Review of Interiors (1978) by Alice S — 01 Jan 2012

The darkest and coldest Woody Allen film I've seen to date. It's high drama, courtesy of Ingmar Bergman. The sophistication is less polished than in Match Point, and rightfully so, since the cracks in this family's veneer are more due to internal turmoil (duh, the title) than external affairs and atmospheres. I love all the silence and noise: the angry scratches of pencil on paper, the sticky screech of unrolling duct tape on window cracks.

Although some commenters on IMDb are not fond of Diane Keaton's performance, I think she (and Geraldine Page) present an acting master class. Renata's first monologue just floors me. Keaton's eyes skitter just enough - to her therapist (I'm assuming), to her hands, to the window - to reveal the insecurity that she dare not show often as the eldest child. She uses her cigarettes well too. She holds it nervously in the aforementioned monologue, and in the scene in which the father (played by Juror #4!) reveals his plans to strike out on his own, she ashes her cigarette by rolling it lightly repeatedly - not letting it go out - bored but listening, almost as if she expected the news and doesn't altogether blame her father for it.

Since new Flixster doesn't allow comments on friends' reviews, I'd like to address a qualm Ryan Hibbett voiced in his review about how it's never explicitly shown or stated that Eve came to the beach house the night she kills herself. I do believe there is a shot of her, standing in the shadows as Joey speaks to her. Joey senses her mother there without seeing her, but Eve really IS in the house.