‘Undoing’, ‘Rocks’: Woody Allen redux?

Sometimes artists in exile are more influential than ever. Woody Allen may be banished from our midst, but his ghost lingers. Two recent efforts owe a lot to his approach and to the #MeToo movement that drove him out of the limelight.

Both the HBO series “The Undoing” and Sofia Coppola’s recent film “On the Rocks” (streaming on Apple TV+) are set in Allen’s version of Manhattan, a realm of magical realism fueled by money, status and a smattering of artistic sophistication. In both, characters signify their smarts by identifying the paintings on the walls of some gazillionaire’s apartment. From “Annie Hall” to “Manhattan” and “Hannah and Her Sisters,” Allen took a similar approach. In this century, he took this schtick to London, Paris, Rome and Barcelona, but the story is basically the same.

Curiously, both “Rocks” and “Undoing” center around a woman, played by Rashida Jones and Nicole Kidman, respectively, coming to grips with mixed feelings about a powerful man in her life. Make that men, as both are worried about their husbands and both have serious “daddy issues.”

In “Undoing,” Kidman’s Grace contends with the certainty that her husband (Hugh Grant) had an affair and the possibility that he murdered his lover. In “Rocks,” Laura (Jones) worries that her husband (Marlon Wayons) is straying. This inspires her bon-vivant art-dealing father (Bill Murray) to reenter her life and investigate like an amateur James Bond. For her part, Grace depends on her tycoon dad (Donald Sutherland), capable of both largesse and vengeance.

Beyond their resemblance to Allen’s films, these recent efforts have themes of their own. This is the second HBO series (after “Big Little Lies”) in which Kidman has been married to a man who may or may not be a psychopath. Seems like just yesterday she was married to Tom Cruise!

Both Coppola and Jones are daughters to powerful and charismatic fathers (Quincy Jones and Francis Ford Coppola), and “Rocks” puts the father-daughter issue at its center.

Wayans’ character is less than a cipher in this movie. Curiously, he resembles Tony Roberts’ character in Woody Allen’s “Play It Again, Sam,” a man forever vanishing on some faraway business trip.

Both Grant’s character and Murray’s are men who can charm their way out of any situation. As such, they are both appealing and potentially monstrous. “On the Rocks” gives Laura room to figure out her mixed feelings for dear old dad. “Undoing” is too gimmicky and constrained by its courtroom formula for such nuance. Putting Grant’s character on trial boils things down to a verdict, a binary choice. Murray’s dad is much easier to love and forgive — if you can forgive someone who left your family and your mother for something “new.” Murray’s character echoes his earlier role in “Lost in Translation” (also directed by Coppola), a film that flirted with May-December romance. Oh, it seems we’re talking about Woody Allen again!

In “On the Rocks,” Bill Murray plays a cad and a blatant, thoroughly 20th-century cad, who never pretended to be anything else.

A certain director comes to mind.

› Election results dominate the dial. Care to watch something else? To my mind, the best movie about election night drama, tension, anticipation and disappointment is the 1976 Australian comedy “Don’s Party,” directed by Bruce Beresford (“Breaker Morant”). Streaming on Amazon Prime, it’s based on a 1971 stage drama by David Williamson.