There isn’t much of a center here – I certainly hope it’s not meant to be saintly, milquetoast Hannah (Mia Farrow) – but as an ensemble riff on Woody Allen’s usual concerns (infidelity, death), Hannah and Her Sisters is amusing enough, and even touching at times. Though remarried to a financial advisor (Michael Caine), Hannah still keeps in touch with her neurotic ex-husband (Allen), while also spending much of her time counseling her two sisters: drifting Lee (Barbara Hershey) and aspiring actress Holly (Dianne Wiest). For a movie ostensibly about three women, I could have used less voiceover from Allen’s hypochondriac (though he’s quite funny) and Caine’s philandering husband (who’s a bore), yet at least Hershey and Wiest make the most of the scenes they’re in. (I especially liked Wiest’s flaky Holly, the movie’s true loose cannon.) A lunch conversation among the three sisters, in which the normally reserved Allen employs a 360-degree camera to circle the table, captures the unique dynamic among related women as well as Pedro Almodovar ever has. It makes me wish Allen would get men out of the picture more often.
