Synopsis
When Eve, an interior designer, is deserted by her husband of many years, Arthur, the emotionally glacial relationships of the three grown-up daughters are laid bare. Twisted by jealousy, insecurity and resentment, Renata, a successful writer; Joey, a woman crippled by indecision; and Flyn, a budding actress; struggle to communicate for the sake of their shattered mother. But when their father unexpectedly falls for another woman, his decision to remarry sets in motion a terrible twist of fate…
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Geraldine PageEve
- Kristin GriffithFlyn
- Mary Beth HurtJoey
- Richard JordanFrederick
- Diane KeatonRenata
- E.G. MarshallArthur
- Maureen StapletonPearl
- Sam WaterstonMike
- Missy HopeYoung Joey
- Kerry DuffyYoung Renata
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Sun-Times
Interiors becomes serious by intently observing complex adults as they fend and cope, blame and justify. Because it illuminates some of the ways we all act, it is serious but not depressing; when it's over, we may even find ourselves quietly cheered that Allen has seen so clearly how things can be. - 90
Time Out London
The film has moments of humour, but they are integrated into a totally serious structure which isolates the family's countervailing tensions with a scalpel-like penetration. Only in a single character, the failed husband of one of the daughters, does the tone falter towards soap. Otherwise the approach is rock steady and, if the film's surface invites superficial comparisons with Bergman, its real roots lie in the very finest American art. - 83
The A.V. Club
Much of the first half of Interiors feels like a stage play, though one in which characters walk in and out of frame. That, along with the overly symbolic breaking of a vase, have earned Interiors some criticism for being too on the nose, which isn’t entirely unfair. But the rest of the movie is so starkly bold that it renders those problems insignificant. It’s beautiful, affecting, and exactly as jarring as Allen probably intended it to be. - 60
The New York Times
Though the movie looks beautiful, the elegant style occasionally works against it, showing it up. This happens in a striking close-up of Miss Keaton, sitting alone on a photogenically windswept ocean beach as she is supposed to be thinking sensitive poet-type thoughts. Yet the image is empty. It's not the actress. It's not the director, whose close-ups of Miss Keaton in Annie Hall burst with love, pride and affection.The movie that contains the image fails to invest it with any associations whatsoever. - 60
The Dissolve
Much of what’s great about Interiors comes from Allen writing a piercing drama, straight from the heart; much of what’s bad about Interiors come from his arid feints at duplicating a master. - 60
The New Yorker
The people in this serious Woody Allen film are destroyed by the repressiveness of good taste, and so is the picture. It's a puzzle movie, constructed like a well-made play from the American past, and given the beautiful, solemn visual clarity of a Bergman film, without, however, the eroticism of Bergman. - 60
Variety
Watching this picture a question keeps recurring: what would Woody Allen think of all this? Then you remember he wrote and directed it. The film is populated by characters reacting to situation Allen has satirized so brilliantly in other pictures. - 50
Washington Post
Interiors imposes a portentous formality that seems deliberately starved of sensuous appeal. It's obvious that Allen has serious intentions, but they're expressed in bloodless, superficial, derivative ways. [29 Sept 1978, p.D1]
