Reviews for Mia & Woody: Love and Betrayal

The average rating for Mia & Woody: Love and Betrayal based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-08-20 00:00:00 Mike Ibison What a sleazy book! This is a memoir of the years of the break-up between Mia Farrow and Woody Allen as a result of Woody's affair with Mia's Korean adoptive daughter from an earlier relationship, Soon-Yi Previn, plus the legal and media-feeding-frenzy aftermath, as told by Mia's nanny (who was nanny during the drama but starting after Soon-Yi was already grown up). It is co-written by a senior writer at People magazine, and it reads like that too: peppy, cliché-ridden drivel that in its depth and nuance sounds more like People magazine photo captions than People magazine articles (for those who care to make that distinction). In terms of what one learns about the events, the question here is not whether Woody Allen is a pig; he is clearly a pig. If you have to spend fifteen minutes explaining how something isn't incest, then it's probably close enough to incest that you're a pig for doing it. The questions seem to be not only how to read Mia and Soon-Yi's roles in this, but also whether the allegations of Woody's sexual abuse of his stepdaughter Dylan (the charges were dismissed for lack of evidence) were true. We will never know, but it is telling that Groteke, though she is a dear friend and clear advocate of Mia, is very careful herself not to rule out the possibility that the supposed incidents of molestation were concocted by Mia and the supposed confession video of the daughter coached, orchestrated, and edited in a deceitful way by Mia herself. Those doubts, from one of Mia's closest supporters and one of Woody's fiercest detractors, and someone who knew the family intimately, are damning. Though it does seem that he coddled her and cooed over her in a way that was unsettlingly sexual. It's also worth noting in this regard that Mia herself comes across as a severely emotionally impaired person. Though Groteke never comes out and says this, there is clearly something pathological about Mia's addiction to adopting children. During these events, she had 11 children and now has 4 more, and this is not even counting the crack babies and blind Vietnamese orphans that she would adopt for a few weeks and then discard and deposit back with the adoption agencies because they were too disabled. Several of these instances occur during the time described in the book; who knows how many times she did this. She even has a Filofax which she turns to so she can select a name for whichever orphan is being dropped off next. Some people are addicted to crack; Mia is addicted to crack babies. Setting aside the lunacy or low self-esteem involved in thinking that either Frank Sinatra or Woody Allen is marriage material, it is fair to point out that the only two categories of people outside the Third World who have FIFTEEN FUCKING CHILDREN are (1) people living on cult compounds and (2) Mia Farrow. Given, then, that there are deeper pathologies than Groteke is willing to explore or acknowledge, there may well be other reasons why Soon-Yi was so willing to cut Mia off without a thought. The narrative of the poor-delicate-flower of a wife who falls for a brutish pervert who steals her daughter away doesn't really fly upon close examination. It's more complicated than that. Which brings us to another unsettling aspect of the way this drama has typically been represented, which is that almost no one is willing to grant Soon-Yi any agency or to see her as any kind of decision-maker with interests or an agenda. I can't help coming back to feeling that this is because she is a soft-spoken and pretty Asian female. She was after all an adult when this started, attending a high-ranking college, coming from a highly talented intellectual family. Are we really to believe that she is either a brain-washed zombie (Groteke, bitchily, comes close to calling her mentally retarded) or a sex-slave being passed around like a delicate Asian doll? Maybe one day Soon-Yi will write her own book. If so, I'll read it, along with 20 million other people.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-08-18 00:00:00 Milez Zaneria Unknowingly poised on the edge of melodrama, author Kristi Groteke innocently accepts a job as a nanny for a celebrity couple---Mia Farrow and Woody Allen. Little does she know that within the year, her life will be turned upside down, just as the lives of the famous couple and their children are---set against the backdrop of a seemingly routine life of a family, a furor erupts when Mia discovers that Woody is having an affair with her daughter Soon-Yi. And then, in the midst of this angst comes the allegations of molest by Woody of the couple’s adopted daughter Dylan. Before the storm, the author marvels at the simple routines of this family, from the Connecticut house to the Central Park West home that Mia shares with several children---some biological and some adopted. Woody, of course, lives in his own duplex apartment across the Park, but visits frequently. In this fashion, the two have developed a semblance of normal family life for a dozen years, collaborating in movies and co-parenting the children. Court battles ensue, and the author describes the stressful climate of the home while this is happening---it takes more than a year for everything to be resolved. But while it is playing out, the day-to-day lives of the family members change---subtly at first---but then dramatically, as the life they all once knew crumbles around them. The author provides a true insider’s version of events, albeit from her point of view. I especially enjoyed the glimpses of celebrity family life, for despite the traumatic events, a kind of normalcy was sought by the parties involved. And one fact shone through---Mia’s love for her children.