Though 2016 has been a straight-up abysmal year for the big studios, the smaller studios and specialty branches have been having a great year thus far. New masterworks likeSunset Song,Love & Friendship,Knight of Cups, andMountains May Departhave brought new fans to the bases ofTerrence Davies,Terrence Malick,Whit Stillman, andJia Zhang-ke. At the same time,The Fits,Weiner,The Love Witch,The Witch, andMen Go to Battlehave all announced startling new talents worthy of bigger budgets and more ambitious subject matter. Still, one must also note that directors likeDuncan Jones(Warcraft),John Hillcoat(Triple 9), andPaul Greengrass(Jason Bourne) have all put out the weakest work of their career this year.
Amongst those names would beYorgos Lanthimos, the staggeringly intelligent Greek auteur who blazed onto the scene withDogtooth, who came into a new wave of fans this year withThe Lobster, a clever but insubstantial tale of a world where people are matched up coldly by overseers or turned into wild animals. As a metaphor for the distancing between people in the digital age, it’s view is narrow and entirely biased; as a dark subversive fantasy, it’s not nearly as imaginative or visually stirring as it should be.
For those reasons alone, it’s great to hear that Lanthimos has just started production onThe Killing of a Sacred Deer, his next American film, in Cincinnati with co-starsColin FarrellandNicole Kidman. Andaccording to Indiewire, the film has a new addition to its cast, namelyCluelessstarAlicia Silverstone. The story revolves around Farrell’s character, Steven, ““a charismatic surgeon forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice after his life starts to fall apart, when the behaviour of a teenage boy he has taken under his wing turns sinister.”
Silverstone will play the mother of the unnamed boy while Kidman will play Steven’s wife, working from a script byEfthymis Filippou, Lanthimos' longtime collaborator. The story sounds less about clever conceit and more about the roots of pain and violence in emotional isolation, which is the bedrock ofDogtoothand Lanthimos' sophomore feature,ALPS. Here’s hoping the director’s next work edges more on the side of those films than cynical ballyhoos likeThe Lobster.
