After pretty impressive debuts at Sundance, and more recently Cannes, the trailer for Paul Dano’s directorial debut Wildlife has premiered online. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Carey Mulligan, Bill Camp, Ed Oxenbould and Zoe Margaret Collett.
Dano wrote the script for the film along with Zoe Kazan. Elegantly adapted from Richard Ford’s novel of the same name, Carey Mulligan delivers one of her finest performances to date as Jeanette, a complex woman whose self-determination and self-involvement disrupts the values and expectations of a 1960s nuclear family. Fourteen-year-old Joe played by newcomer Ed Oxenbould, is the only child of Jeanette (Mulligan) and Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal)—a housewife and a golf pro—in a small town in 1960s Montana.
Nearby, an uncontrolled forest fire rages close to the Canadian border, and when Jerry loses his job—and his sense of purpose—he decides to join the cause of fighting the fire, leaving his wife and son to fend for themselves. Suddenly forced into the role of an adult, Joe witnesses his mother’s struggle as she tries to keep her head above water. With precise details and textures of its specific time and place, WILDLIFE commits to the viewpoint of a teenage boy observing the gradual dissolution of his parents’ marriage.
Wildlife screened as the opening night film in La Semaine de la Critique at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where we caught the film (we loved it – read our review here). Wildlife will be released by IFC Films on October 19, 2018.
Watch the trailer below. Wildlife will be released on 9th November in the UK. Here’s the U.S. trailer.
