Here’s your first look at Todd Solondz‘s “Life During Wartime,” his first feature-length film since “Palindromes” in 2004 and said to be a quasi-sequel of sorts to 1998’s “Happiness.”
The pictures feature Allison Janney, Paul “Pee-Wee Herman” Reuben, Ciarán Hinds, Ally Sheedy and Shirley Henderson. Not pictured, but still in the film are Charlotte Rampling, Michael Kenneth Williams, Michael Lerner and Paris Hilton (though curiously enough she’s not listed on the IMDB page; not that they’re completely fallible or anything, but when someone gets mentioned in the trades…).
Man, Paul Reubens and Shirley Henderson look positively creepy in these stills. Wonder what kind of dark depravity he’ll have the characters up to this time? (We have the script and started reading it, but… we set it down as it presumed you remembered everything about “Happiness”).
The film makes its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, will also make its North American debut at the Toronto International Film Festival and will later appear at the New York Film Festival. No U.S. distributor has been announced as of yet, but presumably someone will pick it up after it screens at one of these festivals. “Palindromes” received a very limited release, but presumably the ensemble cast of strong character actors will have wider appeal. According to TIFF, Solondz revisits the “unsettling terrain [of ‘Happiness’] with new maturity.”