Wonderful character development!

just watch it!

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Immediately after he made his big breakthrough with the Oscar winning Annie Hall (1977), Woody Allen decided to make a film that was anything but a follow-up in the same vein. Instead he made Interiors, which was not only the first of his films that he didn't star in but it was also his first attempt at a drama. It wasn't just a drama though, it was a bleak, serious film with almost no humour to be found anywhere. Needless to say, it was a very divisive film on release but one which has achieved respect with the benefit of hindsight. It is essentially about a dysfunctional family. There are three grown daughters who have a wealthy father and emotionally disturbed mother. The father leaves his mentally unstable wife and it is the fall-out of this decision in which the film takes place. The separation is a catalyst for all manner of insecurities and jealousies rising to the surface.This is a pretty intimate family drama. There are only eight characters in the entire film, aside from the inner family there are two partners of the older daughters and an older woman called Pearl who the father wishes to marry. This is a family of intellectuals, who seem to be very self-absorbed and egotistical. It's only when the unpretentious Pearl comes into their orbit that we in the audience have a true identification figure. Even her clothing marks her out as different, wearing a red dress she contrasts with all the other characters in their drab coloured clothing. She is the only person with real life to her in this gathering and they don't like her for it, dismissing her as a 'vulgarian'. She is a good character and this movie as a whole showcases Allen's ability to write well-rounded female roles. The women drive the piece and all seem realistic, which is part due to the great acting from the entire cast. Admittedly there is some over-written dialogue in here, with some awkward lines that don't ring true but on the whole the writing is mostly good. Stylistically, it's very austere with no musical score to alleviate matters, while the pale colour scheme also emphasises the tone also. Much of the drama takes place in a house by a beach front so we have the roaring ocean waves crashing repeatedly on the shore under a heavy grey sky to add further ominous atmosphere to the dark psychological interactions. On the whole, this is a film that maybe takes a couple of viewings to appreciate and you definitely have to be in the right mood for it. But it's a bold and depressing film from Allen but one with many good things about it.

I'm a big fan of Woody Allen, and I just watched this movie for the first time. I can totally understand why many people hate it, or do not like it. It is depressing, and there's no real "finish" or arc for the characters.That being said, the one thing that stood out for me that nobody has mentioned, is that even Woody Allen didn't like the characters. I think that was his point. As some have pointed out, the characters are pretentious, self absorbed upper middle class yuppies with no real problems. I think what Woody Allen was doing, as was the case in Manhattan, was giving us a glimpse into that sort of liberal elitist upper crest society, where these characters in particular are pseudo-intellectuals and wannabe artists, who create their own problems that really don't mean anything.This would explain the introduction of Pearl, the fathers new fiancé. Pearl is great. Amidst all the self absorbed, elitist syrup the characters espouse relentlessly, Pearl emerges as almost a down to earth, working class gal.The family goes out to a play with their father and Pearl, and later while eating dinner, they are discussing this play. The daughters and their yuppy husbands are over analyzing the play to literally a puke inducing pretentiousness...and Pearl just chimes in "One character was a squealer, the other wasn't. I liked the character who wasn't a squealer. Thats all there is to it!" They try to argue with her with more pretentious drivel, and Pearl simply states again "The message I got was "dont Squeal." Later, Pearl is dancing to dixieland music with everybody, and knocks over a vase on accident, and the one daughter calls her an animal. Towards the end of the movie, Pearl ends up saving the daughters life with CPR after she nearly drowns. She seems almost ungrateful. Its as if this fmaily is so elitist, they look down on Pearl as some sort of "inferior".Pearl is a down to earth, normal, lovable older woman with some spunk, which is why the father fell in love with her. Throughout the movie, we see how dominating and obnoxious their mother is. She is pretty much the reason the family is dysfunctional, with her delusional, relentless whining, and quiet yet aggressive behavior. On top of that, she was a successful interior designer, and her 3 daughters are all "artsy" intellectuals...and you can see why a character like the father is just overwhelmed with them all, and falls in love with a very grounded, relatively simple woman, Pearl.I think it was Woodys purpose to make you feel burdened or overwhelmed by the characters, the mother...hell, almost feel completely alienated, only to suddenly find yourself relating to Pearl when she arrives.Another scene that kind of highlights the pretentiousness of the characters, one of the girls husbands is speaking into a tape recorder about marxism and communism, hinting that he is a supporter of such ideology. Which, again, is woody making a small point. Because here you have this wealthy, yuppy guy, embracing the concept of marxism.For anyone who grew up or lived around New York in the 60's and 70's, that was always one of those ironies...wealthy yuppy types preaching about marxism and communism. Its sort of a hypocrisy Woody Allen often points out in many of his movies.To summarize, this was a serious movie that essentially criticizes the upper class liberal crowd, as Woody has done in many of his movies. In Manhattan, Woody narrates in the film at the end about how its full of people with no real problems, so they create them. That is essentially the characters in this film. They want for nothing...so they began creating these "existential dilemmas".

Standing back from the time of the 70s as we all do now, Allen's 'Interiors' does appear to fill a void by an unexpected style of turning inwards upon American representation, a particularly European intellectual sense of reality and successfully inhabiting along side the usual forms of representation, a deep, alternative yet compatible contribution to the received images of America.The foreignness of the faux-style which was so criticised in it's day, it is fair to say, does resonate with the experience of loss and evocation which forms part of the language of the settled European immigrants who have made the landscape of New York, if not indeed the whole of America their own for generations.The piece, therefore, and it's European influence as well as it's 'weakness' of fauxness proves to be an utterly authentic representation of the Euro-descendant American condition. It is precisely through this authentic synthesis, the piece becomes elevated to something Great.Aside from the debate about the film's standing as a whole, It can be argued that the wedding dancing scene in the last third of the film is one of the greatest character portrayals of cinematic awkwardness ever produced. It is a mini but major triumph of agony, tragedy, and denouement and stands out as one of Allen's best from his Canon.I think this film will continue to receive the revisionism it needs in proportion to the degree to which it has been overlooked and in the end could well be judged as one of the greatest of Allen's films rather than the one that just got through.

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.