Focus Features will certainly have a timely player in the race later this year in Tom Hooper's “The Danish Girl,” starring Eddie Redmayne. But the studio, which has seen great Oscar luck in recent years with films like “Dallas Buyers Club” and “The Theory of Everything,” will also be looking to find some room for Sara Gavron's drama “Suffragette,” centered on early members of the British women's suffrage movement of the turn of the 20th Century.
This one could also be seen as timely, given the current landscape of income inequality. The film was written (Abi Morgan), produced (Aloson Owen, Faye Ward) and directed by women as well, it should be noted. Meanwhile, it has also been tapped to open the BFI London Film Festival.
The way I hear it from someone who saw the movie back when it was being shopped around for a buyer, Carey Mulligan is the big play here as far as potential awards is concerned. (She's also in the hunt for early year release “Far from the Madding Crowd.”) And anyone holding out hope for this to be a “Meryl Streep movie”: she's barely in the film. Stick to “Ricki and the Flash” where her prospects are concerned.
Focus has released a trailer which you can read in the video embedded at the top of this post. The official synopsis is below.
“The stirring story centers on Maud (Mulligan), a working wife and mother whose life is forever changed when she is secretly recruited to join the U.K.'s growing suffragette movement. Galvanized by the outlaw fugitive Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep), Maud becomes an activist for the cause alongside women from all walks of life. When increasingly aggressive police action forces Maud and her dedicated fellow suffragettes underground, they engage in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with the authorities, who are shocked as the women”s civil disobedience escalates and sparks debate across the nation.”
“Suffragette” opens in theaters Oct. 23.