INTERIORS
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
**
Right after Woody Allen made the best movie of his career, ANNIE HALL, he made the worst movie of his career. INTERIORS is not only the first Allen movie Woody didn't star in, it's also the first to focus completely on drama. Woody himself said there were no "intentional" laughs in INTERIORS, even though there are a few unintentionally-funny moments in this heavy-handed Ingmar Bergman ripoff that has at least one-third lingering silent shots of either nature or its actors staring off into space, probably wondering what the hell they were doing in such a stupid movie.
INTERIORS centers around a dysfunctional family, from the mentally-ill mother who falls apart (and eventually commits suicide by walking into the ocean) when her husband announces he's leaving her to the three neurotic sisters, none of whom (interestingly enough) is named Hannah. There's Joey (Marybeth Hurt, who looks like Velma from "Scooby Doo" with blond hair), the moody artist who just isn't talented, Renata (Diane Keaton), the poet who is talented but whose husband isn't, and Flynn (Kristen Griffith), the actress who is successful but shallow.
Woody tries to balance everyone's problems by having the characters argue their existence away. Joey is mad at Dad for leaving and yells at Renata for not spending enough time with Mom, while Renata spouts the Woody speech about her work being meaningless because she can't buy immortality with art and her husband is ready to jump on top of Flynn, who resents the other sisters for having substance in their lives. By the time Dad brings his vibrant, shallow fiance home, the tensions are finally ready to explode.
Then we get the long suicide scene and the final scene where the sisters stare out into the ocean in another Bergman ripoff. The ending of INTERIORS is just like the rest of the movie -- long, pointless, resolving nothing and silent. Forgoing the usual jazz soundtrack, Woody permeates INTERIORS with dead silence a lot of the time, when the other characters are arguing their heads off. It seems artistic, as do many of the labored camera shots from the movie, but underneath there's nothing of substance.
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