Celebrated Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay has delivered four dark dramatic features since her 1999 breakout “Ratcatcher”. She followed that up with 2002’s “Morven Callar,” 2011’s controversy-generating “We Need To Talk About Kevin,” and 2017’s acclaimed Joaquin Phoenix-led “You Were Never Really Here”.
This week she received a lifetime achievement award at the Sarajevo Film Festival and participated in a masterclass on Friday where she revealed (via Variety) multiple works she currently has in the works, including her much-anticipated return to directing.
First up, she confirmed that production has already wrapped on her latest collaboration with Phoenix, a film previously going by the name “Polaris”.
The project, her first work from an original screenplay since her debut film, sees the Oscar-winning “Joker’ star playing a photographer. The film hasn’t settled on a title, but the name “Dark Slides” is a potential candidate.
Also on the way is the previously “Stone Mattress,” a revenge thriller based on a short story by “The Handmaid’s Tale” author Margaret Atwood. That is set aboard a luxury Arctic cruise and will star Julianne Moore and Sandra Oh. Amazon is releasing the film, and Ramsay dubs it her most ambitious yet:
“It’s quite a difficult film to make, because it’s [set on] a cruise ship in the Arctic, so there’s a lot of elements. You can only shoot it in a certain time frame. And…you’ve got to be in the Arctic and bits of the Arctic are melting in specific places. So it’s quite complicated, that film.”
There’s also her long-in-the-works adaptation of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick,” which she says will shift the locale from the ocean to outer space. However, she is playing that one fairly close to her chest.
What is most likely next for Ramsay will be “Die, My Love,” a project which will star Jennifer Lawrence and is based on the novel by Argentinian writer Ariana Harwicz.
That story follows a woman living isolated in rural France, where she’s losing her mind amid marriage and motherhood. Ramsey says the film’s locale will shift to the U.S. and follow a marriage that breaks down despite both partners being very much in love:
“Everyone’s had mental health issues through COVID. So it deals with that. But it deals with it, I think, in a really funny way.”
She also says Lawrence is the one who first sent her a copy of the novel as a potential project to collaborate on:
“She just really responded to the material, which is hardcore in some ways, because it’s about postnatal depression and bipolar [disorder]. But it’s funny as well. Well, I’ve made it funny. I think I’ve made it funny. I hope I’ve made it funny.”
As for why it’s taking precedence over the others? Basic production logistics as it’s much easier to film than those others: “It’s quite simple. It’s not set in the Arctic. It’s not in a boat. It’s just them in a house, it’s just them in a village, so it’s easy to make.”
Source: Variety
