Interview: Julie Delpy on the ideal way to watch the "Before" trilogy

Julie Delpy speaking in West Hollywood in NovemberStargazing sometimes leads us to believe that we really know the faces who act out our human dramas onscreen. Or that we know the characters they portray as if they were neighbors. It’s a false intimacy and a fantasy, fiction being fiction and strangers being strangers, but sometimes the illusion is too perfect to deny. Such is the case with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke as Celine and Jessie in the “Before…”  trilogy. The actors cowrote and costarred in the decades spanning trilogy under the guidance of Director Richard Linklater and the films, perfectly spaced out every nine years, have allowed audiences to age along with them, which has only added to their ephemeral mystique. The films are grounded in reality through their short single day stories and long takes - real life happens one day at a time and without a lot of fussy crosscutting – and the only fantastical element is that every day conversations are rarely this thrilling and this wide ranging and this funny simultaneously for 90 minutes straight without some dud moment or mundane distraction breaking the spell. For that kind of perfection you need miraculous writing and great acting.

Julie Delpy is not, of course, Celine. And though I know this as I settle into our conversation over the telephone I’m temporarily stunned when she, unasked, repeats her trilogy’s most famous line when I bring up the ending to Before Sunset (2004, for which she won a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination though not, tragically, the Best Actress nod she deserved as its companion). She sounds just like Celine… only somehow not...

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Team FYC: Keith Stanfield, Best Supporting Actor

In this series Film Experience contributors sound off (individually) on their favorite fringe awards contenders. Here's Matthew Eng on Keith Stanfield from "Short Term 12" (who was recently Spirit nominated)

Chief among the achievements of Destin Cretton’s Short Term 12 is an early, two-minute scene in which Keith Stanfield’s Marcus, a sullen, soft-voiced, 18-year-old intake on the verge of being released from the film’s titular foster care facility, shares a self-penned rap with Mason (John Gallagher Jr.), one of the center’s supervisors. What unfolds remains, still, the single most heartbreaking moment I’ve seen onscreen this year, as Marcus launches into an unforgiving tirade against the abusive mother who raised him, that soon transitions into a harrowing lament about the unwavering, angering pain of being born into a broken life.

Look into my eyes so you know what it’s like
To live a life not knowing what a normal life’s like”

It's unshakable, shattering stuff, further enhanced by the beautifully-felt efforts of Stanfield, who wrote the rap himself and whose striking, breakout turn remains one of the year's most egregiously undersung performances. It’s easy to imagine all the ways in which the “Young Actor Playing a Troubled Youth in a Social Drama”-model could potentially go wrong: sometimes, steadfast commitment to the “troubled” aspect threatens to render the character one-note; other times, it’s as if the performer has chosen to play the shameless summoner of unmitigated audience sympathy, rather than an actual character. Instead of falling into either of these traps, Stanfield commits whole-heartedly to unveiling each and every complicated layer of Marcus without ever seeming bent on becoming something akin to the underdog worth rooting for. Stanfield is brilliant at navigating and detailing the character’s rocky emotional landscape and prickly persona, whether he’s snapping at Rami Malek’s “new guy” Nate over a dim comment about “underprivileged kids,” rushing to hostile extremes with Kevin Rodriguez’s antagonistic Luis, or allowing his lanky frame to buckle under the weight of suppressed emotional anguish during an impromptu haircut. Marcus’ surly toughness, deep-concealed heartache, and quiet introversion may be his foremost traits, but it’s to Stanfield’s credit that we also get to glimpse a softer, breezier, and funnier side of Marcus, as when he playfully converses with his housemates or cheekily exposes two counselors’ semi-secret relationship via rap.

That Cretton ultimately leads Marcus to something of a narrative dead-end is an unfortunate outcome, albeit one that in no way diminishes the impact of Stanfield’s concentrated and compelling work throughout Short Term 12. He fully and frequently grounds the movie, rooting it in remarkable truthfulness and bold emotionality, helping us locate the beautiful, gently-beating heart that sits firmly at its center.

Previously on Team FYC

Podcast: Spirited Spirit Discussion

In this week's episode,  Nick channels that THR Hollywood Actress Roundtable (previously live-blogged) and Nathaniel, Katey, and Joe join in but eventually it comes around to this week's topic: Spirit Award nominations.

We haven't seen all the films but the best thing about the Spirit Awards is advocacy for smaller titles you might not be familiar with. Are they shirking that privilege and responsibility with the focus on so many future Oscar nominees in the last few years? The discussion includes but is not limited to: Inside Llewyn Davis, Afternoon Delight, Mud, Upstream Color, Frances Ha, Fruitvale Station, All is Lost, Computer Chess, Short Term 12, Blue Caprice, and Spring Breakers.

You can listen at the bottom of the post or download it on iTunes. Join in the conversation in the comments.

Spirit Awards Nomination Chat

Team FYC: In a World... for Best Original Screenplay

In this series Team Experience sounds off (individually) on their favorite fringe Oscar contenders. Here's Tim Brayton asking you to consider "In a World..." The Spirit Awards did, nominating it in this very category...

What’s a talented comic actress with no good parts coming her way supposed to do, anyway? If you answered, “write herself a damn starring role, already”, then you’re on the same page as Lake Bell, the immensely likable and talented star of the TV series Childrens Hospital, making her feature debut as writer, producer, and director with In a World… Though for all her hypens, it’s as screenwriter that Bell most impresses with this project, a hugely ambitious affair all around despite how utterly low-key and normal it all feels.

There are three things happening here all at once, and the script pays equal attention to all of them. First, In a World… is a conventionally satisfying romantic comedy, with the added benefit of having interesting people who act like human adults and have interests and personalities far beyond “if I’m not in a relationship THIS EXACT MINUTE, I will die, and also I am a failure as a woman". Second, it’s one of the best peeks inside the movie industry we’ve gotten in a lot of years, attending with focus and what feels like a great deal of authenticity to the world of trailer voice-over artists, paying tribute to their skills and lightly mocking them for the puffed-up egos common to all actors. Thirdly, and most impressively given the things mainstream cinema likes to talk about in 2013, it’s a cutting investigation into how gender is experienced both in culture generally and in traditionally male-dominated industries. Not just because of the expected “arrg, girls can’t narrate trailers!” plotline, but in how it anticipates and subverts the way we expect to see these people behaving, given the film’s generic requirement, and in Bell’s pet-observation about “sexy babies”, and how women are encouraged by the media and society to diminish themselves and their autonomy.

Heavy-duty stuff, treated with a light, wry tone that gets all of its ideas across without ever forgetting that first and above all, this is a comedy, and it needs to be both funny and fun. There’s no doubt that In a World… is both of those things, and insightful and truthful along with; it looks and acts like a lightweight confection, but it has more ideas packed into its tidy frame than the most wordy and self-important prestige pictures would know what to do with.

previous FYCs  Costume Design Lawrence Anyways | Sound Mixing in World War Z  | Cameron Diaz in The Counsellor | Spectacular Now for Best Picture | MakeUp for Warm Bodies 

Spirit Award Nominations. Discuss!

Oscar Best Picture hopefuls 12 Years a Slave and Nebraska ruled the Spirit Award nominations this afternoon with seven and six nominations respectively. All is Lost was a distant third place with 4 nominations. A bunch of other critical darlings managed 3 or less in a year that seemed to be about spreading the wealth... as least at the nomination stage. (Nominations for Enough Said but NOT Julia Louis-Dreyfuss in it. Hmmm. Best Feature for Frances Ha but only one other nomination? Curious though at least it was for the very deserving editing.

Complete list of nominees is after the jump... 

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