allen's direction, Farrow proved to be a wonderful actress. Elliot as the devastated Howard and Warden as Lane's stepfather, who adores his wife and stays in the background, give solid performances in smaller roles.This is a short film, something like an hour and 22 minutes, yet there are some repetitive scenes and dialogue. Nevertheless, it's all worth it not only for the acting but the confrontation toward the end between Farrow and Stritch. It's not Bergman and Ullman, but it's still powerful.Recommended.

Looking at September I think Woody Allen might have been interested in doing his own version of Long Day's Journey Into Night with this production. The problem is that the characters here are not even half as interesting as O'Neill's autobiographical Tyrone family.Try as I might I just could not get into this story. Apparently neither could Woody, I see he refilmed the entire story with three different players from those he started with. And he was ready to do it again. Who did Woody Allen think he was, Erich Von Stroheim?Mia Farrow who was married to Allen at the time is recovering from a nervous breakdown and she's in Vermont at the old family homestead to sell the place. Her famous actress mom, Elaine Stritch is up there as well with stepfather Jack Warden and Stritch has different plans for the place than Farrow does. Also up there are Stritch's prospective biographer Sam Waterston and other friends Denholm Elliott and Dianne Weist. Who could know that Weist would windup as Waterston's boss on Law and Order and that he'd eventually be the boss as well.Stritch's role is not to terribly disguised as Lana Turner with Mia as Cheryl Crane. I'm surprised that Lana didn't sue Woody Allen. I would have.Stritch and Warden come off the best, they are at least mildly interesting. The rest you don't really care about as we hear about this one loves that one, but that one loves the other, who loves still another. Except for Stritch who thinks the world revolves around her.Woody should stick to comedy.

September seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it work within the Allen filmography, one that seems synonymous with that period in the late 80's when he was trying to take on weightier issues that drew stylistically on the films of Ingmar Bergman (see Another Woman, Husbands and Wives, Crimes and Misdemeanours and elements of Hannah and Her Sisters for more), and one that has the famous back-story of Allen shooting the film once, assembling a rough-cut, deciding he hated it, re-writing the script, re-casting the film and eventually re-shooting the same story on a sound-stage in upstate New York. His intention... to create an isolated and claustrophobic atmosphere in which he could develop a modern-day chamber-piece that would stand more as a filmed play as opposed to a major motion picture!! Still, it showed that he was taking risks rather than playing it safe, something that he would end up doing during the latter half of the 90's and the first half of the new millennium.The basic story of the film concerns six main protagonists who are gathered together at an idyllic summer house in Vermont. The house belongs to Lane (Farrow), who is recuperating from a nervous breakdown, a failed relationship and years of guilt and speculation involving the murder of her abusive step-father. Amongst the group is Peter (Sam Waterston), a struggling writer who is lodging with Lane and who Lane has a crush on. Peter however, is in love with Lane's friend Stephanie (Diane Wiest), who is staying at the summer house to escape the tedium of her husband while her children are away at camp. Stephanie seems close to Howard (Denholm Eliot) who has hidden feelings from Lane, whilst between the four of them there is Lane's vibrant and gregarious mother Diane (Elaine Stritch) and her new lover Lloyd (Jack Warden). The set-up seems ripe for the kind of comedic misunderstandings usually found in the greatest of French farce (or even Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night!!), but instead, Allen uses the notion of couples "in love with someone, in love with someone else" to mine deeper questions involving the need for love, understanding and acceptance in the face of loneliness and isolation.Throughout the film we never stray from the stifling claustrophobia of the summer house, with Allen carefully cutting backwards and forwards between the main characters and their escalating interactions that can only lead to a scene of devastating emotional fall out!! As a result, September is a purposely stagy film that relies heavily on scenes of dialog punctuated by moments of piercing silence. If this doesn't sound like your cup of tea, then the film most certainly isn't for you, with Allen and long-term cinematographer Carlo Di Palma shooting much of the film in long, unbroken takes, with very few close-ups (the obvious exception being the closing scenes of dysfunction), and generally allowing scenes to play out in semi-darkened rooms lit by candle-light or very low sepia bulbs. The feeling that this creates is one of mystery and desperation, offering many secluded areas for the group to break away and take solace in their secrets, whilst also going to some lengths to visualise the deep-seated animosity that lies at the heart of the film's central characters.The film could easily be seen as the middle-part of Allen's dramatic trilogy, which began with the very bleak Interiors in 1978 and climaxed with the very bleak but wholly more interesting Another Woman from 1987. On the whole, September is a more enjoyable film than Interiors (if it is possible to enjoy such a bleak and miserable film), though for me lacked the depth of further interpretation that was so central to Another Woman. The story can at times be a little slow, despite the film clocking in at just under an hour and twenty-minutes, but it is worth sticking with as far as I'm concerned, particularly for the great performances and that jaw-dropping moment towards the end of the film, in which the root of Lane's problems and the deep-seated animosity towards her mother is finally revealed.The performances are fine throughout, though it is Farrow (in possibly her best performance ever... alongside The Purple Rose of Cairo) and Wiest who really stand out as something spectacular. It's a film that I particularly enjoy (though I'm someone who can overlook the flaws in Shadows and Fog and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion to see the great work lurking beneath), and I feel it shows Allen's deft understanding of character, atmosphere, design and direction in pulling off such a dour and depressing piece of work. Although it could be argued that the subsequent Crimes and Misdemeanours and Husbands and Wives were also fairly dark and dramatic films, they were undercut by Allen's verbal wit and enough moments of lighter comedy. Interiors, September and Another Woman are films without laughs and devoid of the usual Allen wit... with the director instead choosing to ask deeper questions about life, love and loneliness. The characters here are forced to dig through the secrets of the past (and the present), whilst at the same time, staring life full in the face, in order to get to the root of their various problems and complications, but ultimately find a (slim) glimmer of hope drifting far on the horizon.As with 90% of Allen's work, September is a perfectly made film with an interesting story, strong characters and an impeccable design. Though it perhaps tries too hard to develop its overtly serious tone, it should be commended for trying to do something stylistically different, whilst simultaneously offering us a film for adults about adults, that isn't afraid to present the darker aspects of life. It may fall somewhat outside the top-ten of Allen-related masterworks, but regardless, it is well made, impeccably acted and occasionally quite moving, and deserves to find an audience that is willing to invest some time in it.