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List Price: $19.94 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 22500
Released: December 11, 2007 |
| Our Price: $4.60 |
| Used Price: $1.38 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Self-destructive journalist Pierre Peders (Buscemi) is no stranger to violence and inhumanity. Having made his name as a war reporter, he has traveled the world seeing some of the most horrifying sights imaginable. So he feels that his current puff-piece assignment, an interview with pop diva, TV and movie star Katya (Miller), is beneath his dignity. The two meet in a restaurant and, instantly, it's a collision of two worlds: Pierre's serious political focus and Katya's superficial world of celebrity. But perhaps all is not as it appears. When Pierre is slightly injured in a traffic accident inadvertently caused by Katya, she's the proverbial girl who causes traffic accidents, they end up in Katya's spacious loft for a long night of talking, drinking, sparring, and coming close to a sort of embattled intimacy. Each is scarred in their own way, aching from deep, hidden pain. But honest revelations give way to punishing deceptions. Their confrontation evolves into a passionate verbal chess game spiked with wit, intrigue and sexual tension, capped with a riveting twist ending.
Description of Interview:
After directing three films and an Emmy-winning episode of The Sopranos, Steve Buscemi turned to Holland--specifically to the work of Theo van Gogh. Before his 2004 murder by an Islamic extremist, the Dutch filmmaker (and Vincent van Gogh descendent) was planning an English-language version of his 2003 Interview--even considering Madonna for the Katja Schuurman role. In Buscemi's reconfiguration, the actor plays jaded journalist Pierre. Once a war correspondent, he now takes any gig he can get. When his editor assigns him an interview with tabloid fixture Katya (Sienna Miller, doing her finest work to date), Pierre grudgingly acquiesces. Their first meeting in a restaurant is a bust. But through a chance second encounter, they continue their verbal volly in her roomy Manhattan loft, where Pierre discovers that Katya is sharper than her image suggests, and she learns about his tragic past. They flirt, fight, kiss, and cry. By the end it becomes clear that one of them isn't being completely honest. As an acting exercise, Interview gets the job done, and Miller’s American accent is especially convincing. As a story, it's less satisfying, not because of the minimal cast or stage-like setting--My Dinner With André made a virtue out of similar limitations--but because the opponents aren't evenly matched. They're also less agreeable than Louis Malle's dining companions. Interview is first in a trio of van Gogh adaptations, with Stanley Tucci attached to Blind Date and John Turturro to 1-900. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Interview Reviews:
Youth against worn out wordliness 
2008-10-06 - Smart movie starring two excellent actors Sienna Miller and Steve Buscemi. This unlikely pair will keep you engaged from start to finish. Sienna plays Katya, young, pretty, seemingly shallow acress who takes on roles in daytime soap operas and thriller movies. Pierre is jaded war correspondent, sarcastic, middle aged and more or less wasted. Pierre's job is to interview the starlet as part of his editor's People Profile column. Surely, neither people profile not the startlet herself is the kind of writing that Pierre wishes to do. He would prefer to be in Washington, DC following up with the latest political topsy-turvy of the capital's national politics. Circumstances place these two in Katya's apartment where they verbally battle each other out for both their career and personal choices. It is apparent that both of them are damaged and as such incapable of compassion and decent human interaction. Both have a goal and use their professions to win over the other individual. Which one of these two consummate actors will win at the end? Will it be the youth and inexperience, or perpetually unhappy worldliness? You will have to watch this movie to find out!
Enthralling Interview
2008-05-20 - Steve Buscemi's "Interview", timing in at 86 min. with a whopping 3 setting changes, is a suprisingly intuitive character study for being so short. Veteran Buscemi and up and comer, Siena Miller, mesh with complete ease and everything seems to work well.
Along with a very interesting screenplay, these two actors completely devulge into their characters and really compliment eachothers strong points. I really cannot emphasize how fun it is to watch these two in action. It's strange how simplistic you think the film is for the first half only to get to the second half and realize your watching a complex drama of a rare sort.
Under the radar as of late, this little indie flick is totally worth a rental. Try not to let the ending throw you off too much.
***1/2 Stars out of **** Stars
Talk about a high tolerance level!!! 
2008-04-23 - Put two completely unlikable characters together and have then talk for a little over an hour, probing to get each ohers secrets that neither one of them (and you) care nothing about and you have a slow moving, hard to watch film. This may have been designed to be an acting tour de force by a couple actors, but it was not. This gave me the impression that it was made as a project for a college acting class. The twist at the end was sooooo lame that I called it as soon as the journalist peeked onto the starlet's computer. This was a twist I saw coming and kept saying to myself: "Please be wrong. Please be wrong." Sigh, I wasn't wrong. Another issue I had was the countless times the writer threatened to leave and did not or the countless times the starlet ordered him out then changed her mind. But what really bothered me about this work, other than the lack of plot, bad dialogue and totally unlikeable characters was the drug and alcohol consumption. Between the two main characters, they drank more wine in 84 minutes than I could consume in a week and, except for about 30 seconds, never got even tipsy and then after that 30 second display of drunkenness, were sober again for the rest of the film. Nobody could drink that much and still be standing, let alone hatching plots. The description on the cover refers to a verbal chess game. No. I gave it two stars for making an effort, but ultimately at some point a film has to deliver on it's promise and INTERVIEW came up short.
Ambitious but unsuccessful
2008-04-13 - While I admire Buscemi for attempting what can be one of the harder things to do on film - basically a two-actor script - I hated this. Yes, it's riveting - perhaps the film's deftist feat is its way of hooking the viewer back in every time the two characters threaten to part ways. But by the end I hated the actress and wasn't terribly fond of the journalist. I felt like I'd been enmeshed in the lives of two people unworthy of my time and attention. Also depressing was the ageist message/resolution. Made me nostalgic for films in which age and experience counts for something durable and respectable. Instead, this just drives home today's youth-uber-alles viewpoint.
Excellent Acting Can't Overcome Lack Of Quality Script
2008-03-15 - This film should be rented or watched on television before you decide whether to purchase a copy of it.
Both Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller (especially Miller) are among the finest contemporary actors - so it is almost always a pleasure to watch their work. However, this film consists primarily of over an hour of improbable and sophomoric dialogue between Pierre (Buscemi), a failed, morally-flawed (yet self-righteous) journalist and Katya (Miller), a self-absorbed, manipulative actress who, alternatively, pities and preys upon the unlucky Pierre. Through a series of interchanges between the characters, we learn (over and over) that they peddle fiction to their respective audiences and, at times, to themselves - but this is easy to pick up during the first ten minutes of the film. The rest of the film seems intent on exploring how many ways this basic message can be delivered and redelivered.
The majority of the interchanges between Pierre and Katya take place in Katya's bohemian apartment, so the film - especially with its minimalist camera work and limited space - often creates the feeling of an intimate stage play. This would be fine if the writing allowed the characters to expand beyond those limited confines and become interesting. However, both Miller and Buscemi (who also directed)are repeatedly forced to try to "emotionally charge" the alternatively petty and "heavy" dialogue that is aimed at showing, as Warhol would have put it, that each character is, in his or her own way, "deeply superficial": Imagine two actors forced to take a really good five-minute Tennessee Williams scene and stretch it out for over an hour. Mid-way through the film (or sooner), you will probably stop caring.
The silver lining in this otherwise forgettable film is the incredible range of Miller and Buscemi's mastery of quirky character. For me, this aspect of the film made it worth viewing - but only once.
