Photo by Julio Macat, ASC. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
All-female remakes may have been receiving less than warm receptions – last month’s The Hustle plumbed new depths – but there’s no sign of them losing their impetus.
This year’s Sundance London brings an indie to the table, an English language re-boot of Susanne Bier’s Oscar-nominated After The Wedding, this time with Bart Freundlich in the director’s chair. The title may remain the same, but now two women are at the centre of this emotional drama, a tale of secrets, overlapping lives and how one single action can be like a stone dropped on calm water. The ripples spread far and wide and are never-ending.
Talking to THN’s Freda Cooper at Sundance London, Freundlich explains his reasons for changing the central characters and his choice of actors for the roles – Michelle Williams and Julianne Moore. He also considers his reasons for retaining the feature film format and whether the story would be suitable for a TV mini-series. And he looks forward to what is probably his next project, based on some of his father’s writings.
Bart Freundlich, director of After The Wedding. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
Read the full interview below.
The film is a reworking of a Danish film from 2006. I wondered why you thought the time was right to shed some new light on the film and give it a new approach and a new angle?
Yes, the producer who owned the rights to the movie – there was a guy who fell in love with Suzanne’s movie and I understand why because it’s so emotional and so beautiful. He actually came to me with the movie and we were going to remake it in a more direct way, but there didn’t feel like there was a reason to remake an already great movie. We started playing around with the idea of switching the genders, which seemed like a typical Hollywood pitch, [but] what was interesting about it for this film is that it modernised it in a way – because there were things about the two male characters in Suzanne’s movie that were new and fresh when she did them in 2006, but having a billionaire businessman who is very hard-edge and emotionally closed off was something that I thought I had seen before. Partly because she did it so well. Seeing a woman who had built a company from the ground up, and was now a very powerful businesswoman who also was trying to balance that with family, it opened up some different aspects to the film that I was able to explore to make it slightly… hers is more three-dimensional, but to take a different angle on a story that is so strong – what I was attracted to in the story is that it is so emotional, so internal and it’s also such high melodrama. What I like to do is three dimensionalise things, so getting to change these characters from men to women allowed me to just kind of break out of the mold she had so beautifully made already.
You wrote the script as well.
I wrote the adaptation, yes.
And you directed. So how did the two roles work for you or does it just expand into just one big role?
Most of the movie I’ve made I’ve written as well. Even for the ones that I didn’t, I did a pass of the script because, for me, the script is everything. I want to remember what I was thinking when I wrote this line, and that informs how I direct it. The two jobs are very different; one is very lonely and the other is very social but they compliment one another nicely. When you’ve been by yourself for months and months and months and dying to be with other people and have a collaboration, you do that, and right at the end of that time when you’ve gone crazy and can’t stand talking to people anymore, you get to retreat and start writing again. So for me, it’s a very natural marriage.
Does that mean when you’re writing in isolation, and then you actually start filming, does the script change a lot?
Some of it. I view it as, not as much as a work in progress, but… it’s malleable. I really believe that the script is more than just a blueprint. I believe that the words are very important. It’s my way of communicating with the actors, but then, when they come in with their own ideas, I welcome them. It this movie, it definitely changed as we went along – the internal workings of scenes changed because Michelle Williams, or Julianne Moore, or Billy Crudup, all had – as they got more familiar with their characters – they were able to offer me more. Yes.
I wonder why you decided to make a film, rather than may do something for television. Maybe a two or three episode series. It struck me with the structure of the piece that there were a number of emotional climaxes that would have made cliffhangers.
You’re right. Should we do it?
You tell me. I’m sure you could get the funding – but I wondered why a film?
Well, I think it’s a really interesting question. I think that it could have worked in the way you’re describing, and in fact, it is very high drama which sometimes lends itself to TV. It’s reminiscent of an old school melodrama/ soap opera in how large the things are that happen in it. I think that some of it is just because I am old school and I’m used to making movies.
Nothing wrong with that.
No, but I am thinking now more expansively as more people are because so much money is in TV and when something lends itself to that kind of format… The one thing I think was important about it being a movie is that it has a very distinct beginning, middle and ending. Within that, it has an unusual structure as you’re hitting on of peaking at several different points, which is a challenge. It had to be delicately done, and it only works for some people [laughs].
You’ve got two incredible leading ladies. I think that this is the first time you’ve worked with Julianne. Am I right?
No, believe it or not, this is my fourth time.
Really?
We met on my first movie, which was in 1997; The Myth Of Fingeprints, which was also a Sundance movie. We had two other movies with her but I haven’t worked with her for about ten years.
So what was it about this particular piece and this particular role for her?
Well, I always want to work with her. She is very specific about the roles she takes. They either speak to her or they don’t speak to her. This one spoke to her because I think she wants to feel like there’s something in a character that she hasn’t explored before, and there was something in this character that really was of interest to her. It has to be something that she feels like she’s drawn to but she doesn’t fully understand yet. At least my impression is that she figures it out. She goes along and that’s part of the joy and the beauty of it.
So did you write the part with her in mind?
Yes, I did write the part with her in mind. But she was not committed to playing the role until after she read the script because she is very script-driven. People can pitch her projects and she’ll say ‘that sounds like a good idea – let me see the script’, because, as we all know, it could be a great story with a terrible script or a boring story with a great script that could make the movie good.
I wonder if she played a part in actually encouraging you do do the film in the first place?
She did.
The reason I ask that was that I interviewed Sebastian Lelio a few weeks ago about Gloria Bell. Of course, she really encouraged him to do that and I wondered if this was the same again? It sounds like she’s a bit of a muse to filmmakers.
I think that she is. What she has is so rare is utter clarity about what interests her. When she saw Gloria, Sebastian’s first incarnation of Gloria, she just knew how to play that part and wanted to play that part. She was very clear about that with Sebastian. With After The Wedding, we watched it the first time together – Suzanne’s movie. Julianne saw the big scene near the end that she has, and she said ‘I want to do that. I really want to do that.’ That kind of guided me, but I didn’t know that she was going to do it, and I didn’t want her to do it unless it spoke to her.
She and Michelle Williams have worked together before on Wonderstruck.
Yes, although they were never in the same scenes.
Did that actually help in terms of creating their on-screen relationship?
Oddly they had never acted together – just been in the same movie. I think Michelle is very like Julie in that she’s just this fiercely creative artist who only does stuff that interests her. They’re both character actors but they’re both movie stars – it’s kind of an unusual thing. Sean Penn is like that, Daniel Day-Lewis is like that, Meryl Streep is like that, but there aren’t a lot of people who are like that. They don’t use any of their personas. They just play these characters. So, t was great to have them to play people who knew one another because it’s always nice to work with people who you like and who are friends, but on set, I think that tey are such professionals that watching them go into their character mode, and especially watching the scenes where they have a little friction, was electric for me.
So, what have you got coming next?
I am working on my next screenplay, my next original screenplay. It is something that I’ve been writing for years and years and years and it’s something that keeps circling back to and I think it will be my next project. It’s very personal and is based on some writings of my father, actually. He’s a writer, and a poet as well as a book editor, but he wrote some things a long time ago that inspired me. So I’ve been playing around with taking that in my own direction. So who knows? Maybe it’ll be that, or maybe I’ll get offered something here along at the film festival and I’ll do that [laughs].
After The Wedding screened at this year’s Sundance London event and will be released on a date still TBC.
