After breaking out with his acting debut in “After School,” Ezra Miller reaffirmed his talent to the film world last year with Lynne Ramsey‘s “We Need To Talk About Kevin” where he went toe-to-toe with Tilda Swinton. While he was briefly linked to the failed blockbuster “Akira” project, Miller continues to make interesting choices, now lining up a starring role in an adaptation of Gustave Flaubert‘s “Madame Bovary” opposite Mia Wasikowska, with Paul Giamatti also confirmed. Update 09/30/13: Logan Marshall-Green (“Prometheus“), Olivier Gourmet (“The Son“) and Laura Carmichael (“Downton Abbey”) have joined the cast.
Helmed by “Cold Souls” director Sophie Barthes from a script by Rose Barreneche, the film centers on a doctor’s wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Miller will play a lover of Wasikowska’s Bovary with Giamatti’s role unknown. Previous reports revealed that Barthes’ take will be a “fresh retelling emphasizing the more youthful and contemporary themes” which was a similar sort of philosophy behind Cary Fukunaga‘s “Jane Eyre” though we’re still unsure whether Barthes will go for that approach or simply a modern take on the source material.
Another Wasikowska-starrer involving classic fiction, meanwhile, is Richard Ayoade‘s “The Double” which has rounded out its cast with “Submarine” leading lady Yasmin Page, co-star Noah Taylor as well as James Fox and Wallace Swan all jumping on board the modern take of Dostoyevsky‘s doppelganger novella.
Jesse Eisenberg reportedly goes Armie Hammer on us playing two seperate roles for the story of an ineffectual clerk who becomes threatened by the introduction of an intensely charismatic doppelganger. The film was previously noted to be transplanting the story to a contemporary American setting (though, lensing is taking place in London) and, as opposed to a direct adaptation, would be centring on the “descent into madness.”
The combination of Ayoade, Eisenberg and Wasikowska is enough to sell our ticket let alone. Filming begins on May 20th. [Deadline]
Is Ezra Miller pouting his lips in that photo? Mia Wasikowska's smile looks frozen and Richard Ayoade doesn't convince me with his humble geek maneuvers. Submarine was not bad despite that a lot of it had already been done but going for Dostoyevsky now sounds just about as idealess and pretentious as I imagine the man.
I'm really looking forward to The Double. I thought Submarine was pretty great, a dazzling debut, but I have this gut feeling that Ayoade is capable of more. I really hope The Double delves into some dark places. I don't mean that in the sense of it becoming quite a tedious examination of mental illness. If anything, and maybe this is a long shot, but I hope the end result is something tragicomic like a Roy Andersson movie. I think Ayoade will craft something quite distinctly his own though.
Classic literatures need to go contemporary to be accepted by modern tastes box office, or meanwhile modern stories hardly get such in depth. At least the bunch of actors are not bad. Ezra Miller also appeared in Another Happy Day.