It's been about three years since I did a post on Woody Allen's movie Interiors, which he was open about making on the grounds that he wanted to make a film in the style of Ingmar Bergman. Allen would revisit Bergman a few years later, although this time with a fair bit of Anton Chekhov mixed it. That movie is A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy.
José Ferrer plays Leopold Sturges, a college professor sometime in the early part of the 20th century. The end of term is about to come up and everyone is about to break for summer, with Leopold telling his fellow professors that he's about to get married to a young woman named Ariel (Mia Farrow) and embark on a summer tour of Europe. But first, he's going to see he cousin Adrian (Mary Steenburgen) out in the country.
Adrian is married and a long-suffering wife to a dreamer of an inventor named Andrew (Woody Allen), the sort of garage-workshop inventor who could come up with new things still in that era, although it doesn't particularly look like most of Andrew's inventions are very successful. They've also reached a point in their marriage where they've stopped having sex, which doesn't seem like a big deal to mention for a 1980s movie but, since the movie is set around 1910, is something you'd think the characters of the day wouldn't mention.
Adrian and Andrew have been expecting Leopold and Ariel, as well as another guest, their doctor friend Maxwell (Tony Roberts). Maxwell is a ladies' man, and has had a string of girlfriends, with Adrian and Andrew expecting him to bring his latest girlfriend. He does, although it's not what people might have been expecting, since he's literally just started a relationship with his nurse Dulcy (Julie Hagerty).
Now, if you've seen the early Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, you'll have some good predictions of what's going to happen next. When Ariel shows up, Andrew realizes that he met Ariel some time back, and that he might still be in love with her, although of course it would be unfaithful of him to try to start up a relationship with her. And then Maxwell and Dulcy arrive. Maxwell immediately discovers that he too is in love with Ariel, and that the Ariel/Leopold marriage has no real shot of working out. Complicating matters is that Adrian talks with the other women about how to spice up her love life again, while Leoplold thinks he might be falling for Adrian and/or Dulcy.
All of this has the vibe of the aforementioned Smiles of a Summer Night, but also reminded me of the film adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull that I watched late last year. I'm sorry to say that what Woody Allen does here doesn't quite work. I think that's because of Woody putting himself in the cast. This was still the point Allen's career when he had the screen persona of the nebbish, neurotic city type, and I don't think that works for A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy. If he had been able to cast other people and not himself, and write to their strengths and personalities, I think the movie would have worked better.
Reading other reviews of A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, I see that it's generally considered of one Allen's lesser films. Having watched it, I can see why. Although it's got some lovely cinematography, in terms of story it's just not up there with Allen's other work.
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