Woody Allen's somber Interiors is unlike any other of his films and accordingly does not poke fun at Jewishness. It may, nevertheless, concern modern Jewish dynamics evident in the lives of a very urbane, arty family that forms the nucleus of this film. Theirs is the kind of supposed Jewish struggle with sexuality, venality, creativity, and psychoneurosis that appears in specifically Jewish characters described by Roth, Potok, and Bellow. (p. 59)
[The] almost stereotypical characters, usually grist for Woody Allen's pulverizing mill, are in no way reduced to the usual antics. Although it owes much to Ingmar Bergman, something to Chekhov, and a great deal more to Woody Allen's untapped sensitivities, the film does not belong in any way to the comedian's well-known satirical genre. As some have lamented, indeed, there are no jokes in the entire picture…. In fact, there is a great deal to mark this movie as a beautiful landmark, particularly in the way Allen—like a spider spinning a web—captures the fragile truth of the psychoanalytical seventies. True, there may be no jokes (there are some laughs, to be sure), but there are enough droplets of brilliance … to give the web a shimmering as well as delicate appearance. And there are subtle undercurrents as well, one of which, the possible Jewishness of the characters, still intrigues me.
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