‘Serena’ Starring Jennifer Lawrence & Bradley Cooper Premiering at BFI Film Festival
How about some non-photo-leak news with Jennifer Lawrence now? In one of the surprise announcements for a film that has long been delayed: Serena, starring Lawrence and Bradley Cooper and directed by Susanne Bier (of indie darling After the Wedding), will make its world premiere at the BFI Film Festival in London this October.
The film will be screening with other major awards contenders and prestige pictures, such as The Imitation Game and Fury (those two films will be opening and closing the festival), as well as other festival hot picks like Whiplash, Foxcatcher, and Rosewater among many others (see a full list with tons of titles at the article on Playlist).
There was some speculation as to whether the film would screen at another festival earlier, such as Telluride or Toronto, but the announcements for films being screened came and went without mention. Bier actually directed the film back in Spring of 2012; Cooper and Lawrence have subsequently acted in American Hustle since (this being after their first romantic pairing in Silver Linings Playbook) while Bier has been tinkering with the final cut over two years.
Bier’s adaptation (by screenwriter Christopher Kyle of 2004’s Alexander) of the by Ron Rash is a melodrama about George and Serena Pemberton who move to North Carolina in 1930’s depression-era America and start a lumber company and to which Serena shows herself the equal of any man. When Serena discovers she cannot bear children, she decides to exact revenge on George, who has fathered an illegitimate child, by killing his son.
Possibly heavy stuff, and about a subject that isn’t immediately something audiences would flock to see – timber, after all – but it has two more than appealing stars who have clear chemistry. The suspicious thing about the screening is how it’s being quickly shuffled in to this schedule, despite so many other heavy-hitters screening, right before its UK theatrical run starting October 24th (it currently has no release for the US planned or a distributor, but this may change following the BFI screening).
More on this as it develops, preferably with a trailer soon.
