Actress Gena Rowlands died last year, and TCM ran a programming tribute to her from which I already posted about one of the movies since I had it on my DVR at the time of the tribute. I haven't really gotten around to watching the others, although recently I finally sat down to watch A Woman Under the Influence.
The movie starts in what seems the middle. Peter Falk plays Nick Longhetti, the father of a family married to Mabel (Gena Rowlands) and works for the Los Angeles sewer department, a job which entails long shifts because emergencies happen in a city of that size. It's been a bit of a strain on Mabel, and just after the opening credits, we see Mabel packing up the kids in her mother-in-law's car (played by Rowlands' real-life mother-in-law Katherine Cassavetes, mother to the film's director John Cassavetes) so that they can spend a day with grandma and Mom and Dad can have some alone time for, well, you can probably guess.
Except that Nick gets called out on another emergency, and Mabel responds by going to a bar where she has way too much to drink and gives a strange man the idea that she's coming on to him. So he takes her home and presumably sleeps with her, as she's none too happy in the morning and has to get him out of the house before Nick comes home. Nick would clearly misunderstand and think of Mabel as a loose woman.
The erratic behavior continues when Nick brings all his co-workers from the emergency overnight shift home, only for Mabel to make them spaghetti instead of a traditional breakfast food. Worse, Grandma brings the kids home to pick up some schoolbooks, and both Nick and Mabel react very badly, albeit in different ways, with just as much of Nick's anger seeming to be directed at Mabel. Is this the cause of Mabel's erratic behavior, or his having no idea how to deal with it.
There's more unstable behavior from Mabel, and finally Nick, not knowing what to do, calls in the professionals, who diagnose that Mabel has some form of mental illness and would be best served by a stay at a psychiatric institution. She spends six months there, and when it's time for her to come home from the hospital, Nick and his friends think the best thing to do would be to hold a big party for Mabel. Nick's mom knows better and thinks that everyone who isn't family should leave. Mabel comes hom, and it's obvious to the viewer that she hasn't gotten any better, although everyone around her seems to want to deny that obvious thing.
To be honest, there's not much to a plot synopsis of A Woman Under the Influence because it's more of a character study than a traditionally plotted movie. Not just a study of Mabel, but of Nick too, and neither one really passes the test, at least not as characters. Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands both pass, giving outstanding performances, albeit performances that can be harrowing at times. The movie also runs a good two and a half hours, which is rather too long for material like this. As well-made -- and even more so how well-acted -- A Woman Under the Influence is, it's not necessarily an easy movie to watch. An important one, yes, but not easy.
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