Mighty moralism

March 20, 1996
Issue 

Mighty Aphrodite
Directed by Woody Allen
Reviewed by Afrodity Giannakis

Woody Allen, in Mighty Aphrodite, has apparently given up his exploration of relationships, having found the answer to his previous preoccupations. And the answer lies in the ready-made good old American family values.

Simple, wasn't it? Why didn't he tell us so in the first place? One can't help but wonder whether Allen is trying hard to get back into the good books of the establishment after his private life scandal.

The plot of the movie verges on the simplistic. It evolves around Lennie's (Woody Allen) relationship with Linda (Mira Sorvino), a prostitute and porn-movie actor, who happens to be the mother of his adopted child. After tracking her down, and during most of the movie, Lennie tries to convince her that she is better suited to a life as a "decent" wife and mother. His ostensible motive is saving his son potential embarrassment in the case of a future encounter between them.

Linda doesn't have much faith in relationships, especially after two bad experiences. To top this, Lennie's attempt at match-making proves disastrous. So, Allen has to resort to a "deus ex machina" (or dea), Aphrodite, who hands down the desired resolution. Linda gets herself a nice man, finds true love and happiness in a nuclear family and lives happily ever after. Aphrodite, the notoriously unconventional goddess of love, is certainly shown in a new light here!

There are some seemingly subversive twists in the film — for example, Linda's initial carefree prostitute image and her obliviousness to Lennie's moralising. However, these aspects fade before the dominant assumption, which gets justified by the ending: true happiness for all concerned (even the peripheral participants) entails heterosexual pairing off, preferably leading to a nuclear family.

This is crudely presented as the only desirable possibility from the start, for everyone. And everyone is ecstatically happy with this arrangement. It could have been a parody of post-war Hollywood movies, but the problem is it's serious.

The blind acceptance of dominant values is also seen in other aspects: double standards concerning a woman's sexual history, sexual stereotyping with the woman in a couple being much younger and conventionally prettier than the man, overt expression of homophobia — on top of the overall heterosexist message, and over-the-top praise of the child's intelligence and good looks.

If you can suspend your criticism, Mighty Aphrodite is quite watchable and enjoyable, with good performances and an interesting stylistic device in the form of an ancient Greek chorus. But you are most unlikely to find any profound insights into relationships in this film.

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