Only the necessary number of characters needed to analyze interpersonal relationships form the backbone of the movie "Interiors". The camera can be viewed in two ways, as the author's poetic voice or the movie’s vital character by the name of Eve (Geraldine Page). The opening shots invite the viewer to enter Eve's minimalist home as a guest. Each member of her family struggles with separation in their own way. Joey (Mary Beth Hurt) and Renata (Diane Keaton), Eve's daughters, cling to the past, stained by their mother's psychic breakdowns, absences, and expectations she set for them. Like their father Arthur (E. G. Marshall), Renata and Joey are presented to viewers in separate but almost identical frames while watching a static scene through a window. In these shots, the camera’s perspective can be identified with that of Eve’s, whose character captures them on a daily basis. In Eve's brief taxi ride scene, she observes a shift of images from the streets through her window, confirming the thesis that Eve captures every moment of the movie as she captures her children. Her inner world is diverse and unstable. This is why Eve is currently suicidal, and Renata and Joey almost fall short under the pressure of a joint caregiver role.

It is notable that the detailed characterization of the characters in this movie is a guide to understanding the complexities of their mutual relationships and the types of mental states in which they are. For example, in the last of a series of introductory frames, the glass of the picture frame on the wall shows the outline of Joey entering the frame with a slight step. She ventures into the space that her mother had arranged and where Joey had grown up. This testifies to her individual movement in life shaped by Eve’s influences. Her mother's character name materially signifies the main culprit of Joey's origin. The theme of motherhood is subtly explored throughout the movie. For example, Joey is horrified by the thought of bringing another person into the world who will struggle with conceptualizing their experience. Joey is unsure of what she wants to be, constantly striving for a new version of herself. The endless possibilities for creative expression create her impatience and hold her in liminal time. Renata, on the other hand, is an accomplished poet and mother of a single child who is overwhelmed by the thought of mortality. Finality as a fundamental feature of every living being is what Renata has a hard time reconciling with. The scenes of her visits to a psychotherapist provide insight into her interior. In these scenes, Renata is thoughtful, vulnerable, and focused on her inner self. The prevailing thoughts about the innocence of the humane part of the self compel her to focus on her body and to view it as a piece of meat that is only momentarily moving. In her case, the problem of mortality is that it erases the meaning of creative work. She wonders about her artistic legacy and in general about the need to create and publish just about anything. Comparing the characterizations of Joey and Renata, one can see that they are facing each other like reflections in a mirror. While Joey struggles with expression but makes a pragmatic presence in his mother's life, Renata struggles with the purpose of expressing herself because she has already mastered this technique. Both have a drive for understanding the correct way of conceptualizing their experience (where correctness is to be understood as an extremely relative term), which includes the morality and purposefulness of actions. Considering that their mother represents a physical legacy in the world, Eve is the dominant source of emotional, intellectual, and aesthetic values ​​in their lives.

Eve's main task is to pass on her knowledge to her daughters. In one scene, she goes unannounced into the physical interiors that belong to Joey, brings in an expensive vase, and proposes further renovations to the apartment, such as painting the floors, replacing the lamps, and installing new decorations. Probably aware that she has been in a mental strife for decades and that this has reflected on her daughters, Eve insists on order and novelties in her children's interiors. While in Joey's interior, she leads a confidential conversation about her hope of renewing her relationship with her husband. In this particular period, Eve and Arthur are in the process of separation. As the poetic voice, the director achieves a guided narration through the subjective positions of the camera. That is, during the separation conversation, Joey physically exits the frame, leaving Eve to sit and be represented in the center of the frame. This highlights Eve and her separation problem as the conversation with Joey continues even though the latter is out of the frame. It is signaled that Joey has been reconciled to her parents' separation at least to a greater extent than Eve. This problem is indirectly touched upon (it is not Joey's marriage), which is why she manages to position herself as a counselor. Such a practice is similar to Eve's ease in choosing the elements of her daughters' interiors, signifying Renata and Joey's delay in dealing with their own concerns. Among other things, during the scene where Arthur announces his marriage to Pearl (Maureen Stapleton), Renata gives her blessing without hesitation while Joey finds herself offended. This unexpected reaction to Joey disrupts the practice of less challenging, mediated problem-solving, which hints at the existence of different spaces within the personal interiors of the characters in the movie. The most striking evidence of this is Frederick's (Richard Jordan) sexual assault, ie. his attempt to rape Eve's third daughter Flyn (Kristin Griffith), a successful actress in the B movie industry. Renata's husband, Frederick, is a writer who has behaved peacefully in the movie's past situations. In addition, Flyn's cocaine addiction is another unexpected room to stumble upon at the end of the movie. Thus, Eva's unsuccessful suicide attempt is expected because she shows neither emotional nor intellectual pride in front of her family. This is what makes her fundamentally different from the other characters.

In almost professionally done interiors, Eve is an unpredictable figure. Her character can be understood as a gradual silence or decrescendo (this is probably why there is no music in the movie until the wedding of Pearl and Arthur is organized) and identified with the character of Pearl, who in this sense is a gradual amplification or crescendo. Both of them, through their different techniques, capture the world and carry out the already mentioned conceptualization. Pearl wears colorful clothes, has a passion for collecting African sculptures, and informs Eve's children, sons-in-law, and Arthur that she will remodel Eve's apartment. She admits that she does not read much, but that this is why she travels a lot. In the midst of an intellectual debate over dinner at Renata's, the camera angle that personifies Eve is set off on the table, quietly observing that most of the things Pearl says or does are inconsistent with what her family finds valuable. Pearl thus stands for physicality, while Eve stands for overintellectualization.

My impression is that both Eve and Pearl are facing each other as reflections in a mirror, like Renata and Joey, because both share the same drive within themselves - which is love for the same man. Eve strives to master herself by arranging physical spaces and choosing visually soothing tones such as whiteness. Arthur, the daughters, and the sons-in-law wear clothes of exactly these colors throughout the movie, emphasizing the obvious impact of Eve's inner and outer portraits. Her preference for milky vases is a metaphor for her appearance of a seemingly stubborn woman, but above all as a fragile person. Her children act as her extension, for they are not freed from her influence until she is immersed in the troubled sea once and for all. I will also note that the complete set design contains several mirrors as reminders that dealing with separation is the beginning of salvation. In the wedding scene, only Pearl looks in the mirror and holds on to her reflection, which she is at peace with. After causing one of Eve's vases to break, she prepares her family and viewers for Eve's final escape from the physical interiors of the world and indulgence in her illness. In the scene of Eve's suicide, Joey comes to her rescue, enters the sea, but is herself rescued and survives. By accepting the act of her mother, she frees herself from her and credits Pearl as a new mother figure. The sea as a source of unpredictable danger that can swallow their house on the coast at any moment is a sign of Eve's consciousness and an integral hidden element of the last frame of the movie where all of Eve's daughters gather outside the window and look in the same direction, ready to continue their paths.

Author: Lemana Filandra
September 11, 2019