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A Woman Under the Influence is an emotionally packed film that is centered around a capricious yet troubled housewife named Mabel. Mother to three young children and wife to her loving but volatile husband Nick, Mabel's mind is consumed with gaining acceptance and being reassured by those who surround her. Her psychological ability to keep up with normal everyday situations eventually reaches full capacity and she struggles to maintain emotional and mental competency.

Director Cassavetes intentionally chooses not to grant clemency to the viewer. Imagine walking in late to an opera that's in it's third act – that almost seems like what Cassavetes does to the audience – introducing his depiction of a distressed family while they're in mid flight. Gena Rowlands' portrayal of the likable but frail Mabel is nothing short of incredible, and Peter Falk gives an equally remarkable performance as Mabel's husband Nick. This film is not for the weak-hearted nor for those seeking traditional entertainment. It's distinctive approach to such an emotional journey will undoubtedly impede many viewer's enjoyment - but for those who appreciate unique cinema and realism, it doesn't get much better than this.

This is a film about need, about affection, about a desperate need of affection that consumes the heart of Mabel Longhetti, the "woman under the influence" ... Some might say she's a troubled woman suffering from a personality disorder, others would say she's just psychotic ... they couldn't be wronger : she couldn't have a personality disorder, since she doesn't have any personality at all. Her character is totally diluted into that desperate need to please, to make people comfortable. The painful paradox is that this desire creates even more awkward and uncomfortable situations. But Mabel isn't aware of that, she can't understand that because she has buried any desire to be someone under the profound will to make people she loves, happy. She's sweet and tender, but this sweetness is wrong because it's inspired by a double fear of rejection and confrontation.

Mabel crystallizes all these feelings and translates them in a behavior made of unpredictable excitability, a forced cheerfulness, a childish behavior she almost uses as a shield not to be hurt. She's afraid, and so are we, when we watch this poor woman trying to gain anyone's sympathy, just to please Nick, her husband. Mabel is played by the beautiful Gena Rowlands in what I consider the greatest cinematic female performance ever. Peter Falk is underrated as Nick, the husband who tries to deal with Mabel's condition, with such severity sometimes, that even himself can't control his own reactions.

This is the set-up of the film, it's a drama, that couldn't have been directed by anyone but the great John Cassavettes. It's not a thriller, not an action film, yet it provided some of the most heart-pounding moments I've ever experienced. Never had a lunch and a dinner scene been so uneasy to watch : as it's been mentioned before, Mabel doesn't want to hurt people's feeling yet she unconsciously does. Mabel is like a little flame that might, at any time, light a bag of powder. Mabel creates real tickling-bomb situations, where the explosion is a burst of emotions, so human watching the film feels indecent. That's Cassavetes genius, this is no voyeuristic movie because we don't enjoy watching such devastation in a family that has everything to be happy. It's no voyeurism, it's realism, its cinema-verity as its purest form. Every laugh makes us smile, every shout makes us vibrate. Every silence makes us feel uncomfortable. We watch, we wait, and we never have a feeling that nothing is happening. Every look on Gena's eyes, every way she deforms her face, every noise or weird hand gesture she makes is the expression of a poor little a soul trying to communicate a part of what remains in the bottom, what remains of Mabel's personality.

Confronted to Mabel's emotional clumsiness, Nick looks totally helpless, yet he's not exempt from reproaches. He's not crazy but his own temper probably aggravated Mabel's condition. He warns his colleague, "Mabel is not crazy", but he insists so much, you wonder why would someone say that about a 'normal' woman. The answer is that he thinks she's crazy, but loves her so much he doesn't want people to think she is. Nick loves so much his wife he puts himself in situations making him act like a bag of contradictions. Nick himself looks sometimes desperate as he doesn't know what he's doing, lost between his responsibilities as a father, a son, a husband who loves his wife, and a man devoured by a frustrated violence. Seeing him trying to act like a father makes you put Mabel's insanity into perspective. If Mabel acts under Nick's influence, Nick's life and behavior are equally influenced by Mabel's problem, the effects on the couple, on the family and the relationships with the friends are disturbingly heart-breaking.

