“Here…It's Not Their Cup of Tea”
Summary
This chapter discusses Woody Allen's melodramatic tendencies in Interiors, September, Another Woman, and Alice. Placing his work in a coherent feminist framework is difficult given his tendency to bracket female desire and ambition within an overarching trajectory of male desire. These films provide an unwavering and nearly exclusive access to female subjectivity. Even when his endings appear to be “happy,” as in Alice, to offer resolution as in Another Woman, or some degree of closure as in September and Interiors, rich ambiguities remain that tap into those of the earlier film cycles. Throughout Interiors, September, Another Woman, and Alice, Allen selectively invokes many of the thematic and visual tropes so common to the domestic melodrama and variations of the woman's film both challenging and reproducing the patriarchal unconscious that informs them.