Actress Hani Furstenberg and director Julia Loktev live in the city, but traveling to the wilderness of the former Soviet Georgia to film the acclaimed arthouse drama “The Loneliest Planet” earned them all kinds of new exposure.
For one thing, the film opens with Furstenberg as an American tourist on a backpacking trip, nude and jumping up and down in a rustic, cold-water shower.
“I was very comfortable filming it, but I’m not comfortable seeing it,” laughs Furstenberg. “It’s very real, and it gets you right in the mood of the film. I just wish it wasn’t me.”
The filmmaker defends her artistic choice. “I love the idea that we start with this girl completely vulnerable, then you never see nudity again,” Loktev says. “There’s quite a bit of sex, but they’re completely clothed. It’s the kind of sex you have while camping. You’re trying to take off as few clothes as possible.”
Critics and festivalgoers have certainly found “Loneliest Planet,” opening Friday, to be revealing. The spare, often wordless drama concerns a couple (Furstenberg and Gael Garcia Bernal) whose hiking trip across the Caucasus Mountains in Russia reveals a shocking truth. Their relationship is altered dramatically.
The movie has just been nominated for Best Feature at the Gotham Independent Film Awards, alongside such high-profile titles as “The Master,” “Bernie” and “Moonrise Kingdom. ” “Loneliest Planet” earned rousing applause at Lincoln Center’s 2011 New York Film Festival — a thrill for Loktev and Furstenberg .
“It was fun for me to premiere this film across the street from my high school,” says Queens native Furstenberg, who attended LaGuardia Arts.
Adds the Russian-born Loktev, who went to N.Y.U. film school: “When I was a student, I’d go to the New York Film Festival and think, ‘One day, I want to have a movie here.’ ”
The movie’s shoot, though, was considerably less glamorous.
“We were in the middle of the mountains with a 15-person crew,” recalls Furstenberg. “We’d sleep in tents, then wake at 3 in the morning and start hiking.”
But everybody got into the do-it-yourself spirit, including Bernal (“Babel,” “The Motorcycle Diaries,” “Y Tu Mama Tambien”).
“I was a little worried. I said, ‘You’re not going to have a trailer,’ ” remembers Loktev. “But Gael was amazing. He carried his own pack up the mountain every day.”
Bernal’s character proves somewhat less heroic, as the film explores the meaning of masculinity and femininity in modern relationships. “I like the idea,” Loktev says, “that two people may will go to the movie and spend a long time talking about it after .”
Furstenberg found the lack of dialogue a stimulating artistic challenge. “I actually love it as an actor,” she says. “The feeling that the camera and you are having a conversation with your eyes and your body movement — that always excites me.”
Source : nydailynews[dot]com
No comments:
Post a Comment