Interiors
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Woody Allen
1978/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing?/Amazon Prime rental
Pearl: You only live once, and once is enough if you play your cards right.
After the massive success of “Annie Hall” (1977), Woody Allen was given free reign by his producers. He used it to make this super grim homage to Ingmar Bergman.
Eve (Geraldine Page) is an interior decorator aged about 60. Her aesthetic embraces the subtle, the pale, and the exquisite. She is negative and critical. She has reared three daughters, all adults and two married. The daughters could not be more different. Joey (Mary Beth Hurt) is in advertising and is married to Mike (Sam Waterson). She is the most lively and positive of the sisters. Renata (Diane Keaton) is a poet who is married to Fredrick (Richard Jordan). She sees an analyst and is introspective, self-critical, and feels her own poetry is not good enough. Flyn (Kristin Griffith) is an actress and is the closest of the three to their mother.
As the movie begins, Arthur (E.G. Marshall) the girls’ father, asks Eve for a separation. Eve is distraught and is sent to a mental hospital for a short time. She returns home and simply refuses to believe the separation is anything but temporary.
When Arthur returns from a long vacation in Greece, he has Pearl (Maureen Stapleton) by his side. Pearl is the polar opposite of Eve. She is warm, easy-going, and fun-loving. Arthur announces their engagement. This does not go over well with any of his female relatives as can be imagined. It forces even more introspection in this crowd
I like Woody Allen and I love Ingmar Bergman. I think “Interiors” fails as homage and fails as a film. Allen might have done a fabulous job parodying Bergman but this story is deadly serious. He takes the homage to the limit though almost to the point where it might be funny if half the characters weren’t suicidal. He is also superficial where Bergman would be complex. I was not a fan.
