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Tag: The Two Faces of January

  • Viggo Mortensen Begins Venice With “Far From Men” Tomorrow, Then Off To Toronto

    Viggo Mortensen has been dominating the international film festivals this year. Already his movie The Two Faces of January, made waves at the Berlin film festival in February with an 84% critic approval according to Rotten Tomatoes, and Indiewire reported that Magnolia Pictures made a deal to distribute the movie in the United States.

    Then in May, Jauja was released at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard category and managed to claim the FIPRESCI Prize. In September, it moves on promisingly to the Toronto and New York Film Festivals. “Lisandro Alonso has created a work of immense beauty and power that will be studied and talked about and adored for years to come,” Ryan Krivoshey of Cinema Guild told Indiewire, “It’s a film that needs to be seen by as wide an audience as possible and that’s exactly what we intend to do.”

    The movie is set in the 1880s during a genocidal war in Patagonia, but you wouldn’t know that from watching the unconventional trailer:

    Tomorrow, however, marks the beginning of the Venice Film Festival. Mortensen has yet another film in the festival’s opening line up of French language movies, according to Deadline. The David Oelhoffen directed Far From Men will premiere in Venice and then move on to the Toronto International Film Festival in a Special Presentation berth.

    Will Mortensen be in an English language film ever again? The star is currently filming Captain Fantastic, which doesn’t come out until next year. With Steve Zahn, Frank Langella, Kathyrn Hahn, Missi Pyle, and Erin Moriarty, it is sure to be in English, especially since it is set in the Pacific Northwest.

    The Two Faces of January, mentioned above, also is in English. According to Magnolia Pictures’s website, Americans can expect it to be released in theaters September 26th, but you can watch it on demand with iTunes starting on Thursday.

  • Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst in New Thriller

    Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst brought an Alfred Hitchcock-inspired thriller to life at the Berlin Film Festival this past week. The Two Faces of January premiered at the festival Tuesday, and also stars Oscar Isaac. This films marks the directorial debut of Iranian-British screenwriter Hossein Amini, known for writing the 2011 blockbuster Drive.

    The film is based on a novel written by the late Patricia Highsmith. The U.S. crime writer was best known for penning The Talented Mr. Ripley. Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst star as an American couple–Chester and Colette–who are on vacation in Greece. After catching the eye of a Greek tour guide named Rydal–played by Oscar Isaac–the film takes a sudden turn. Soon murder, mystery and a love triangle all take center stage.

    Mortensen says he was a huge fan of Highsmith and loved the ‘film noir aspects of the story.’

    “It’s a term that’s thrown around a lot — it needs to have shadows, it needs to be black and white,” he said. “The only thing I would say is that the characters need to lie and lose, and it needs to end badly for everyone.”

    He also believes in order for there to be intrigue, that all characters should have secrets.

    “That’s what the story’s generally about: the masks, and the masks fall away, and what you end up seeing about these people is often ugly and embarrassing,” he said. “But when it’s well done, when the thriller aspect works in terms of storytelling, no matter how badly they behave you’re on their side somehow. You don’t want the cops to catch them.”

    The Two Faces of January garnered mixed reviews at the Berlin Film Festival last week. The Daily Telegraph called it an “elegantly pleasurable period thriller, a film of tidy precision and class”. But movie website Indiewire summed it up as a “competent disappointment”. It will be very interesting to learn how it does back home in U.S. theaters.

    Image via YouTube