I’m still not sure whether Silver Linings Playbook was actually any good, or if I was just so taken with the idea that Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence might f*ck that I was willing to put up with anything. They’d be the perfect inaugural pair for the beta for F*ckstarter, our proposed crowdsourcing platform that would pay attractive celebrities we’d like to see together to bang. The makers of Serena apparently knew this, which is why Lawrence and Cooper have been reunited for some kind of classy period piece about timber and hawks.
The film follows newlyweds George (Cooper) and Serena Pemberton (Lawrence) who travel from Boston to the mountains of North Carolina where they begin to build a timber empire in 1929. Serena soon shows herself to be the equal of any man: overseeing crews, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving a man’s life in the wilderness. Together, this king and queen rule their dominion, killing or vanquishing all who stand in the way of their ambitions. But when Serena learns that she can never bear a child, she sets out to murder the woman who bore George a son before his marriage. And when she starts to suspect that George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons’ intense, passionate marriage begins to unravel as the story moves toward its shocking reckoning.
The project, completed in 2012 and acquired by Magnolia, who haven’t set a US release, was initially set to be directed by Darren Aronofsky, who dropped out and was replaced by Susanne Bier, an award-winning Danish director who I nonetheless remember solely as the director Lars Von Trier trashed when he was comparing himself to Hitler, saying “I don’t have anything against Jews, except Susanne Bier.” One of the best quotes of all time, she should be proud to have been a part of it.
Anyway, this looks… overwrought. But the trailer also sort of implies that Jennifer Lawrence trained that hawk to steal Bradley Cooper’s bastard child, which, if true, would be so awesome that I’d let off Roman candles inside the theater.