Mia Farrow is still performing.
In Part 1 of HBO’s brilliant new documentary, “Allen v. Farrow,” the actress, as fine and excited as the state of Connecticut, recounts how she was emotionally maimed by filmmaker Woody Allen, who dumped her for one adult daughter and then, according to her, molest her other, prepubescent girl child.
It’s a haunting yet strange antiseptic act by an actress who has avenged her life’s work on the man who did her wrong.
The problem is that it seems to me that no word of it, with the possible exceptions of ‘and’ and ‘but’, is true.
And again, Mia’s scorched earth revenge fantasy claimed an innocent victim – her daughter, Dylan, who was allegedly cruel by Woody when she was 7 years old. As she has been doing for decades, Mia Dylan, now 35, exploits and mentally mutilates her and throws her under the Woody bus in a twisted attempt to destroy the life, reputation and career of her former paramour.
Why did the filmmakers encourage her so cynically? Maybe because this abomination makes for a better story than the story that really happened.
As we watch Part 1, which aired Sunday, it’s helpful to compare Mia’s current story of betrayal and endless eating in bustling restaurants with the one she testified about in a New York courtroom in 1993, while Woody told her charged with supervising the three children. they share.
An important point in the episode comes when Mia tells that she found Polaroid photos of her daughter Soon-Yi Previn in her apartment, across from Central Park. In the shots, Soon-yi is naked.
According to Mia’s revisionist history of the event, Soon-Yi, now 50, is not only in the buffalo, but also the subject of hardcore pornography – straight from ‘Hustler’.
The discovery of the kinky skin prompted Mia to rush her to her apartment, and trembled, she says now, to face her daughter.
‘Gou-Yi was home and I remembered what I said. “I found the pictures,” Farrow remembered “suddenly.” “And she said, ‘What pictures? “And I said, ‘The photos Woody took.’ And she started crying and I started crying and I said, ‘No, no, it’s not your fault.’ And she was beyond herself. ”
Sweet.
And apparently untrue.
When Mia, now 76, testified in court about 28 years ago, no one cried. Instead, Mia testified, after confronting Soon-Yi about the mere “naked” photos, her daughter teased her mother.
‘The person sleeping with [Woody] is the one with the relationship, ” Mia said bitterly quickly. And then Mia admitted on the stand that she had punched and punched the young woman.
“I’m not proud,” Mia coolly testified.
In addition to this ugly – but honest – display of anger, I saw an exhibit in the courtroom that questioned my Mia’s common sense. It was a photo of Mia with her giant offspring of biological and adopted children. Mia dipped metal sticks into each person’s chest to show Woody how his actions with Soon-Yi broke their hearts.
There were other television deviations from the story she spun.
Mia says in the documentary that a therapist around 1990 expressed the opinion that Woody acted “inappropriately” around 1990, but not sexually, towards Dylan, when Mia was still with him. She mentions this to explain why she stayed with Woody and had a child with him.
But the probable truth is much simpler – that no child abuse has taken place. Not, as Mia claimed, in her home in Connecticut. Nowhere. (Woody steadfastly denied that this ever happened.)
Mia got primary custody of her children, but she was never completely proven right.
The fact remains that no matter how much Mia and her supporters want the abuse to be true, the state authorities in New York that they can not prove the allegations, and child abuse experts in Connecticut have concluded that Mia Dylan possible ‘ coached ‘to lie about. It. Mia’s adopted son, Moses (43), also long insists his mother Dylan ‘brainwashed’ to believe it.
Woody and Soon-Yi have been married since 1997 and have two adopted daughters. There has never been an accusation of molestation against him again, before or after the accusation with Dylan. Experts in the field say those who attack young people tend to commit these crimes repeatedly.
The sad part is that Dylan Farrow apparently believes she was Woody’s prey. She may never recover from these seemingly false memories.
For that, the filmmakers and Mia Farrow should be ashamed.