I don’t know if it was insomnia, the urge to watch something “different,” or just my inner emotional masochist acting up, but I ended up watching A Woman Under the Influence. What started as a curiosity about a so-called cult film turned into one of the most uncomfortable, raw, and painfully human experiences I’ve ever had in front of a screen.
The plot is simple — even boring, if you hear it out loud: Mabel, a housewife, has some "unstable behavior," and Nick, her husband, loves her but doesn’t know how to deal with her. That’s it. That’s the summary. But this movie isn’t about story — it’s about the mirror it holds up to you. It doesn’t want to entertain you. It wants to strip you down emotionally. No music. No pretty cinematography. Just you and the ugliness of real, flawed people.
Gena Rowlands doesn’t play Mabel — she becomes her. And it’s terrifying. Because she’s not a typical “crazy lady.” No wide-eyed screaming or random outbursts for drama. No. She’s sweet. Awkward. Tender. Unsettling. You want to hug her, but also to tell her to shut up. She feels too much, too deeply. And that’s her curse in a world that demands women love quietly and suffer beautifully.
And Peter Falk… damn. Nick is the kind of guy people say “puts up with a lot” or “tries his best.” But to me, he’s a coward in love. He doesn’t hit her — well, not much — but he erases her, one word at a time. He talks over her. He tells her what to feel, when to speak, how to act. He loves her, sure, but he can’t stand that she feels more than him. That makes him furious.
There’s this dinner scene. Man. That f*cking scene. Mabel trying to act “normal,” with her shaky smile, her rehearsed tone, her desperate need to not mess up again. I cringed. I looked away. I wanted to turn it off. But I didn’t. Because I knew that scene was showing me. How many times have I asked someone to tone it down? To not “make a scene”? To act “like everyone else”? And in doing so, I killed something real in them.
This movie isn’t about madness. It’s about how we drive people mad by not knowing how to love them when they don’t fit the mold. It’s about how society — friends, family, us — slowly push someone to the edge and then act shocked when they fall. It’s about how men hide their emotional incapacity under the mask of being “providers,” and how women get institutionalized for simply being too much.
There are lines that pierced me. Like when Nick yells, “Why can’t you just be like other women?” Or when Mabel, crying, says “I’m fine, I’m perfectly fine,” and you know she’s anything but. Cassavetes didn’t want us to understand Mabel. He wanted us to feel guilty for not understanding her.
And that’s where this movie becomes genius. There’s no perfect arc. No redemption. No comforting soundtrack to guide your emotions. Just long, suffocating silences and breathing. You hear every breath. Every pause. It’s not meant to make you feel good — it’s meant to make you squirm.
I hated watching it. I hated how long it felt. I hated how real it was. But damn it... I’d watch it again. Because it’s one of those rare films that doesn’t end when the credits roll. It lingers. It eats away at you.
And now that I’ve seen it, I can’t stop thinking: How many Mabels have we pushed off the edge? How many times have we mistaken emotional freedom for mental illness? How often have we told someone to be “normal” because we were too scared to love them as they are?
I don’t know. But what I do know is... this movie stays with you. And not because it entertains you. But because it accuses you.
View replies 0