Disturbing, Cassavetes' masterpiece is because it reflects our own fears with a gripping realism, it's a journey into the deepest bottom of the human soul, made of anger, fear, sadness, happiness, reason, craziness, men, women, children, human relationships. It's hard to watch, it's uncomfortable, we can't help but feel sorry for the poor Mabel, for these poor kids, and even for Nick. They're not pathetic because they're not quite passive. In fact, the movie is full of noise, of loud shouts, of movements, this is no swimming in an ocean of tears, this is not your typical tear-jerker drama, it's almost like an emotional thriller. In fact, this doesn't need any categorization, this film makes other films look like films. "A Woman under the Influence"'s direction turns it into a chaotic journey into human relationships, and a very exhausting experience in reality.

Gena Rowlands gave the best performance I've ever seen, and the fact she won or not an Oscar doesn't even matter ... these considerations normalize the movie when it's more than something you would nominate for an award. Cassavettes's masterpiece is a tunnel ride into the depths of the human soul with its dark sides, and a probable light of hope at the end.

In a world where you must be what you are told, bring up the children, do the washing, be controlled, cook for all your husband's mates, when he's just cancelled last night's date, is it any wonder, that you'd cave in, crash and fold!!!

Gena Rowlands is absolutely spectacular as the put upon mother who has her mental health, that's already walking a fine line between breakdown, depression and dissatisfaction, absolutely trashed and destroyed by her unsympathetic, insensitive and cruel partner, exquisitely performed by Peter Falk. A far from uncommon story of yesteryear that plays forward today and inevitably tomorrow. Leaves you wondering how on earth did that lady not win an Oscar!

"Dad ... will you stand up for me?"

Oh my goodness, Gena Rowland in this. She's brilliant. Peter Falk too. I love how Cassavetes just immersed us into their lives and let us gradually understand their issues through their behavior, instead of explaining everything in that tidy way of conventional Hollywood. We see Rowland's character acting awkwardly, oblivious to social cues, or dissociating from reality entirely, but we also see a caring person being crushed by pressure, and cowed by her husband. We see Falk's character being patient and understanding of his wife's idiosyncrasies, and we also see him prone to violent outbursts, and piss-poor parenting. He regularly defaults to trying to yell and force things, like when he bellows "We're having a good time!" after dragging his kids and a co-worker out to a beach. The kids' instinctive reaction to what's going around them is heartbreaking, like when the adorable little girl runs to the other man on the beach, or they all try to protect their mom after she's been released from the mental hospital.

What's remarkable is that none of these characters has been transformed over the course of the story, though the viewer might be in some small way, after having witnessed such powerful performances of vulnerable, flawed characters. What an interesting title too. What is Rowlands' character under the influence of? Not alcohol, as the opening scene might suggest. A condition that threatens her sanity? Her domineering husband? The pressures of society to be a good wife and mother? How telling is that early on she says to her husband "Tell me what you want me to - how you want me to be," and that late in the film he tries to command her by saying "Be yourself!" when it seems that when she is being herself, she isn't accepted as "normal" by her husband or his co-workers. Meanwhile, the husband's erratic, dangerous behavior is par for the course, unquestioned, and certainly not about to be shipped off for ECT. There is thus a certain feminism at the bottom of this film which is fascinating, in light of such an unlikely protagonist.

Textbook gender related observation: When Jack Nicholson's character acts eccentric in One Flew Over the Cuuko's Nest, nobody will believe he's crazy. When Gena Rowland's character is eccentric in this film, everyone assumes she is.

