Amazon.co.uk Review With Interiors Woody Allen, fresh from the critical and commercial triumph of Annie Hall, set out to prove for the first time that he wasn't just a maker of funny movies. It feels like it, too. The film leans heavily on Allen's revered mentor, Ingmar Bergman (and especially on Bergman's masterly 1972 chamber-drama Cries and Whispers) right from the word go, with its austere white-on-black titles and its pointed lack of any music track. The camera moves relatively little, preferring to hold on close-ups of one or two faces. And Allen himself, again for the first time, doesn't appear in his own movie--sensing no doubt that the mere presence of that woebegone face and kvetching accent would start his audience giggling. The plot in many ways prefigures Allen's later, more accomplished Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). The father of three adult daughters announces he wants a "trial separation" from their mother, a fastidious control freak played with pained passive-aggressiveness by Geraldine Page. The daughters, their loyalties tugged different ways, try to deal with the situation and with the demands of their partners. Much of the action, as usual with Allen, is conversation--but lacking the spice of his one-liners, it tends to drag glumly on. Where the film works, the acting carries it, especially Page, Diane Keaton and Marybeth Hurt as two of the daughters, and Maureen Stapleton as the ebullient vulgarian the father takes up with on the rebound. Stapleton's scenes introduce some much-needed humour into a movie that takes itself all too seriously. Allen would go on to achieve a far better balance between light and dark in films like Hannah or Crimes and Misdemeanours. On the DVD:Interiors on disc features just the theatrical trailer. The soundtrack is mono and the picture an anamorphic widescreen presentation of the original 1.85:1 theatrical ratio. --Philip Kemp Product Description The first non-comedy from writer-director Woody Allen. Three sisters (Diane Keaton, Mary Beth Hurt and Kristin Griffith) try to come to terms with themselves and their family when their father Arthur (E.G. Marshall) decides to divorce their mother (Geraldine Page) to enable him to marry a lively middle-aged woman (Maureen Stapleton).