Mia Farrow is still acting.
In Part 1 of the new HBO docuseries, “Allen v. Farrow,” the actress, who appears as first and foremost as the state of Connecticut, once again recounts how she was emotionally mutilated by filmmaker Woody Allen, who abandoned a. for a grown daughter and then, she claims, he proceeded to molest the other prepubescent girl.
It is a captivating, but strangely antiseptic, interpretation of an actress who did her life’s work, claiming from the man who made a mistake.
The problem is, it seems to me that no word in it, with the possible exceptions of “and” and “but,” is true.
And, once again, the fantasy of revenge for Mia’s scorched earth claimed an innocent victim – her daughter, Dylan, who was allegedly brutalized by Woody when she was 7 years old. As she has done for decades, Mia exploits Dylan, now 35, mentally mutilating her, throwing her under the Woody bus in a twisted effort to destroy the former’s life, reputation and career. her lover.
Why did the filmmakers encourage her so cynically? Maybe because this hideousness creates a better story than the one that really happened.
As you watch Part 1, released on Sunday, it’s helpful to compare Mia’s current story of betrayal and endless dining in lively restaurants with the one she confessed to in a New York court in 1993, while Woody gave sued her for custody of the three children. they share.
An essential point of the episode comes while Mia tells that she found Polaroid photos of her daughter Soon-Yi Previn in Woody’s apartment, over Central Park of hers. In the photos, Soon-Yi is naked.
According to the revisionist story of the Mia event, Soon-Yi, now 50, is not just an enthusiast, but the subject of hard-core “pornography” – straight from “Hustler”.
The discovery of the perverse skin caused Mia to hurry back to her apartment, trembling, she says now, to face her daughter.
“Yi was home soon, and I remember saying that. “I found the pictures,” Farrow recalls “suddenly.” “And she said, ‘What pictures?’ “And I said, ‘The pictures Woody took.’ And she started crying and I started crying and I’m like, “No, no, it’s not your fault.” And he was beside her. ”
Sweet.
And seemingly untrue.
When Mia, now 76, testified in court about 28 years ago, no one was crying. Instead, Mia confessed, after confronting Soon-Yi about only the “nude” images, that her daughter mocked her mother.
“The person she sleeps with [Woody] it’s the one with the relationship, ”Mia remembered bitterly, saying Soon-Yi. And then Mia admitted on the stand that he punched her and hit the young woman.
“I’m not proud,” Mia confessed coldly.
In addition to this ugly – but honest – manifestation of anger, I saw an exhibition in the courtroom that cast doubt on Mia’s health. It was a photo of Mia with her giant biological and adopted baby. Mia had put metal stakes in each person’s chest to show Woody how his actions with Soon-Yi had broken their hearts.
There were other televised deviations from the story he had spun.
Mia says in the documentary that a therapist, around 1990, gave the opinion that Woody acted “inappropriately”, but not sexually, towards Dylan around 1990, when Mia was still with him. She mentions this to explain why she stayed with Woody and had a baby with him.
But the truth is probably much simpler – that there was no molestation of the child. No, as Mia claimed, in her Connecticut home. Not anywhere. (Woody strongly denied that it ever happened.)
Mia won primary custody of her children, but never fully proved herself in law.
The fact remains that no matter how much Mia and her supporters want the abuse to be true, New York state officials have said they cannot prove the allegations, and Connecticut child abuse experts have concluded that Mia could have “Train” Dylan to lie about it. Mia’s adopted son, Moses, 43, has long claimed that his mother “brainwashed” Dylan to believe.
Woody and Soon-Yi have been married since 1997 and have two adopted daughters. There has never been another charge of molestation against him, before or after Dylan. Experts in the field say that those who attack young people tend to commit these crimes repeatedly.
The sad part is that Dylan Farrow seems to think he was Woody’s prey. He may never recover from these seemingly false memories.
For that, the directors and Mia Farrow should be ashamed.