Interiors Details

Interiors (1978)

Woody Allen's films can be neatly divided into two types: the funny ones, and the not-funny ones. This film is not funny (there is a joke, about halfway through, involving an art gallery in the lobby of a casino, but that's it). Three sisters, each with their own problems, are devastated when their elderly father decides to separate from their mother. Their lives begin to unravel in slow, painful fashion. No, there are no inflatable vegetables in this Woody Allen film.

However, it is a striking, powerful film that looks beautiful and is crafted with care and attention. The cinematography, all washed out colours, half-light and shadows, perfectly matches the despair and confusion of the characters; they are emotionally drained, as the sets are, too.

However, there's a knowingness about this film - about cinema, about Bergman, about arthouse films - that never lets you just sit back and enjoy it. It's often self-conscious where it should be natural.

Also, Allen's characters are the usual suspects - white, affluent, middle class intellectuals suffering existential angst as a result of an inability to express themselves. We identify with Allen in the comedic roles - as loser, chancer, clown - but, here, there's no-one to sympathise with. Even the much-hated girlfriend of the father (hated, just because she's not a true replacement for the mother) becomes the butt of the film's one and only joke.

That said, the stand-out scene, where the mother prepares her living room with masking tape so that she can gas herself, shows a director blessed with true brilliance.

This film is worth seeing once. But watch Deconstructing Harry (1997) straight after, just to realise that Allen can do funny and art-house at the same time.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Woody plays Ingmar

Yes, this is a very serious Woody Allen at the feet of his master Ingmar Bergman. You can spend some time spotting reverential shots such as the hand at the window from 'Persona'. So we have a very serious film of family dysfunction and mis-communication leading to mental illness and suicide. Depending on your taste it can be watched although most of us will find it rather dry fare out of the context of Swedish society. I have never met Americans who behave like the characters in this movie do; they just don't ring true. And yet... the film has been assembled with such care that it seems almost timeless as if caught out of its context of 1980 United States. It may be that this film will last in the way that most Hollywood fare will not. Try it and see what you think.