Life's all about love. Or at least that's what Cassavettes believed. The anti-thesis to this movie has got be Eyes Wide Shut, where life just comes down to sex, regardless of relationships. Mabels love is for everyone too, not just her husband. It's like she has a disease : a pure heart. The problem is this goes against society which is all masks and manipulation, and no one in the movie can figure Mabel out. She gets branded as crazy for being free of bulls**t. In Eyes Wide shut everyone has their mask and keeps it firmly on, even when Kidman & Cruise recognize their masks for what they are, they still have to keep on going, and the solution is sex. Maybe what's missing in Eyes Wide Shut and present in A Woman Under The Influence is the presence of God. Perhaps the question about Mabel is wether she really is pure or is she just another person dealing with the complications of life and human genetic programming. We all manipulate to get what we want, maybe Mabel is just doing the same on a grand scale. Mabel finds it quite easy to bring a man back to her place for sex, maybe because she's not getting her emotional-love fix from her husband, but still, it seems to boil down to just sex again. Cassavettes seemed to believe in his Love philosophy, but i wonder...
Review of A Woman Under the Influence
