Film Bridge Intl. is currently shopping a new picture around Cannes called “The Jesuit.” From director Paul Schrader, the film is an ensemble that follows a wrongly imprisoned man who seeks vengeance when he learns his wife’s been murdered and his son’s been kidnapped. Said vengeance apparently involves a lethal suicide mission into the heart of Mexico. Paz Vega, Willem Dafoe, Oscar Isaac and Michelle Rodriguez are in talks to star.
Schrader’s had an interesting couple of years since the critically-lauded “Auto Focus” in 2002. After toiling on an “Exorcist” prequel that was completely reshot by different directors, he made the little-seen gigolo thriller “The Walker” before segueing into one of the oddest films of the past few years, “Adam Resurrected.” You must see this movie. Jeff Goldblum plays a Holocaust survivor so traumatized by being forced to act like a dog for the pleasure of a Nazi officer (Dafoe) that it’s now part of his laundry list of sexual fetishes. It’s… something else.
Schrader’s talked about this film before, and with this announcement, it looks like, pending financing, it will be his next film. Afterwards, it looks like he’ll finally head East for the Bollywood thriller “Xtreme City,” which he’s described as something of a response to “Slumdog Millionaire.” Like it or not, it’s hard to avoid the fact that Schrader is one of the last relevant names of the seventies filmmaker boom, and to not want to follow him wherever he goes next kinda runs counter to the idea of loving cinema.