Interiors (1978)
Directed by Woody Allen
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…
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What critics compared Interiors to
Perry tears shamelessly from the pages of the hysterical women canon, keying into Polanski's "Repulsion" and "The Tenant," Altman's "Images" starring Susannah York, a sort of proto-"3 Women" about a splintering female psyche, with shades of Bergman and, yes, Woody Allen's own strained Bergman homage "Interiors."
Perry has also cited the influence of Woody Allen 's "Interiors," which was a studious, self-conscious Bergman rip-off.
(Perry himself has also cited Woody Allen’s “Interiors” as a key influence.)
The sense that the two women have exchanged roles, or that in some way, each is the other, is alluded to in shots that show them gazing in the same direction, side by side—echoes not just of Persona, but of a later riff on Bergman, Woody Allen’s Interiors (one of the Seventies influences that Perry has acknowledged, along with Robert Altman’s Images).
It’s like Woody Allen following up the amusing “Annie Hall” with the cold and distancing “Interiors.”
Its close quarters call to mind cinema in enclosed spaces like Woody Allen’s terminally-solemn Interiors or Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s classic dramas Martha and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.
The 70-year-old Woody Allen ("Annie Hall"/"Interiors") in his 36th film shleps to London to film a morality play that's a serious drama without his usual one-liners, but instead is spiked with a more subtle darker humor.
Comic moments give way to dark irony in subdued fashion; Match Point remains as serious as Interiors, reflected by the musical score that forsakes his usual light-hearted jazz for heavy does of tragic Verdi arias.
In fact, the film has more in common with Robert Altman's "Gosford Park" or most anything by Alfred Hitchcock than most of Allen's oeuvre (save, perhaps, "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and "Interiors").
In Interiors (1978) he channeled the starkness and angst of Ingmar Bergman.
Woody Allen is better know for his comedies, obviously, but he's done quite a few dramas over the years, with more (the Martin Landau storyline in "Crimes and Misdemeanors") or less ("Interiors") success.
Woody Allen famously followed the Oscar-winning Annie Hall with the bleak Interiors, which was dismissed by critics as a pretentious embarrassment.
Or the ultraviolent concluding shootout that rips off everything from “The Untouchables” to “Bonnie and Clyde” to “Dirty Harry” to various other things I didn’t bother to identify?
Gangster movies love two themes most: crime and celebrity (Bonnie and Clyde et al) and Westward Expansion (Goodfellas etc).
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In 1978 in creating the stark Interiors, Woody accessed Ingmar Bergman.
Nevertheless, it is a fun ride that signposts right from the beginning that it is working on a very stylised level in a similar yet far less apparent way to Sin City (Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez, 2005).
Rather it's a gleaming, glossy parade of good-looking actors trading quips and striking poses in sexy period duds, only a couple of stops more naturalistic than "Sin City" or "Dick Tracy."