Intense is the word I was left with after watching the trailer for William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth. I still can’t shake it.
(Warning, there are instances of domestic abuse in the trailer.)
With a title like Lady Macbeth you probably know what to expect from this film but that didn’t stop me from gasping and feeling actual panic during the course of this trailer. I can only imagine what the whole film will be like. The film is based on the 1865 novel Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov, though the new setting is England.
Rural England, 1865. Katherine (Florence Pugh) is stifled by her loveless marriage to a bitter man twice her age, and his cold, unforgiving family. When she embarks on a passionate affair with a young worker on her husband’s estate, a force is unleashed inside her so powerful that she will stop at nothing to get what she wants.
The adaptation as scripted by Alice Birch and Oldroyd worked in British theater prior to directing this, his first full-length feature. The two met through their agent and she was the one who gave him the book.
“I knew similar literature of the period which focused on strong female protagonists but what made it stand out was that unlike other heroines of that period she was neither passive nor suicidal but rather proactive and audacious,” Oldroyd told Filmmaker Magazine earlier this year. “It was so refreshing and ‘modern’ to find a female lead character who kicked back against the stifling patriarchy rather than suffering in silence.”
The film has already been making its way around the film circuit to rave reviews but should be released in New York and Los Angeles on June 2, 2017. It stars Florence Pugh, Naomi Ackie, Cosmo Jarvis, Paul Hilton, Chris Fairbank, Golda Rosheuvel, and Rebecca Manly.
(Via Yahoo)
