Officially, I have one full month of movies watched! And I'm feeling pretty good, still. Still doesn't feel like a chore (which is a real positive since I have 11 months, 334 movies left to go), but not only that, I'm still enjoying everything I'm watching (well, when I'm actually enjoying it, of course). Also this month, I also finished three books (quite the accomplishment, I'd say) and watched a crapload of tennis, of course. All this in addition to the weekend I spent in Kalamazoo. Oh, and working. Haha.
This "last" movie of the month (at least in terms of quantity of days) is Interiors, Woody Allen's first drama. I wanted to break up the recent releases a bit, so I combed through my Netflix suggestions and happened on a Woody Allen film featuring Diane Keaton (surprise!) and thought, "Why not?" Combing through Allen's filmography I find that this is only the ninth Allen film I've seen, after Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, Small Town Crooks, Match Point, and Scoop. I say "only" because I'm so very fond of his work that I feel I ought to have seen more. And there's no time like the present, and the next 334 movies.
Unsurprisingly, this outing of Allen's follows a family (see: virtually any Allen film) with three daughters (Hannah and Her Sisters?), one of whom is a writer (also vitually any Allen film), one of whom bounds about in different jobs (see Dianne Wiest in HaHS), and the third who is an actress (Mighty Aphrodite's Mira Sorvino (-ish)), as they watch their parents separate, mostly because of Mom's (a magnificent Geraldine Page) ever-spiraling depression, then watch their dad (a pretty faceless E.G. Marshall) remarry (a dynamite Maureen Stapleton).
The script is well-written and well-acted, and I tried really hard to pick holes in it because it initially didn't feel much different from the standard Allen fare of the Annie Hall/Manhattan/Hannah and Her Sisters vein, but it actually does have a uniqueness not only among his own work, but among works of others, too. Case in point: Page's Eve is clearly not all there, and I believe it. She's bright and together, but only occasionally. She has real feelings that vary from daughter to daughter, and though we learn much of these feelings from the daughters themselves, we see it in her interactions with them. Of course, Page is easily the best part of the film, and the best scene is right near the end of the movie as she suffers while her daughter Joey (Mary Beth Hurt) lays all her feelings out in the open.
Yet, while the movie isn't unidimensional, nothing really seems to matter as much to the story as these relationships. We see the strain in Keaton's Renata and her husband's marriage, we realize the differences between Joey and her boyfriend (Sam Waterston), we are privy to seemingly forgotten daughter Flynn's drug habit, and we are forever barraged by the word "creativity" and all its dimensions: who has it, who doesn't, who thinks others have it, what does it all mean, etc. Despite this, we find ourselves not caring what most of the characters think about creativity, and, indeed, many a viewer will probably prefer Stapleton's views: it is or it isn't; why does it have to be something else? Something to ponder, Mr. Allen.
Score: 7.5/10
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