Woody Allen’s life has been made very difficult by the revival of allegations of sexual abuse of his former partner’s –Mia Farrow– adopted daughter. The abuse of Dylan Farrow allegedly occurred on 4 August 1992 when the girl was 7 years old, and just a few months after Mia Farrow learned of the relationship Allen had initiated with Soon-Yi, another of Farrow’s adopted daughters and Allen’s current wife. The accusation is extremely serious, which does not necessarily make it true. In fact, in late 1993, after a 14-month investigation, the US justice system concluded that there was no credible evidence of such abuse and did not admit the complaint against Allen.
This being the case, Woody Allen has had difficulty in getting his memoirs published, entitled Apropos of nothing. In them, Allen informs us that the only thing that is intellectual about him are his glasses, which does not stop him from turning to mathematics from time to time in search of metaphors. On one of these occasions the protagonist is none other than the Moebius band, that fascinating example of a non-oriented surface. In a very Woody Allen-like scene, the director tells us how he was trying to impress the one who would later become his first wife, and we must admit that the metaphor is very well brought up, because there are few things as dizzying as moving around in a Moebius band:
“I was managing quite well in my role as a conquistador and lover until his family invited me on a boat trip,” says Allen. I accepted in a sportsmanlike spirit and wanted to present an image of poise, but once we set out to sea, just as I was drinking a beer in one gulp and singing the chorus of the pirate song “Heave ho, blow the man down”, I got all chartreuse-coloured and collapsed on deck, moaning and pleading for euthanasia. As I lay there, writhing like a Moebius band and with a dizziness that was about to enter the Guinness Book of World Records, I swore that I would never set foot on a ship again.
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