Friday, July 14, 2017

Another New Solondz Film? The Quarters

Yes, in addition to Love Child and St Petersburg: A Category of Feelings, Todd Solondz is reported to be directing on even another film.  Called, The Quarters, this one seems to have a lot more in common with St. Petersburg, in that it's another collaborative film, where Solondz will just be writing and directing one segment, alongside several other filmmakers.  Also like St. Petersburg, this is another one centered around a particular city, in this case Jerusalem's Old City, with the title The Quarters referring to the city's four "quarters:" Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Armenian.

This movie is being filmed in conjunction with the The Jerusalem Film Festival, and the other three directors will be Anna Muylaert, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and Arsinee Khanjian (Atom Egoyan's wife, who usually acts in his films; this will be her first time directing).  The JFF's official website lists this as set to film in 2018 and be released in 2019.  Fingers crossed, considering St. Petersburg seems to have gone pretty much off the radar, as did the similar French project, À propos de Nice, la suite, which I've been waiting for since 1995.  But let's not be cynical, and instead look forward to seeing all four movies eventually. 

Monday, February 6, 2017

Up Next: Love Child

Every time Solondz mentions his difficulty finding funding, I worry that this is going to be his last film.  But Deadline has just posted a reassuring announcement about a new film, Love Child.  Solondz will be back writing and directing for Killer Films, who previously produced his Happiness, Storytelling and Wiener-Dog.  Penélope Cruz is set to star in the film, along with an actor named Edgar Ramírez.

The plot is described in the Deadline article as, "a dark and hilarious twist on the classic Oedipal theme. Story follows 11-year-old Junior, a delusional aspiring Broadway star with an inappropriate obsession with his mother Immaculada. After orchestrating an accident that nearly kills his abusive father, he encourages Nacho, the handsome man living in the family’s guesthouse, to court his mother and become his new dad. But when the two fall in love, Junior becomes so jealous that he is no longer the subject of his mother’s attention that he hatches a plan to frame Nacho for his father’s murder."  Sounds fun to me; reminds me of the 1972 Robert Klein film, Rivals.  There's already an IMDB page for the film, with a general 2018 release date.

Meanwhile, there's still no news on the Russian Petersburg film, which Solondz presumably wrapped on a couple years ago now.