There was a certain period in Woody Allen's career when he was trying desperately to imitate Ingmar Bergman's work. It rarely worked, and often turned out disasters like the execrable September. Another Woman is a riff on Bergman's Wild Strawberries: a college professor, played by Gena Rowlands, is past fifty and looking back on and reliving key events in her life as her present life is falling apart. The film is quite stagy at times, just as it was in September, Allen's previous film. He seems to think that adds something, but it really doesn't. One other problem Another Woman has is a couple of very clunky scenes, and a few poor bit performers, which were much bigger problems in September, which was actually the last Allen film that I saw and the one that made me subconsciously avoid him for the past several months. Allen's script here is excellent. He has produced an excellent character study which is probably unsurpassed in all of his other films that I've seen. The lead actors are wonderful here, Rowlands, Ian Holms, Blythe Danner, Sandy Dennis, and Gene Hackman. Allen's use of piano music is beautifully touching. It all adds up to a very touching and sad little film. It might not be Woody's best film, but it ought to be better respected and known. 8/10.

The melancholic mood and Gena Rowland's impressing acting are the most important elements of this movie. It's the Ingmar-Bergman type of film, like „Interiors`, much more serious and thoughtful than all of Woody Allen's other movies, not at all typical for him. In my opinion, it's even more vivid than „Interiors` because there are less people involved and – something that happens less and less in Woody Allen's movies – there is only one main character. This time, it's the character herself who tells the story which is really unusual for Allen.

By leaving every other trade mark in plot and topics away, Allen concentrates on the intellectual dialogues and the analyses people make about each other. It's characteristic that Marion Post is a professor for philosophy. She automatically analyzes everybody around her, which leads to the fact that they start analyzing her. Her crisis begins, when she learns that people talk about her – which, of course, is something completely natural – and therefore starts analyzing herself. Her character really impressed me because I know people myself who are exactly like Marion Post. Woody Allen is a brilliant psychologist who watches people precisely and that's why he is able to create such believable characters.

Marion Post (Gena Rowlands) is a New Yorker in her 50s facing a midlife crisis. She's on sabbatical as the director of undergraduate studies in Philosophy at a women's college. She's renting an apartment to write her book in quiet when she notices that she can hear the psychiatrist office next door. She overhears a patient (Mia Farrow)'s desperate sessions whose words bring up issues in her own life. Marion is married to second husband Ken (Ian Holm) who has daughter Laura (Martha Plimpton) with bitter ex-wife Kathy. They had an affair while Kathy was sick. She starts to take stock of her regrets like a romance with Ken's friend Larry (Gene Hackman). Her brother Paul (Harris Yulin) and his wife Lynn (Frances Conroy) are getting divorced. Her father (John Houseman) is frustrated with Paul. In flashback, her father forced him to work at the paper box factory to help Marion go to a prestigious college. She runs into former friend Claire (Sandy Dennis) and her husband when an old issue resurfaces. She starts to wonder about her various calculated choices over the years.

This is a movie about a cerebral woman. It relies on the integrity of Gena Rowlands' performance. She is a cold character but not in a cartoon way. Her regrets feel visceral like ones which are collected over a lifetime. She is a woman of thoughts realizing that her seeming perfect life hides wreckage of past mistakes that have been ignored for far too long.