But that is only one of many realisations one makes observing A Woman Under the Influence. It is an intricate film, as was John Cassavetes a filmmaker who always filled his films with as many things as possible. Whatever his films were about, it always had to do with the truth of human nature and human life in modern society. In one example of great main leads in his films, Cassavetes' real-wife Rowlands is playing Mabel, the woman of the title, the house-wife of a Peter Falk's construction foreman Nick. Everybody knows that Mabel is more or less "crazy". Why does everybody "know" this? She is eccentric, has got funny mannerisms, at time she talks and acts randomly about things that make no sense. She is a human being with a desire to achieve, but nobody has ever given her attention or respect as an individual. I think Mabel's crisis is first and foremost that of an identity crisis. She is empty inside, Nick says. That's because nobody has bothered to look inside. Upon the demanding adult roles society demands on her, in particular the task of motherhood, the result is breakdown. She is a house-wife who spends her days wandering around the house trance-like, she cooks and cleans and sews and all the time she acts as if that somehow would be an absurdity. She tries to be nice to the guests but it all results in awkward silence and embarrassment. What should she be doing, then? Who is she?

I think any viewer judging that she is in fact "insane" is an enemy to the film's intent and soul. Rowlands portrait of this woman is a hauntingly perfect portrayal of mental illness, certainly, but her state is that of extreme confusion rather than being someone who's simply "lost it". This is a woman aimlessly struggling to get out of a sea of under-nourished self-esteem and identity loss. We don't know how or when it started, but the more into the film we get the more we understand. Her mind is like a tapestry that Cassavetes gradually unfolds. In the first scene she is running around trying to place her children in the car for a trip with their grandmother's. Cassavetes knows that the clever viewer will relate the title's "influence" to that of gender related, domestic pressure. But that's only the beginning, I think, of what this woman is suffering from. It's not until the end we realise that maybe her family wasn't all that supportive of her, her father seems genuinely uninterested in whatever any diagnosis could be and her mother is just Mabel's fourth child. And if Mabel is crazy, Falk's character of Nick is certainly just as crazy. We don't realise that until after a while either. But he acts just as random upon situations he's not familiar with, and he also has bursts of eccentric (mis)behaviour. You'll have to look more closely to discover this perhaps, he is after all a friendly looking male patriarch and your brain is less inclined to view him as crazy.

Mabel, who is still dependent on him and her domestic safety (that's the crux, I think, of her entire problem), says "I'll be anything you want" and Nick tells her to be herself. But she hasn't got a personality of her own, her emotions conflict her roles and duties but neither become clear to her. What's worse, nobody is interested in her, or has the slightest notion she might have anything worthwhile. "Be yourself", Nick says, but in fact he's not interested in who she is, and he is (without giving too much thought to it) putting demands on her, expecting her to fulfill her duties which is one of the very reasons she's all messed up. He's just not that clever. It's not just that he is a blue collar guy, he seems totally unable to communicate personally with his wife and, certainly, with his children. Basically, he hasn't got much of a personality either, but being a man that reasoning is considered as abstract and not a psychological case. In any case, Nick and Mabel surely love each other, but none of them have the capacity to cope with one another, or even comprehend their surroundings. Towards the end of the film, all Nick can tell Mabel is "Stop what you're doing". There's a childish desperation in him that is channeled through his gender but just as "crazy" as Mabel's lack of self-confidence and self-realising even.

I said that you observe this film, and I mean it. It is more than realistic, it is profoundly real. Everyone have met couples like Mabel and Nick, couples who's lack of harmony and functionality is so great, it can't stay behind the social curtain. I'm saying that as point of reference. We've all left the dinner table at some point. "Maybe it's time we'd go home". As much as any documentary, Cassavetes films moved in real time, here and now, portraying life as it is. He knew that realism doesn't mean tragedy or brutality. Life is rarely dramatic and offers no cathartic finales. Life just is what we are living, it's not easy to comprehend and it doesn't offer security. For the future, we feel great hope but we also feel great fear. This film has got horrible moments, but it's horrible moments of truth. It's also got humorous moments of truth. These judgments are in a sense arbitrary. It's real life. It's the rarely seen beauty of truth that Cassavetes conjured up in his films. Rowlands is there to capture the essence of it, the notion that we are all human beings who need and deserve to be loved, no matter if we have table manners or not.