the girl in the park Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Expect Sigourney Weaver to receive an Oscar nod for her work in The Girl in the Park, which got a warm reception at this year's Toronto fest. Weaver plays Julia Sandburg, a 40-something business executive and mother of two, including a toddler named Maggie. Julia's life, which we can sense has been planned down to the smallest detail, is unexpectedly shipwrecked when, during routine playtime in a park one day, Maggie goes missing under her nose. The child is not found, and her disappearance is tied to a string of similar abductions in the area, leaving practically no hope. Cut to fifteen years later -- Julia now looks to be in her late 50s and has spent the last fifteen years living a solitary, robotic existence, the disappearance having disintegrated her marriage, poisoned her relationship with her remaining child, and taken a toll on her mental health. Existing more or less as a shut-in these past years, her own relatives, including her son and new daughter-in-law, can hardly believe it when she turns up at a family function.

The son and daughter-in-law, played by Alessandro Nivola and Keri Russell, are budding suburbanites who are planning for a new child and have no intention of living their lives in the past, but the past is the only place Julia feels safe, and there seems to be little prospect of her returning to any kind of social normalcy. This is the lay of the land when Louise comes into the picture. A sleazy drifter and scam-artist in her young twenties, played effectively by Superman's dame Kate Bosworth, Louise meets Julia in the city by chance and picks up on her vulnerability, perhaps sensing she's some old, lonely lesbian who can be taken for a ride and cleaned out or more simply, someone who will feel sorry for her. During their first meeting, Louise gives Julia a phoney tale of woe, and in the space of a few minutes, Julia has her checkbook out and is shelling out for travel fare and medical expenses for an unborn child (which doesn't exist.) Louise then wisely disappears, but their interaction isn't over yet.

If there is one thing that always makes the TIFF season a little bit sweeter, it is John Sayles. Since I started going to the fest in 2003, I've seen his adoption drama Casa de los babys and then his Dubya-metaphor political mystery -- Silver City. The film gave Danny Huston some excellent screen-time (while robbing him appropriate props on the DVD), and had an ironic screening at TIFF, when a horde of gold and platinum card-holding patrons gained advanced entry.

Now the festival is sharing its latest batch of films to be screened, and Sayles' next film, Honeydripper, leads the pack. (We last mentioned the film when Jessica Barnes posted about the its production wrap.) Always managing to keep things fresh, this latest film is about a "down-on-his-luck Southern juke joint owner who recruits a talented drifter to help revive his club." It stars Danny Glover, and has other big names in the cast like Lisa Gay Hamilton, Charles S. Dutton and Stacy Keach.

The other films on the list aren't too shabby either. There's The Girl in the Park, David Auburn's drama starring Sigourney Weaver and Kate Bosworth, which is about a woman who never gets over the disappearance of her three-year-old daughter, and the young woman she comes across years later, who she hopes is her daughter. On a lighter note, there's Ryan Gosling's latest film -- Lars and the Real Girl, which is a film about a strange man who falls for a life-size doll. (will doll shenanigans be next in the wave of boundary-breaking cinematic sex?!)

Then we can jump back into drama with Helen Hunt's directorial debut -- Then She Found Me -- about an adopted woman in crisis. While trying to have a baby, the woman's marriage crumbles, her adoptive mom dies and then her birth mom pops up -- and it has a rather interesting cast of Hunt, Colin Firth, Bette Midler and Matthew Broderick. Lastly, there's Richard Roxburgh's Romulus, My Father -- the Nick Drake-adapted Raimond Gaita memoir starring Eric Bana and Franka Potente. I think it's time to invest in some No-Doze or get some Clockwork eye-openers if the rest of the film list is half as tasty as what they've already listed.

Variety reports that Sigourney Weaver and Kate Bosworth are in negotiations to star together in The Girl in the Park (which seems to have changed its title, as well as its stars), scripted by playwright David Auburn, who will also serve as first-time director for Furst Films. Auburn, who won a Pulitzer for his play Proof, also wrote the script for the Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock romantic drama The Lake House.

If talks are successful, Weaver will play a woman still traumatized by the disappearance of her 3-year-old daughter 15 years ago. When she meets a troubled young woman (Bosworth), her pain resurfaces along with the hope that the woman may be her missing child. Shooting will start this November in New York

I'm thinking this will be an interesting pairing. Both Weaver and Bosworth have demonstrated an ability to play strong independent women, and though it will probably have nothing to do with this film, the Alien series and Superman Returns have shown that both actresses can stand up to extraterrestrials. It will be interesting to see how they play off one another. Weaver's presence apparently negates the rumor listed on IMDB that Susan Sarandon would star in this project.