The lovely Liv Ullmann will be at Lincoln Center for free talk about her adaptation of MISS JULIE
Film Society of Lincoln Center Amphitheater
144 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Tuesday, December 2, free, 6:30
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com
www.wildbunch.biz
A dozen years ago, we had the pleasure of attending the U.S. premiere of Arne Skouen’s 1969 film, An-Margritt, at Scandinavia House, which was followed by a wonderful discussion with Skouen and his ever-charming star, Liv Ullmann. The Japan-born Norwegian actress, who was raised partly in New York, will be back in town on December 2 to talk about her new cinematic adaptation of August Strindberg’s 1888 play, Miss Julie. Her fifth film as director — she previously helmed Sofie, Kristin Lavransdatter, Private Confessions, and Faithless — Miss Julie, which opens December 5, features Jessica Chastain as the title character, Colin Farrell as John, and Samantha Morton as Kathleen. “I feel the play has always been a part of me. I had hoped to have the chance to play the role on stage when I was younger but it never happened,” Ullmann, who also wrote the screenplay, says in the film’s press kit. “When the producers first contacted me, they asked me if I would be interested in making a film on the theme of a ‘femme fatale,’ a proposal they had also made to a French and a Spanish director. I thought of Miss Julie straightaway and they agreed it was a marvelous idea. As soon as I started to work on the adaptation, I fell in love with it, and not only because of Strindberg’s writing but also because of the themes that are important to me on a personal level: to be seen or to remain invisible, to present an image of oneself which does not correspond to whom one really is, to be loved for oneself and not for what others see in you, the relations between the sexes, and the crises that stem from them….” What should be a lovely, intimate discussion is part of the ongoing series “Film Society Free Talks” at Lincoln Center; free tickets will be given out beginning at 5:30, one per person.
Korean director Bong Joon-ho, who had a huge international hit in 2006 with The Host and a major critical success with 2009’s Mother, makes his English-language feature debut with Snowpiercer, a nonstop postapocalyptic thrill ride that takes its place with such other memorable train films as The Great Train Robbery, From Russia with Love, The Train, and Murder on the Orient Express. It’s 2031, seventeen years after the chemical C7, which was supposed to end climate change, instead froze the earth, killing all living beings except for a group of survivors on board a train run by a perpetual motion machine. In the rear of the train, men, women, and children are treated like prisoners, beaten, tortured, dressed in rags, their only food mysterious gelatin blocks. Soldiers led by the cold-hearted Mason (Tilda Swinton) and the yellow-clad Claude (Emma Levie), whose outift brings virtually the only color to this dark, dank, deeply depressing setting, violently keep the peace as the two women heartlessly dictate orders and abscond with the children. But Curtis Everett (Chris Evans) and Edgar (Jamie Bell) hatch a plan to get past the guards and make their way to the front of the train in order to find out just what is really going on and to meet with Wilford, the wealthy entrepreneur running the engine. With the help of defiant mother Tanya (Octavia Spencer), elder statesman Gilliam (John Hurt), train engineer Namgoong Minsu (Bong regular Song Kang-ho), and Namgoong’s daughter, Yona (Go Ah-sung), Curtis attempts to lead a small revolution that is seemingly doomed to failure.
Since 2002, Austin auteur Richard Linklater has made a wide range of successful films, from the family-friendly School of Rock and Bad News Bears to the second and third parts of the more adult Before series (Before Sunset, Before Midnight), with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, in addition to the Philip K. Dick thriller A Scanner Darkly and the Jack Black black comedy Bernie. But during that entire period he was also making one of the grandest films ever about childhood, the deceptively simple yet mind-blowingly complex Boyhood. The work follows Mason Evans Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) as he goes from six years old to eighteen, maturing for real as both the actor and the character grow up before our eyes. As the film begins, Mason, his older sister, Samantha (Linklater’s real-life daughter, Lorelei), and their mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette), are preparing to move to Houston just as their usually absent father, Mason Sr. (Hawke), returns from a job in Alaska, supposedly ready to be a more regular part of their lives. But his emotional immaturity leads to divorce, and Mason Jr. spends the next dozen years dealing with school, stepfathers, and the normal machinations of everyday life, including sex, drugs, rock and roll, and, for him, a determination from an early age to become an artist. Along the way, his sister and parents experience significant changes as well as they all learn lessons about life, love, and loss.
