SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Micransix Crappy film

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

strike-1995 Too ponderous for me unfortunately. It struggled to grab my attention.

Red-Barracuda 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.

didier-20 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.

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.