Gena Rowlands has been one of those actors I've heard of repeatedly but couldn't place. It made sense to remedy this by seeing the first role for which she got an Academy Award nomination, in a movie significantly more popular than the one for her second, Gloria. Incidentally, both were directed by her husband, John Cassavetes, who got an Oscar nod only for AWUtI.
In what might be a New York suburb, Mabel (Rowlands) lives with husband Nick (Peter Falk), their three prepubescent kids, and Nick's fairly active mom (Katherine Cassavetes, John's mom). Despite this crowd, she spends more time alone than she's comfortable with, leading her to bad behavior -- not that she's such a winner around others either. In fact, midway through the movie, after some inappropriate child supervision, she gets involuntarily committed. We don't see her at the institution; the third act skips ahead six months to her release, which might just be premature.
I took a college course on abnormal psychology but couldn't piece together Mabel's likely modern diagnosis from memory. Wikipedia suggests borderline personality disorder. I can buy that. She feels too readily "stood up" when Nick has to work late, so she smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish, and has a one-night stand. Many of her acts are rash if not brash. It doesn't take much to make her angry or depressed. Come the climax, she gets especially self-destructive.
At the same time, I can see why the name "borderline" suggests a relatively mild disorder. Most of the time, Mabel just seems vaguely "off," not irrational. Even "eccentric" is a stretch, except when an idiosyncratic tic emerges. When Nick invites work buddies over, she's generally kind to them but alternates between disconcertingly quiet and disconcertingly friendly. I found it odd when strangers on the street strode silently past her while she was asking for the time of day; guess she exudes more wrongness than I picked up on.
Frankly, I'm not sure the doctor picked the right person to commit. Nick has still worse anger issues, and by no means just toward Mabel, tho she may be the primary source of his stress. He even gets angry when she's not acting the same after institutionalization. Usually this rage takes the form of sudden yelling and swearing; sometimes he punches hard. At his worst, he verbally threatens to kill Mabel and the kids -- where he knows they can hear him. (Do you mind movies that expose child actors to profanity?) Nor is he a responsible or patient parent in her absence. I suspect he inherited this from his mom, who has her own outburst when clamoring for the doctor to take Mabel away.
This is very much an indie, with financing out of the pockets of the director and Falk. Many scenes were in a real house, and some of the crew members were students, which might explain some questionable cinematography, unless the point was to further convey the discomforts of emotional instability. No theater would show the film until Cassavetes admirer Martin Scorsese threw his weight around.
Being an indie may have enabled a less conventional approach to the production. The actors, possibly including the kids, had a lot of wiggle room for improvisation, so the dialog feels pretty natural. Unfortunately, that also means plenty of repetition and unimportant small talk. Every scene is about twice as long as it has to be, for a total of 155 minutes. Good thing I have more patience than the main characters.
Many praise AWUtI for its merciless intensity. I just found it OK. No one moment really stands out to me in a good way. I've seen plenty of equally severe dramas. Maybe it'll mean more to you if you know someone like Mabel. Or someone like Nick.
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