Three couples in various stages of their relationships visit the countryside around 1900 to spend the weekend at the home of Andrew (Woody Allen), a neurotic stockbroker and part-time inventor.
He is obsessed with renewing his sex life with his frigid and seemingly anorexic wife, Adrian (Mary Steenburgen) but his efforts are complicated by the romantic entanglements of his visitors, including José Ferrer as her elderly cousin Leopold, a pedantic world-famous scholar engaged to Ariel (Mia Farrow), an old crush of Andrew’s.
Also visiting is Andrew’s best friend, Maxwell (Tony Roberts) – a medical Lothario who amuses himself with his office nurse, Dulcy (Julie Hagerty) until he, too, falls in love with Ariel.
It’s a loose adaptation of Shakespeare and Bergman, but also – and probably more so – a quirky mediation on Woody Allen’s pet themes of sex and death.
The jokes come rather thin and slow for a Woody movie, with the result that Allen’s oddball inventions (which include a flying bicycle) are at least as interesting as the oddball people.
Andrew
Woody Allen Ariel Weymouth
Mia Farrow Leopold
José Ferrer Dulcy Ford
Julie Hagerty Maxwell
Tony Roberts Adrian
Mary Steenburgen Reynolds
Michael Higgins Student Foxx
Adam Redfield Mr Hayes
Moishe Rosenfeld Mr Thompson
Timothy Jenkins Carstairs
Sol Frieder Blint
Thomas Barbour
Adrian
