The Sundance Kids

April 8th, 2010

Profiles

Images Ryan Pfluger Words Carmen Lam

The Sundance Festival is about more than just film: at its heart, it’s a celebration of creativity. And when we visited Utah this January, we met a parade of actors, directors, and writers who truly push boundaries when it comes to the pursuit of art. More than what meets the eye, these kids boast talents on and off the screen.

Tilda Swinton

Few Hollywood actresses can transform themselves from one role to the next, especially if that transformation is becoming a man. 49-year-old Tilda Swinton, who played the gender-bending title role in Orlando, a film adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel of the same title, and the androgynous archangel Gabriel in Constantine, proves this kind of versatility involves a lot more than just a well-placed ball of socks.

For the Scottish-born mother of twins, acting is just one of many talents: a glance at her most recent CV shows that Swinton’s creative output is all over the map. She’s the muse for fashion house Viktor & Rolf, wrote and narrated the 2008 documentary Derek, sang backing vocals on Patrick Wolf’s 2009 album The Bachelor, and founded the travelling film festival, The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams.

Swinton’s current project pairs her with Italian director Luca Guadagnino for the film Io sono l’amore (I Am Love). Swinton plays Emma Recchi, a Russian socialite who marries a wealthy Milanese businessman. As matriarch, Emma’s life is dedicated to her husband and children. That is, until the family chef Antonio, played by Edoardo Gabbriellini, catches Emma’s eye. A torrid affair ensues, leading Emma on a whirlwind sexual journey.

Unsurprisingly, critics were captivated by Swinton’s portrayal of a high-society matriarch. And there’s nothing this Scottish lass can’t do. Word on the street, Swinton has agreed to play redhead Conan O’Brien – provided he occasionally walks the red carpet on her behalf.

Nathaniel Brown

Enter the Void is a grisly and euphoric film by infamous director Gaspar Noé. Noé’s 2002 film, Irreversible, had Cannes audiences walking out, but the director probably wasn’t surprised. The film includes an uncensored 15-minute rape and a man’s skull being viciously crushed. His new film, Enter the Void, is similarly shocking.

The main character, Oscar, played by Nathaniel Brown, is a drug dealer and user who dies on a bathroom floor after police shoot him during a nightclub drug-raid. For the soon-to-be 22-year-old Brown, this was a dream role, not because of the character he got to play, but for the opportunity to step behind the lens.

“Because of the camera’s perspective in this movie, there are times you see [Brown’s] body and hear his voice without seeing his face, so I thought I should find someone who wants to direct, who wants to participate in the process,” said Noé in V magazine. “When I met Nathan, he said that he wanted to study cinema and I immediately thought, he’s the perfect guy.”

Enter the Void is the model-turned-actor’s first feature film. For Brown, growing up home-schooled with a film-heavy curriculum attracted him to filmmaking: he lists John Hughes, Wes Anderson, and David Fincher as favourite directors. Having moved to New York at the age of 18 to pursue a career in directing, Brown was cast in editorials for i-D magazine and Barneys New York instead – consider it a stepping-stone into the industry. With his first role a success, Brown’s dreams are coming true.

John Hawkes

You probably don’t know John Hawkes by name, and his credits may not help (remember Pete Bottoms, Liquor Store Clerk, in From Dusk Till Dawn?). But a history of solid supporting roles has kept audiences engaged throughout his 25-year career. Born John Perkins, the 50-year-old actor’s recent TV roles are pure prime-time: Deadwood, Eastbound and Down, and Lost. He’s earning accolades, too: his performance in the movie Buttleman landed him the prize for Breakout Performance at the 2004 Sedona Film Festival. Now Hawkes’ current film, Winter’s Bone, is keeping audiences on edge with his gritty performance as Teardrop.

The Grand Jury Prize-winner at this year’s Sundance, Winter’s Bone begins with a family discovering their meth-dealing father put up their home to pay his jail bond, and to make matters worse, he’s gone missing. Determined to save her family from living on the streets, Ree Dolly, played by 19-year-old Jennifer Lawrence, journeys through Missouri’s Ozark Mountains in hunt of her father. She’s left to rely on her intimidating, drug-dealing uncle, Teardrop, as guide.

Despite his long resume, Hawkes has only been at Sundance a handful of times. But then, he’s got other things to keep him busy, from fronting folk-rock band King Straggler, to trying out different characters while hitchhiking across the country (if you see him on the side of the road, he’s unlikely to answer to “John”). But we’ll excuse his absence. Who can be upset with a man who so coyly sings, “Do you want to hold hands?”

Dax Shepard and Katie Aselton

Before Dax Shepard earned infamy as a small screen improv troublemaker on MTV’s Punk’d (he played the repo man who made Justin Timberlake cry), he spent eight years persistently auditioning for roles in tampon commercials (or so he likes to joke). But The Freebie, an ultra-low budget film, is propelling Shepard (and the film’s director) into indie-darling stardom. “It may be the only time I will be able to use the word ‘beautiful’ for a film I’m in,” tweeted Shepard.

