GENA ROWLANDS as Mabel Longhetti in A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE

GENA ROWLANDS

GENA ROWLANDS as Mabel Longhetti in A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE

Before there was Cherlize Theron in MONSTER or Hilary Swank In BOYS DON'T CRY there was only Gena Rowlands in A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE. Thinking about this film I always have this image of John and Gena running around LA with their kids putting up movies posters cause they couldn’t afford proper marketing. And then I think of my mother. Who wasn't off the deep end as much as Mabel, but occasionally, seasonally, had moments that were very Mabel-esk. My mother was diagnosed, reluctantly later in life as bipolar and if Mabel would have ever went to a professional - she would have been labeled the same. I avoid this film at times. It's too familiar - too honest, doesn't cut away when I need a moment, it just keeps going. Unrelentingly honest and persuasive.

This film is a tough hard look at what lays behind low / middle to low income track houses and housewives.

Normally an actor would approach ‘crazy’ or any kind of mental illness with broad - generalized strokes and we can see it coming a mile a way. But Rowlands goes for ‘normal’ and bring us in slowly. We enter on a energetic – childlike woman who loves her kids and waves them off to school. Nothing wrong with that…She does the most innocent things with just a sprinkle of what dangers may lay ahead. Then her husband – played by the terrific Peter Falk (another under appreciated, Oscar worthy actor) bring home his co-workers for some breakfast. She makes spaghetti. Ok, not a normal early morning meal, but OK. With every line to the men, “want some Spaghetti?” seems like a tiny desperate cry form help. As if she’s saying ‘please take me away from all this’. Then she doesn’t remember the men, ut oh – or does she? We want, we need Mabel from the beginning to hold it together. As her world cracks so does ours. When she breaks, we break. I remember sitting outside the bathroom with I was seven. Inside my mother was taking a bath and crying. 'Hold it together mom' I would pray.

Mabel isn't gregarious, but, she tries. She tries too hard, and that's her problem. She desperately wants to please her husband, and when they're alone, she does. They get along, and they do love one another. But when people are around, she gets a little wacky. The mannerisms, the strange personal little ways she has of expressing herself, get out of scale. She's not sure how to act, because she's not sure who she is. "I'll be whatever you want me to be," she tells Nick, and he tells her to be herself. But who is that?

The film takes place before and after six months she spends in a mental institution. Her husband has her committed, reluctantly, after she begins to crack up. There have been some indications that she's in trouble. She behaves strangely when some neighbor children are brought over to stay for a while with her own, and the neighbor is afraid to leave his kids because of the way she's acting. But what, exactly, is "strange"?

Well she's insecure, hyper, manic. She laughs too much and pushes too hard. She's not good with other people around. So her husband does what he thinks he has to do and commits her. But what about him? What kind of a guy is he? It's here that this film and performance gets to be terribly complicated, involved and fascinating -- a true blue revelation. Because if Mabel is disturbed, then so is he. He's as crazy as she is, maybe more so. But because he's a man and has channels for his craziness, he stays at home and she gets sent away.

Said to have taken cues from a family friend and a mother of a childhood friend. This is a hard one for me to watch cause I have been there as my mother’s seasons had changed in her mind - I watched time and time again the sun go down and her depression and mania go up. It’s one of those performances I don’t like to talk about cause it’s too real – too vivid – too close to home. It’s coming from deep within but she’s playing a person we all know very well. A lonely innocent girl needing more love.

There's Gena Rowlands incredible command of her physical acting resources to communicate what Mabel feels at times when she's too unsure or intimidated to say. Just who’s crazy – one no understands the world of family or relationships except those directly involved – everyone else should mind their own business. Nothing wrong here. Brilliant. Hilary and Cherlize should hand over their Oscars and give them to Gena. Cause they it all to her.