With its meticulous script by
James Schamus
, strong performances and elegant direction, this tragi-comic look at the lives of a couple of comfortably-off small town Connecticut families in the winter of 1973 is a gem of witty, perceptive observation. Unbeknown to Allen his wife, Kline is carrying on with neighbour Weaver, an affair discovered when he comes across his teenage daughter Ricci playing her own sexually explorative games with Weaver's sons. Cue marital discord, adolescent disenchantment and family crises in a thoroughly enjoyable blend of comedy and melodrama which is spot-on both in its evocative re-creation of the fads, habits and attitudes of the early '70s, and in its sense of an America at a particular point in its socio-political history.