The Freebie, written and directed by Katie Aselton (a former Miss Teen USA first-runner-up), was one of the buzz films at Sundance this year. The plot, inspired by conversations between Aselton and her friends, revolves around Darren and Annie (Shepard and Aselton), a happily married couple of seven years who have lost interest in having sex. To spice things up, they both agree to take one night off from their relationship and sleep with a stranger.

In real life, Shepard and Aselton are both in deeply committed relationships, no questions asked: Shepard is engaged to actress Kristen Bell (his When in Rome co-star) and Aselton is married to director Mark Duplass (his film Cyrus, starring Marisa Tomei and Jonah Hill, also premiered at the festival).

Critics considered Aselton’s first directorial debut a delight, proving that acclaim isn’t tied to a big budget. “Kevin Costner’s The Postman was really expensive and really sucky,” Aselton told indieWIRE online. “I attempted to do the exact opposite.”

Paz de la Huerta

Twenty-five-year-old Paz de la Huerta loves being promiscuous – on film, anyway. She played Donald Sutherland’s seductress maid in Fierce People, a sex-siren named Nude in The Limits of Control (alongside a blonde cowgirl Tilda Swinton), and Nico, a nympho in Choke (a film about a sex-addict con-man played by Sam Rockwell). Adding to the roster, Huerta did a cover and full editorial spread for 2009’s French Playboy. So it’s no surprise why Gaspar Noé chose Huerta to play Enter the Void’s salacious character Linda.

The film’s teaser – jarring bright lights that could almost cause a seizure – provides a lot of thematic foreshadowing. In Void, recently orphaned Oscar makes a life-long commitment to take care of his sister, Linda. But when Oscar’s drug-fuelled lifestyle spirals out of control, Linda needs to fend for herself. She becomes a stripper, with some forays into prostitution. Ultimately, it’s a story about emptiness and the things we’ll do to fill it.

The many euphoric moments in the film, from Oscar’s rapturous drug-trips to Linda’s sexual highs, weren’t easy to shoot: one 20-minute take required Huerta to portray sexual ecstasy that cascades into a full-fledged mental breakdown. And Huerta makes it look effortless. Maybe it’s the years of walking down runways for the likes of Zac Posen, or being trained by The Actors Studio, or starring in dozens of big and small screen roles that have made her so easy onscreen. But it doesn’t really matter, because Huerta has us seduced.

Juliette Lewis

It’s been a long time since Juliette Lewis moaned and growled her way through a cover version of PJ Harvey’s “Hardly Wait” in Strange Days. But the 36-year-old actress still nimbly balances her music and acting careers – fronting The New Romantiques and starring in several films a year – and marries them when she can.

No surprise, then, to hear Lewis co-stars Mark Ruffalo’s directorial debut, Sympathy for Delicious. Delicious is a dramatic and music-driven film about a paralyzed DJ who finds out he’s been given the gift of healing. “He takes his God-given gift and prostitutes it for sex, drugs, rock and roll, and fame,” explains Ruffalo in the Sundance Film Festival’s Meet The Artists video blog.

In the Dramatic Special Jury Prize-winning film, Lewis returns to familiar musical ingénue/druggie territory. She vamps on-stage and pops painkillers as Ariel Lee, the bassist in the band Burnt the Diplongs, alongside Orlando Bloom, who plays the self-important lead singer, The Stain. In the film, Ariel offers DJ “Delicious” Dean, played by writer and real-life paraplegic Christopher Thornton, the opportunity to exploit his talents by joining the Diplongs.

“It’s a super strange movie which I like, and I’m told I’m pretty good in it – Ha!” tweeted Lewis. But the icing on the cake is Lewis performing all the songs live, not a trace of lip-syncing or air guitar to be seen.

Diego Luna

In many ways, Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal are like Mexico’s Matt Damon and Ben Affleck: inseparable on and off film. The pair, who have been acting together since their adolescent days starring in telenovelas, now put out Sundance-approved flicks through their production company, Canana Film; their past successes include Rudo y Cursi and Sin Nombre. This year, Luna’s second outing as a director, Abel, has Bernal serving as executive producer. (Luna’s directorial debut was J.C. Chávez, a biopic about Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez.)

In the film, the audience is introduced to Abel, played by Christopher Ruíz-Esparza, a young boy newly released from a psychiatric ward. Once home, Abel has difficulties adjusting to the absence of his father, who walked out on the family. Solution: Abel takes on the role of patriarch – acting as father to his siblings, and as husband to his mother. But life gets complicated when, inevitably, his father returns home.

Though some scenes are mildly incestuous, the film is less disturbing than it is endearing, and features pitch-perfect performances from its young cast. We wouldn’t expect anything less from Luna; after all, he’s played everyone from a teenager experiencing a sexual awakening (Y tu mamá también) to a neurotic Michael Jackson impersonator (Mister Lonely). It seems Luna is a true Jack-of-all-trades: transitioning from actor to director and back, performing beautifully on both sides of the lens.