Ever wonder what happened to Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson’s (“Show Me Love,” “Lilya 4-Ever”) English-language debut, “Mammoth,” which boasted a strong cast of Michelle Williams and Gael Garcia Bernal?
We sure did. It made it’s debut at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year in the winter, but was seemingly met with mediocre reviews and indifference.
Essentially the film sounded like it was taking global politics and turning them personal with heart-wrenching living room dilemmas.
A tale of families divided, the story begins in New York, where Leo (Gael Garcia Bernal) prepares to leave wife Ellen (Michelle Williams) and their 8-year old daughter for an extended business trip to Thailand. Busy with work, Ellen becomes increasingly dependent on Gloria, the family’s nanny, who is pining for her two little boys at home in the Philippines. With great attention to the complexities of human relationships and emotion, the stories and tremendous performances of MAMMOTH culminate in a stunning cinematic experience.
Now the film is getting its belated U.S. release on November 20 via IFC as announced as part of their fall schedule (via IndieWire). The film is actually playing the Hamptons International Film Festival this weekend where we hope to check it out early if we can make it up there in time.
Other films of note playing in the fall at the IFC center in New York (and presumably and hopefully on IFC On Demand for the rest of the country) are François Ozon’s (“Swimming Pool,” “8 Women”) latest, “Ricky” which will screen in the latter half of December and Corneliu Porumboiu’s “Police, Adjective” which will hit theaters on December 23 for a small, two-week run (sad to think that an award winner at Cannes basically amounts to two weeks screening time in the U.S. and that’s it).
Here’s the “Mammoth,” trailer for those that are curious. We know despite the lukewarm reviews, we’re still very interested.
As much as I love IFC for picking up these films, they kinda drop the ball on a lot of releases. I've lamented here and elsewhere their treatment of Christophe Honore's films.
Seems like they figured out they bungled the last one because the newly anglicized title "The Beautiful Person" (La Belle Personne) is getting re-released after a pitiful opening in New York in March. They didn't even have a poster, or a subtitled trailer, and with an indifferent NYTimes review, it predictably the film came and went. (In March they kept La Belle Personne as a title.)
For the October 28th re-release they're using the French poster, with the French title, and there's still no English trailer.
If you're going to spend the money to buy a film, why not cut a trailer, put up a poster and let people who aren't looking for the film find it? If IFC had been doing their job right Louis Garrell would be an art-house star, and be more than enough to sell this thing or his father's "Frontier Of Dawn," aslo dumped last Spring.
I doubt they'll be able to sell Mammoth either.
You really think another studio would release Mammoth or any of the films IFC picks up wider?
The fact of the matter is they push them as wide as can be that will make money.
There's not huge markets for these films unfortunately. Dumbasses across the country have proven this with their votes, i.e., their ticket purchases each box-office weekend.
Mammoth was garbage. I dont understand why any studio would want to release it.