We Can't Wait! #11: "A Bigger Splash"
Team Experience is counting down our 15 most anticipated for 2015. Here's Nathaniel...
Who & What: No, kids. NOT the watery pop art David Hockney painting. Not even the highly naked 70s era fictionalized bio sprung from that painting, though we'd happily see that too should someone screen it. (Curators?) What it is is FINALLY the Luca Gaudagino follow up to I Am Love which topped our charts when it was released in 2010. That film's inimitable star Tilda Swinton and its gifted cinematographer Yorick Le Saux (Only Lovers Left Alive) and editor Walter Fasano are all returning. New collaborators are production designer Maria Djurkovic (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Imitation Game), Dakota Johnson untied, and two of the best male screen actors in the world in Ralph Fiennes and Matthias Schoenaerts.
Here's the only photo that I'm aware of from the set:
Why We're Excited About It: Swinton and Fiennes hinted at fabulous chemistry in Grand Budapest Hotel in their ultra brief screentime together. They're playing ex-lovers this time -- with Tilda married to Schoenaerts so just those names all smooshed together in a daisy chain sound like a bodice ripper for art film fans. The characters all collide on vacation in Italy including Fiennes screen daughter (Dakota Johnson) and things get... well, no spoilers but there's obviously TROUBLE and that trouble is at least somewhat sexual. It's adapted from La Piscine (1969) a French film starring the beauteous coupling of Alain Delon & Romy Schneider. If you want spoilers, go there.
What if It All Goes Wrong: Guadagnino has been doing shorts and documentaries for the past several years after I Am Love, just as he had before that international breakthrough. Following up a masterpiece is never easy. It's probably not safe to expect something that brilliant again though we wish him enormous success so he might finally get that proposed remake of Auntie Mame with Tilda in the leading role made after all. Another concern: Margot Robbie was originally cast in Dakota's part and, ,apologies to Dakota, but that feels like a downgrade on the evidence of what we've seen so far from both of them.
When: Fox Searchlight has distribution rights for America and filming has wrapped so we'd expect a TIFF or Telluride bow followed by a November or December release if people are wild for it. But you never know. I Am Love did Venice and TIFF in 2009 and then waited until summer of 2010 for release.
previously in We Can't Wait, Kate Winslet in The Dressmaker
Reader Comments (13)
Thank you for posting this. I have been eagerly waiting to hear more about this from the first moment I heard of it. Can't wait.
I've been intrigued by some of the We Can't Waits so far, but this is the first one for me that's truly a Can't Wait.
I think you're underselling Fiennes when you say he's one of the best male screen actors in the world. I definitely can't wait.
Wait, is this a Bonjour Tristesse reboot? Dakota Johnson will be fine as the teenage daughter as Margot Robbie projects more mature, although I'm getting more interested in her performances. Really looking forward to this for so many reasons! Huge fan of I am Love! And Tilda, and Ralph, and Italy.
Yes, please, NOW.
I am looking forward to this. I love Swinton, Fiennes and Schoenaerts.
WHY WAS THIS NOT ON MY RADAR!? This sounds beyond fantastic
Yes, yes, yes, all of this. Cannot wait.
And going from Margot Robbie to Dakota Johnson is a total downgrade. We better brace ourselves tho, Hollywood is gonna be aggressive in trying to make her happen within the next couple years. I mean, she's already hosted SNL within a month of her FIRST big film being a hit. Like wtf, it's already started.
Here's hoping for what looks to be only the beginning of many collaborations to come between La Swinton & Guadagnino.
Love the spelling of Alain Deloin (yum, yum). That really is a better description of him in that era. The critic Anne Billson did a recent post on men in film who were utterly beautiful, inspired by Alain Delon.
I think Schoenaerts must be playing the Delon part, and Dakota Johnson playing the Jane Birkin part.
Swinton, Fiennes, Schoenaerts, and... Johnson?
One of these things is not like the other... hope she doesn't ruin the film.
Just seen Fiennes on stage here in London, and am more in love with him than ever.
Filmed last summer in my island, Pantelleria :D Very proud