gridoon2018
At the very least, "Interiors" is fascinating viewing because it's so damn hard to believe it was written and directed by the same person who had made "Sleeper" just five years earlier, in which he also acted, and spent his first five minutes making weird faces at the camera. With "Interiors", Woody Allen goes out of his way to eliminate every trace of humor or happiness out of the picture, and nearly every trace of warmth as well. It's a moody film dripping with misery. There are scenes and lines that cry out for a comic spin ("I want to express something but I don't know what to express or how to express it" or "An enormous abyss between us" - reminded me of the "empty void" that Allen's character was feeling in "Love And Death"), but Allen is determined to play it all deadly straight. In later films such as "Hanna And Her Sisters", he would temper the heavy drama and the psychoanalysis with sarcastic observations and memorable one-liners, and the results would be both more balanced and more enjoyable. But if you accept "Interiors" for what it is, it really is extremely well made. Though most of the characters are clichés, they are so perfectly acted that they become real persons. And Allen's choice not to include a music score is as brilliant as when Alfred Hitchcock did it for "The Birds". *** out of 4.
ElMaruecan82
I would like to start this review with one simple question : what's with this Bergmanian obsession? Everything has been said and re-said about "Interiors" and the word 'Bergman' regularly filled the accolades, I myself labeled "Interiors" as Allen's homage to Bergman. Yet what I have just figured after a second and third viewing (both in a row) is that "Interiors" stands alone as a classic psychological and introspective drama. I'm not ignoring Allen's new stylistic licenses, yes, there is the trademark static shots, the sight of people contemplating a still nature mirroring the desert of their own lives, yes, the antagonism between Joey and Eve is a reminiscent of "Autumn Sonata"'s emotional core,. But "Interiors" has the merit to go deeper in the comprehension of one notion that takes all its significance when it's associated with Woody Allen: accomplishment.Let's have a quick look on the poster. It shows three sisters' faces, they don't look at each other but they still look in the same direction, with peaceful and determined expressions. The image conveys both the feeling of reconciliation and independence while the film's opening shot shows the protagonists at different places, staring through the window at different horizons. They might live separately but they're all shackled together and never have family ties been so synonyms of curses.The oldest is Renata, a successful poet writer who became disillusioned about the value of her own creations, she's stuck in a sort of mental block, questioning the purpose of leaving stuff for posterity. The youngest is Flyn (Krystin Griffith), a seductive and flirtatious TV actress, whose roles are nonetheless limited to B-movies. In between, Joey (Mary Beth Hurt) is insecure, incapable to find the right path to work upon, she doesn't want a child and a useless job, she wants to create but hasn't still figured what. What do these three different personalities have in common?The answer relies on the central character: Eve (Geraldine Page), the mother who gives its very meaning to the title. She was an interior designer, very perfectionist, she was more attracted by cool and sophisticated arrangements, her choices of color are very austere but to a certain extent, all her Family trusted her to design the "interiors" of their lives. But human hearts are not furniture, and the whole foundations rapidly started to collapse when the three daughters realized how futile it was, as it never provided them the capability to lead lives on their own. All their choices of life interact with a cruel irony. But interestingly, it's the father who seals the Family's fate. Arthur, a wealthy lawyer, (E.G. Marshall) reveals his intentions to leave the house. The declaration he makes is a masterstroke of writing, as we can hardly find his motives unreasonable. He paid all the bills, did his best to ensure his daughters a good education, so why wouldn't he be allowed to think for himself. The scene echoes the opening lines when he relates the way Eve changed from a beautiful and classy lady to a total stranger. The tragedy of all the protagonists in "Interiors" is that the awareness isn't enough; grieves and hurts that inhabit their hearts are so heavy that it continues to work as obstacles to live their lives without being governed by the others. However as bleak and sinister as the film apparently gets, it is not pessimistic, but it invites us to question what kind of lives we desire for ourselves. And the clues are given by the peripheral characters, Mike (Sam Waterston), Joey's husband is a filmmaker who believes that a child could cure Joey from her existential torments. Frederick (Richard Jordan) can't dissociate mediocrity from the peers' recognition, no matter how sincerely Renata compliments him; he'll feel inferior to her as long as he doesn't win a single award. And then there's Pearl (Maureen Stapleton), the "vulgarian", the woman who conquered Arthur's heart, a down-to-earth nature who prefers beaches to Greek temples, eating, dancing, drinking, rather than getting caught in some intellectual masturbation about the meaning of life. She epitomizes the polar opposition from the values the three daughters grew in. With her dress, in the bleak almost monochromatic setting Eve painted to her Family, Pearl is like a bright and flashy red stain. She feels things rather than intellectually distorting them. She doesn't see her previous marriages as failures at all since life is about new sensations to live and live again while, for Eve, the separation was a failure that irremediably damaged her health. Is feeling the solution?I read in a recent article that Allen was never satisfied by his films and never watched them twice, he even disregarded "Hannah and her Sisters" one of his most acclaimed creations. This attitude says a lot about the intelligent humility of a creator questioning his own creation, like so many geniuses do, and he's one. He's Renata who wonders what the purpose of pursuing a creative process is, and whether it works or not is futile because one satisfaction is not a key to plain happiness. He's Flyn, who's constantly associated to the same standards.But more than anyone, he's Joey, a woman who lives in the adoration of superior talents, aware of her lack of potential, trying to imitate but never equaling her idols. The film is Allen first full-alleged drama, and in my opinion, the characters are only multiple facets that highlight Allen's own insecurities, as if he was trying to design himself the emptiness of his own creation, or to reorganize it before taking a new creative start, which he'll ultimately do in the 80's.Maybe Bergman have something to do, after all…. But the conflicts driving the film's rich plot line say more about Allen vs. Allen than Allen vs. Bergman, as if the titular "Interiors" were only the intellectual metaphor of his own personal, artistic, inspiration.
