Other Titles • A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy • Sommernachts-Sexkomödie, Eine (1982)
Synopses for A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982)
1.
In A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, Woody Allen mixes Shakespeare, Ingmar Bergman, and the music and art of the turn of the century. Allen plays Andrew, an inventor, whose listless marriage to Adrian (Mary Steenburgen) has lost all erotic zip. He welcomes two pairs of friends to his country home: college professor Leopold (José Ferrer) and his fiancée Ariel (Mia Farrow), and dentist Maxwell (Tony Roberts) and his suffragette nurse Dulcy (Julie Hagerty). Before long, everyone's lusting after everyone else's partner, and the plot twists and turns to a happy and magical conclusion. It's a light and airy film, perhaps a deliberate break from Allen's previous production, the caustic Stardust Memories; but the tone may also be due to his new relationship with Farrow, who went on to star in Allen's films for the next 10 years. --Bret Fetzer
2.
A wonderful, frothy treat from Woody Allen about three couples frolicking in the countryside at the turn of the century.
At a beautiful farmhouse in upstate New York, wealthy Andrew passes his summer days tinkering as a hack inventor and attempting to make love with his frigid wife, Adrian. Then Leopold, a self-possessed scholar, and his future wife, the highly sexed Ariel, come for a visit. The second couple in the mix is Maxwell, a doctor, and his current girlfriend, Dulcy, a nurse who advises Adrian on her sex life.
It turns out that Andrew once had an innocent romance with Ariel, but he's one of the very few men she has met and not slept with. Now Andrew is very much interested in Ariel again--and she in him. And thus begins this whimsical farce of lust, love, and longing among friends.
3.
Centred around a weekend party at the home of inventor Andrew Hobbs and his wife Adrian, attended by randy doctor Maxwell Jordan, his nurse Darcy, renowned philosopher Dr.Leopold Sturgis and his fiancée, this is a light comedy concerning their various emotional, intellectual and sexual entanglements, loosely based on Ingmar Bergman's 'Smiles of a Summer Night' (qv).
4.
Woody Allen's 1982 homage to Bergman and Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is a delight from start to finish and must rate as one of his most joyous films. The period setting--Edwardian up state New York--gives the whole thing a misty, elegiac quality.
Part Midsummer Night's Dream (the magic supplied by visions through a spirit glass) and part Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman's source material provides the basic plot and ensuing couplings), it's a gentle satire on male sexuality and frustration. Allen handles the angst with the lightest of touches. He plays a Wall Street broker who spends his holidays inventing flying machines (they work, with telling consequences). He and his wife (Mary Steenburgen) are increasingly depressed by their ailing sex life. Cue the arrival of weekend guests: crusty academic (Jose Ferrer) and beautiful blue-stocking fiancée previously in love with Allen (Mia Farrow, of course); and insatiable doctor (Tony Roberts) with his latest squeeze, a nurse (the excellent Julie Hagerty). Eighty minutes of unravelling, discovery and renewal follow, accompanied by a Mendelssohn sound track. This is one of Allen's most treasurable pictures.
On the DVD:A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is presented in widescreen that recaptures the pleasure which greeted the setting of this most pastoral of Allen's films on its first release; it really does glow with summery light. The standard stereo soundtrack is perfectly acceptable. Extras include the original theatrical trailer and multiple language soundtracks.--Piers Ford
Mooviees.com is not the official site for this film.
All editorial views and opinions expressed here are for entertainment purposes only.
<>
Movie Database
In Theaters
