Sunday, February 6, 2011

Alice

Alice is the wife of a rich man. She wears red a lot, but otherwise is mostly repressed. Like the mistress in Crimes and Misdemeanors, she has sacrificed her ambitions and dreams for a man to become a mother and husband.

There is a certain aspect of magical realism to the movie including such things as ghosts, invisibility, flying, dreams, and love potions.

This is one of the few Woody Allen movies that ends happily for someone single. Usually happiness for Woody means getting the girl. More often he prefers to explore the tragedy of love gone wrong. But here the notion that "freedom is a frightening feeling" does not deter the titular Alice from pursuing that goal once her other options have been stripped from her. And she seems one of the most genuinely happy of Woody's character by the end of the film.

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