Melinda and Melinda (2004)

Two alternating stories about Melinda's (Mitchell) attempts to straighten out her life.

Director:

Woody Allen

Writer:

Woody Allen

Stars:

Wallace Shawn, Will Ferrell, Chiwetel Ejiofor

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Wallace Shawn	...	Sy
Neil Pepe	...	Al
Stephanie Roth Haberle	...	Louise
Larry Pine	...	Max
Radha Mitchell	...	Melinda Robicheaux
Michael J. Farina	...	Man with Dog
Jonny Lee Miller	...	Lee
Chloë Sevigny	...	Laurel
Matt Servitto	...	Jack Oliver
Arija Bareikis	...	Sally Oliver
Brooke Smith	...	Cassie
Zak Orth	...	Peter
Will Ferrell	...	Hobie
Andy Borowitz	...	Doug
Amanda Peet	...	Susan

Storyline

Over a meal in a French restaurant, Sy poses a conundrum to his fellow diners: Is the essence of life comic or tragic? For the sake of argument, he tells a story, which the others then embellish to illustrate their takes on life. The story starts as follows: A young Manhattan couple, Park Avenue princess Laurel and tippling actor Lee, throw a dinner party to impress Lee's would-be producer when their long-lost friend Melinda appears at their front door, bedraggled and woebegone. In the tragic version of what happens next, the beautiful intruder is a disturbed woman who got bored with her Midwestern doctor-husband and dumped him for a photographer. Her husband took the children away and she spiraled into a suicidal depression that landed her straight-jacketed in a mental ward. In the comic version, Melinda is childless and a downstairs neighbor to the dinner hosts, who are ambitious Indy filmmaker Susan and under-employed actor Hobie. Back and forth the stories go, contrasting the ...

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Plot Keywords:

actor | dinner party | party | filmmaker | stage play | 

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Taglines:

One love story. Two versions. Seriously funny.

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for adult situations involving sexuality, and some substance material

Details

Official Sites:

Fox [es] Fox Searchlight [us]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

29 October 2004 (Spain)

Also Known As:

Melinda, Melinda

Filming Locations:

Dune Road, The Hamptons, Long Island, New York, USA

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$206,233 (Brazil) (27 May 2005)

Gross:

$606,549 (Brazil) (1 July 2005)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Fox Searchlight Pictures, Gravier Productions, LF Hungary Film Rights Exploitation

Technical Specs

Runtime:

99 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital (Mono)

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

During filming, Radha Mitchell was the only actor who had the entire script. The other actors just had their storyline.

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Goofs

In one of the beginning scenes for the "drama" version of Melinda's tale the battery pack for her microphone creates a very noticeable bulge in the lower back of her shirt. Whenever she stands up from leaning on the kitchen table the bulge turns into the shape of a square.

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Quotes

Melinda: Why do things that start off so promisingly always have a way of ending up in the dump?
Ellis Moonsong:

• Not for everyone.

Melinda:

• Well, for anybody with any imagination. You know, life is manageable enough if you keep your hopes modest. The minute you allow yourself sweet dreams you run the risk of them crashing down.

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Connections

Features The Black Cat (1934)

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Soundtracks

"Darn That Dream"
(1939)
Music by Jimmy Van Heusen
Lyrics by Edgar De Lange (as Eddie DeLange)
Performed by Dick Hyman

User Reviews

I predict you won't be miserable.

Manhattan still drives Woody Allen crazy: Urbanites are prey to ambition and lust, pride and diffidence and even sound like Woody with their halting sentences, paranoid affectations, and occasionally witty lines tossed off like the dregs of their grande lattes. It's a petting zoo of needy moderns who most of all want to find love, which eludes them right up to the last cliffhanging moment.

Alvy Singer and Annie Hall are the best known of Allen's angst-ridden city dwellers, but the new Woodies are every bit as screwed up if not more knowing about the quagmires their marriages and professions have become. The setup is twin parallel stories starting from the same incident reflecting separately the tragic and the comic possibilities.

It all begins with a discussion at a restaurant table among four sophisticates about life being either tragic or comic. Sy (Wallace Shawn), a comedy writer, argues that people need laughter to overcome life's essential pain (difficult to separate Shawn from the memory of his discussion in "My Dinner with Andre"). Max (Larry Pine) says that life is absurd and therefore tragic. So each tells the same story differently about an uninvited guest, one story a romantic comedy, the other a tragic tale of a desperate loner.

Will Farrell as a neurotic husband does the best fax Allen yet in his films. His lines are vintage Woody, tossed-off self-deprecation with a worldly wise guy subtext. One of the best lines comes from Susan (Amanda Peet), a director, who discloses the title of her newest film, "The Castration Sonata," putting "male sexuality in perspective." The Woodman returns in fine form to take on Aristotle and try to fulfill his own hope over a quarter century ago when he said, "If my film makes one more person miserable, I'll feel I've done my job." His tragedy has such ample comedy, I predict you won't be miserable.