Stephen Schiff
“…. Its central figure is the family matriarch, Eve (Geraldine Page), a regal, domineering interior decorator who has imposed her obsessive good taste on her husband and three grown daughters until it's smothered the life and love out of them. Compulsive, manipulative and paranoid … Eve is not an endearing character, but her emotional frailty makes her genuinely pitiable. When her long-suffering husband (E.G. Marshall) finally leaves her…, Eve comes unglued, and her descent into madness and self-annihilation is truly unnerving….
“Still, some of the performances are engrossing. Marybeth Hurt's still, taut Joey has the clear, timid eyes and clenched jaw of someone who expects pain, a prisoner awaiting the whip. And Geraldine Page makes a magnificent Eve. A heavy, redoubtable woman in immaculate gray suits, she's an ice queen fending off terror and madness. As she struggles with her demons, her face collapses, her forehead wars with her eyes and she pulls her mouth into a knot, as if to keep the agony from spilling out. Page has often been crafty to the point of manipulation; here, we never catch her "acting," and her lived-in anguish is very moving indeed. Unfortunately, Diane Keaton's haggard performance, for all the courage in its plainness, is a disaster….”
“… [Pearl's] galvanizing entrance could have sabotaged Interiors. Even if we'd previously been inclined to take this dour family seriously, how can we once Pearl's vivacity has punctured gloom? She reveals Keaton, Griffith, Hurt and even Page for the spoiled children they are, and their spiritual poverty suddenly seems, well, laughable.
“Perhaps what's most remarkable about Interiors is that this sudden shift in perspective saves the film instead of ruining it….”
Stephen Schiff
Boston Phoenix, 1978
[left out some on both above?]
“Still, some of the performances are engrossing. Marybeth Hurt's still, taut Joey has the clear, timid eyes and clenched jaw of someone who expects pain, a prisoner awaiting the whip. And Geraldine Page makes a magnificent Eve. A heavy, redoubtable woman in immaculate gray suits, she's an ice queen fending off terror and madness. As she struggles with her demons, her face collapses, her forehead wars with her eyes and she pulls her mouth into a knot, as if to keep the agony from spilling out. Page has often been crafty to the point of manipulation; here, we never catch her "acting," and her lived-in anguish is very moving indeed. Unfortunately, Diane Keaton's haggard performance, for all the courage in its plainness, is a disaster….”
“… [Pearl's] galvanizing entrance could have sabotaged Interiors. Even if we'd previously been inclined to take this dour family seriously, how can we once Pearl's vivacity has punctured gloom? She reveals Keaton, Griffith, Hurt and even Page for the spoiled children they are, and their spiritual poverty suddenly seems, well, laughable.
“Perhaps what's most remarkable about Interiors is that this sudden shift in perspective saves the film instead of ruining it….”
Stephen Schiff
Boston Phoenix, 1978
[left out some on both above?]
posted by Intersections28 - David Gibson at
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