DECONSTRUCTING HARRY (Fine Line Features) Directed by Woody Allen After such recent frothy forays as "Everyone Says I Love You" and "Mighty Aphrodite," it comes as a shock to see Woody Allen deliver "Deconstructing Harry," a vicious black comedy that calls to mind such earlier Allen as "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and "Stardust Memories." Set against those two, "Harry" has a more singular focus than "Crimes" and is a much more successful examination of a writer's psyche than "Stardust." By turns clever, devestating, bitter and delightful, this challenging piece of work is easily one of Allen's most mature efforts to date. It also offers him an opportunity to play one of his least sympathetic characters. Harry Block is a self-loathing post-middle-age novelist whose fiction recalls the work of Philip Roth. But Harry has also written a savage roman a clef about the faithless, superficial types in his life. "You take everyone's suffering and turn it into gold!" accuses Lucy (Judy Davis), one of Harry's several neurotic ex-lovers. Unable to cope with the demands of loving relationships any longer, Harry now hires prostitutes, such as the streetwise Cookie Williams (the delightful Hazelle Goodman), a weary vixen in pink spandex cut-offs and a tie-dyed tank-top who Harry recruits as his date for a ceremony his former college --he was thrown out before graduation, so it's not technically his alma mater-- is holding to honor him. Harry doesn't feel much like celebrating, however, since he's suffering from crippling writer's block. During the course of the film, often at unexpected moments, Harry's stories come to life and we can see for ourselves how Harry combined personality traits from both a chilly ex-wife (a knockout Kirstie Alley) and his rigidly religious sister (Caroline Aaron) to create the character of Helen, who describes herself as "the shrewish Jewish hybrid," and is marvelously played by an imaginatively cast Demi Moore. Harry's isolationism also comes through in his tale of a movie actor (Robin Williams) who realizes he's somehow become permanently out-of-focus, and is destined to drift through life as a blur. "Deconstructing Harry" features many such inspired bits. It also continues Allen's experimentation with offbeat camerawork and editing. He's previously utilized a weaving hand-held camera in "Husbands and Wives" and attempted Bergmanesque imagery in "Interiors" and "September," and in "Harry," he tries out the kind of jump-cut editing popularized by Godard and Truffaut in such films as "Breathless" and "Shoot The Piano Player." Though the technique sometimes comes off as slightly self-conscious, it effectively points up Harry's fragmented, chaotic world. More off-putting to some of Allen's fans may be the harshness of the language used by many of the characters, although again, it's perfectly in keeping with the rage most of these people are feeling. In previous films, Allen concentrated on the lighter side of divorce: When Meryl Streep left him and wrote a tell-all book about their failed marriage in "Manhattan," Allen played the idea for easy laughs. But Harry's thinly veiled portraits of his friends and family do some real damage and almost inspire one of his subjects to kill him. The humor cuts deeper and the laughter is sometimes tinged with a gasp of disbelief. The brilliance of "Deconstructing Harry" lies in Allen's deft blending of its many tones: sardonic, sarcastic and sentimental.
James Sanford
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