Review of Interiors (1978) by Mj F — 02 Aug 2014

Seen as one of the more dramatically focused Woody Allen films, Interiors sounded like an interesting experience.

Despite the fact that Interiors received many Academy Award nominations at the time of its release, I do not feel that it has aged very well. It is good to see Woody Allen branching out into fully fledged drama, and considering that he recently proved his worth of handling such material on the dramedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona, it was an interesting sense of nostalgia to look back at him exploring dramatic material from decades ago, straight off the bat from his Academy Award winning film Annie Hall. But I do not feel that Interiors has aged too well, and in my opinion, I found that the film fell too flat.

Interiors has a slightly different style to the more conventional Woody Allen films, but as a whole it follows the same general style of cinematography and editing that he usually pursues. The visual style of the film is pretty decent and the production design of the film looks nice, but it does not really add to the drama. The story dynamics in Interiors unfold in front of the eyes of the viewers at a fairly natural pace, and at the same time Woody Allen reinforces the naturalistic feel of the film by lacking a musical score to dramatize things. The problem here is that it doesn't make the film feel like a movie experience. It feels like the drama of the film unfolds naturally, and viewers who can appreciate that style would be more favourable of the film. But me personally, I like a film which mixes a touch of realism with the experience of a genuine drama film. Interiors leans solely towards one focus which is the former, as if the film is a stage play. But the problem I found was that the drama for the film was way too subtle. Interiors is a film where really little happens whatsoever and so the way that the material is handled dictates the quality of the film more than the type of material itself. In Interiors, since the material is not dramatized, the effect of it is limited. For me, I just did not feel it. The general focus of the film was on the everyday life of several characters as they dealt with their own personal dramas and the complicated relationships that they all shared, but the problem was that it was too subtle. There were a few too many characters in the film which made it challenging to keep up with to a certain extent, and so I lost track of what relevance half the characters posed to the tale. Interiors doesn't really have any story, it has characters. But the characters did not seem that interesting to me, nor did they really involve me in the story deeply enough for me to really sympathise for them. Interiors felt rather emotionally distant to me and rather dry to a certain extent. In terms of entertainment value, Interiors is not one I can recommend simply because it feels like the experience of waiting in a room for a friend to arrive while people around you bicker about other things. I've experienced that before, only the real life drama of that left more of an impression on me while the fact that everything in Interiors was purely fictional but portrayed in a dry and dreary way which intended to make it seem realistic really did not manage to reach the centre of my emotions or give me any true entertainment value.

Interiors has a crowd, but I can safely say that it is not me., The style of the film did not entertain me in other films such as the 2013 Polish drama film Idea and in Interiors it repeated this lack of effect. I can't say for sure that the film suffers due to a battle of age, but there is certainly evidence to suggest that because the style of the film seems rather dated. The script itself is not too much of a problem because the language of the film is great and it supplies some decent moments to the talented cast who are able to act with great skill from then on, but the problem is that the entertainment value ends up as null. Interiors simply proved to be a long and slow drama in my eyes without characters that interested me, plot dynamics that had me involved or subject matter that ended up being that deep. I can appreciate the ambitions of Woody Allen for experimenting with filmmaking and breaking free of his usual style, but this project does not have the kind of spirit that his better works have and is quite forgettable to me. I didn't hate it, I just don't consider it my kind of film and would not recommend it for entertainment value. The quality of the acting in the film is great with the leading performance of Geraldine Page being a powerful and complex one which managed to put a lot of subtext into the surrounding depth of the character. She is by far the best character of the film, and as the lead she manages to have an interesting role in the story even if the story itself does not have sufficient interest to really carry itself.

Diane Keaton also does an excellent job. Woody Allen proves again to be able to pull the best out of her, this time in the form of dramatic acting because she manages to grip the intended mood of her character with firm strength, both from a perspective of physical acting and line delivery. She integrates her acting talents into the character very well.

Maureen Stapleton also delivers a nice performance.

But despite the talented cast and Woody Allen's dramatic ambitions, Interiors is a film which is too slow, long and boring to handle itself and mainly suffers from a script which is rather thin and excessively dramatically subtle.