As jointly directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, the real-life soap opera, relationship meltdown, and courtroom showdown of former lovers/ film collaborators Woody Allen and Mia Farrow unfolds (originally premiered on HBO in four episodes/acts), to move, outrage, and discomfort the viewer. With child sexual-abuse allegations at the center, this is Capturing the Friedmans with Hollywood A-listers.
As with ugly family disputes, viewers ultimately must choose sides and Allen Vs. Farrow is assuredly Team Mia (Allen and his core refused to participate). Established actress Mia Farrow, who with former husband Andre Previn adopted a large household of children from distressed and war-refugee circumstances, describes an idyllic early relationship with the iconic actor/screenwriter/comic/playwright/author/director Woody Allen (an introduction made by Michael Caine, poor chap) in the 1980s.
Though Allen insisted on maintaining separate residences in his cherished Manhattan—and said he had no interest in fathering children—they nonetheless enjoyed a cozy partnership, doing 13 acclaimed films together and securing a “power couple” image. As shown in numerous home movies, Allen seemed to take Mia’s adopted kids in affectionate stride and ultimately did get her pregnant with a biological son, Satchel (later renamed Ronan). But, according to Mia and other witnesses, Allen grew obsessed with Farrow’s little adopted daughter Dylan.
Already on thin relationship ice (it seems by this time Farrow and Allen were taping each other’s phone calls) during a visit to Farrow’s New England home in August 1992, Dylan and Allen disappeared for 20 minutes. During this span, subsequent accusations claimed, Allen molested the little girl in an attic.
Allen’s “defense” (cringeworthy by normal human standards, but apparently acceptable in showbiz) was that he had fallen in love with another young Farrow adoptee, a slightly more of-legal-age one—Korean-born college student Soon-yi Previn (whom Allen would later marry, much against his declared commitment-phobe persona) and that the child-molestation charges were ex-girlfriend Mia’s vengeance.
Now-adult Dylan Farrow is interviewed at length. A young wife and mother herself, she claims no question of having been violated by Allen. Other witnesses, film critics, and former hangers-on attest to Allen’s long fascination with older-male/younger-female dalliances, even in unproduced work (though it is never acknowledged that Mia Farrow later co-starred in Widow’s Peak, a feature in which Irish village women contrive a series of hoax events to punish an offender).
Farrow claims, chillingly, that Allen’s prestige as an NYC icon and income generator led to high-level cover-ups of his behavior and her career blacklisting, that celebrity enablers (Diane Keaton especially) continue to venerate him for his promotion of `strong female roles,` and that Woody was out for revenge. Court cases in which Allen tried to prove Farrow’s instability had mixed results: two sets of child-abuse experts reached contradictory conclusions about whether the accusations held up, and Allen failed to gain custody of Dylan and Satchel.
To the filmmaker’s credit, some attempt is given to lending Allen’s voice to the scandal, in audiobook excerpts from his 2020 autobiography Apropos of Nothing and noting another Farrow adopted son, Moses, affirms Allen’s version (but when Alec Baldwin appears on camera supporting Woody, viewer reaction will probably be equal to anything in a Woody Allen dark farce). In an almost Biblical twist, Ronan Farrow grows up to be a journalist whose muckraking work on Harvey Weinstein and others was a tentpole to the Me Too movement of women complaining of longstanding sexual harassment in the workplace. Ronan is, of course, an ally of Dylan and Mia.
One is left with a damning portrait, with worthy discussions on the side about female exploitation and the hard question of how to embrace a talented artist’s oeuvre when the artist himself (or herself) is a problematic individual (Roman Polanski, Richard Wagner, Charles Dickens called out). And even so, in watching this clash of elites (and, it must be remembered, professional actors, image-makers, and fabricators) a little bit of unease lingers: what if Woody Allen really was unfairly maligned? As in the John Patrick Shanley play/film about ecclesiastical child abuse, Doubt, that tiny uncertainty is haunting. Strongly recommended for television collections, as an alternative to Woody Allen library programming, and for university classes on child sexual abuse.