In Contention

Tag: Rodrigo Garcia

  • INTERVIEW: ‘Albert Nobbs’ producer, screenwriter and actress Glenn Close

    Telluride Film Festival

    Actress Glenn Close has known the title character of “Albert Nobbs” for nearly 30 years. Ever since she was first asked to audition for the play “The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs” in 1982, which brought her to George Moore’s short story about a woman living as a male waiter in male-dominated 19th Century Ireland. That’s a long time for any performer to live with a role, and it takes a special breed of stick-to-it-tiveness to see the journey she’s seen for the character all the way to the big screen.

    “It’s always been a little surreal,” the actress says at the Chuck Jones Theater after introducing the film to its second crowd here at Telluride. “Every morning when I would go to the set, I couldn’t believe that, something that’s been in my head so long, people were actually working on this movie.”

    The role originally sparked Close’s interest because of the inherent challenges it presented. Servants in that era, she notes, were not supposed to look people in the eye. They were meant to be invisible. And here is a character, invisible in her own right by virtue of her secret, also in a profession where she must be under the radar. It wasn’t an opportunity to be emotionally expressive for much of the narrative, but Close says that was an attraction to the part.

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  • Rodrigo Garcia talks ‘Mother and Child’

    The Annette Bening starrer “Mother and Child” stirred the awards conversation in Toronto, mostly for Bening but with plenty offering wonderful notices for the performances of Samuel L. Jackson and Naomi Watts.  Guy even made a pretty good case for the film cornering the female vote (in the year of the woman, no less).  But, no distributors have come calling yet, so it’s looking more and more like it could be a 2010 (or later) holdover.  In the meantime, here’s director Rodrigo Garcia talking about his work on the film:

    (Courtesy: MakingOf)

  • Could ‘Mother and Child’ corner the female vote?

    Mother and ChildOne of the surprises of the TIFF coverage I’ve read so far has been the notably enthusiastic reception for Rodrigo Garcia’s “Mother and Child.” It’s a film I confess hadn’t been on my radar at all until now, despite my high regard for Garcia’s quiet, character-oriented work in film and especially television.

    “Mother and Child” seems to further carve his cinematic niche of tasteful, female-focused ensemble dramas, so I was expecting the same kind of warm, if slightly reserved, critical reaction that greeted “Nine Lives” and his underrated debut “Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her,” but so far, “Mother and Child” seems to be aiming higher than that.

    Jeff Wells was eager to be first on Monday, gushing that it was “a super-sensitive, perfectly acted and exquisitely written adult drama” and “a Best Picture contender — guaranteed, hands down, take it to the bank.” He then rather spoiled his own party by later admitting that he’d skipped the film’s last half-hour, which he later found wanting — but still generally stands by the film.

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