Everything about Diane Keaton’s performance in Annie Hall is inimitable, and we know that for a fact because what happened next was that every woman in America went around trying to imitate her—and failed. Style looks easy, but is not. This is true about Annie Hall across the board. All the things that look easy are not: the pastiche form; the integration of schlocky jokes with an emotional tenor of ambivalence; the refusal of a happy ending, tempered by the spritzing about of a general feeling of very grown-up friendliness.
