It’s been slow going for James Gray‘s period epic “The Immigrant.” The film, which stars Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner, debuted at this year’s Cannes Film Festival where it played in competition, but since then there hasn’t been much news. The Weinstein Company is scheduled to handle domestic distribution, but didn’t schedule the lengthy historical drama for awards consideration (it’s coming out Spring 2014 instead), and aside from a few festival presentations, remains largely unseen. Thankfully a November 27th release date is still planned for France, which has provided us with the first-ever trailer for the film.
In short: the movie just looks gorgeous (read our review from Cannes here). In the film, Cotillard plays a woman immigrating to New York City in the ’20s. While in line to finalize the process, her sister is rejected, and sent back home to Poland. She then struggles with finding a way to get her sister to America, first falling under the spell of Bruno (Phoenix), who gets her into prostitution, and then his cousin Emil (Renner), who also promises to return her sister to her.
Sure, the love triangle looks arch and dramatic but the real star of this trailer is Darius Khondji‘s lush, honeyed cinematography that gives off an earthy, almost “Heaven’s Gate” vibe. It looks like the kind of movie that you can just wrap yourself up in and we’re now kicking ourselves repeatedly in the balls for missing it when it recently played the New York Film Festival.
The trailer is subtitled in French and slightly NSFW, with a flash of bare breasts and this exchange between prostitutes: Prostitute 1: “It’ll take a lot of money to get her out of here,” Prostitute 2: “Or a lot of fucking.” It’s an interesting turn for Gray, whose last film “Two Lovers” was a modern-day tragic love triangle that also starred Phoenix, and we can’t wait to see the results. Recent posters for the film can be seen here. Spring 2014 can’t come soon enough. [via Elle]
