Cinema: Darkest Woody

INTERIORS

Directed and Written by Woody Allen

The movie begins with stark images—still lifes snapped around a disused beach house, then female hands and pensive, pained faces. That style, an emblem of high seriousness, persists throughout a film one will remember mainly for its look: actors grouped in self-consciously arresting ways, costumes and sets done up in grays and beiges, the lighting (by voguish Cinematographer Gordon Willis) low-keyed and "textural."

Eventually characters are introduced and dialogue begins—but most of it seems couched in terms of the higher banality: psychobabble, discussions of creativity, even home decoration when money is no problem. Despite advance word that...

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