Hannah and her sisters

James

13 September 2022

82%

Actor : Woody Allen

Hannah and her sisters is an excellent film. The film explores the relationships between three sisters in New York over the course of a year starting and ending with the family at a Thanksgiving meal. Some of the filming takes place in Mia Farrow's apartment (see note below) and includes 4 of Mia's adopted children as extras. The plot, as you would expect with Woody Allen, has several threads - the main one is that Elliot (Michael Caine), second husband of Hannah (Mia Farrow), decides to start an affair with Lee (Barbara Hershey) - Hannah's sister. Of course there are many relationship complications and in the post film discussion we pondered on the complications of the relationship Woody Allen has with Mia Farrow's adopted daugther, and now Woody Allens wife, Soon-Yi Previn.

Ian compares the relationships in film with real life:

" In the film their characters are married and can’t have kids. They use a friends semen to have kids but still split up. She marries Michael Caine who in turn has an affair with her sister. Woody ends up marrying the third sister. So far, so incestuous.

They film it in Mia’s real life apartment and 4 of her real life adopted and biological kids play the part of her fictional kids. So far, so slightly weird. Cut to real life…Mia has adopted a young Chinese girl when she was married to Andre Previn. She divorces him and has along term relationship with Woody who then starts shagging the adopted daughter (36 years his junior) who he is now married to.

An uplifting and wholesome tale of life imitating art!!"

Extra note on Mia farrow's apartment - Although Woody Allen and Mia Farrow were in a 12 year relationship at this point ther did not live together. They had two separate apartments on opposite sides of Central Park. In fact Woody Allen has said that he never stayed over at Mia Farrow's apartment.

James had prepared smoked trout belinis along with a cheese board to go with two Châteauneuf-du-Pape wines from Waitrose. Both wines were a similar price however, I thought they tasted sompletely different - both good, but one was a lot lighter than the other.

The film was unanimously recognised by the five members present as being of high quality and was awarded accordingly with scores ranging from 16-18. Similarly, the evening scored highly as well with the exception of Simon who only gave it a score of two. He argued that the crisps were not very good, the belinis should be made with smoked salmon, the cheese was not all French, and there was not enough caviar on the belinis! Apart from that a wonderful evening with a deserved season high score of 82%!