Charlize Theron and Diablo Cody on Tully
Entretien avec l’actrice Charlize Theron et la scénariste du film Tully.
La comédie dramatique Tully, en salles le 27 juin, scelle les retrouvailles du réalisateur Jason Reitman et de la scénariste Diablo Cody, après les succès de Juno et de Young Adult. L’actrice sud-africaine Charlize Theron y campe Marlo, une jeune quadra au bout du rouleau qui vient d’avoir son troisième enfant et décide, à contrecoeur, de faire appel à une nounou de nuit. Rencontre.
Two years ago, screenwriter Diablo Cody was in the middle of trying to write “a very big, commercial, four-quadrant movie” when she gave birth to her third child. After her first two kids, she had gotten back in the groove of work, but this time, shattered by exhaustion, she felt herself floundering both as a writer and as a parent. Cody, 39, had always been dismissive of the idea of hiring a night nanny, thinking, she says, “the least I can do is wake up with my baby.” But this time she decided to enlist someone to help 1. screenwriter scénariste / four-quadrant movie film susceptible de plaire aux quatre catégories démographiques ciblées par les studios (hommes/femmes de plus et de moins de 25 ans) / groove ici, rythme / shattered ici, brisé / exhaustion fatigue extrême, épuisement / to flounder être en difficulté / to be dismissive of dédaigner / to hire (sin. to enlist) embaucher, engager / to help her over the hump... pour l'aider à surmonter… (over the hump avoir fait le plus dur) / her over the hump of sleep deprivation. The experience was revelatory.
2. The big studio project fell away and the idea for another, more personal story began gestating in Cody’s mind — an idea that would eventually grow into the new film Tully. In Tully, Charlize Theron stars as Marlo, an overburdened middle-aged mother of three whose life is turned upside down in unexpected ways when her wealthy brother (Mark Duplass) offers to hire a young night nanny (Mackenzie Davis) to help care for her newborn daughter. Deliberately discomfiting and shot through with dark humor, the film marks Cody’s third collaboration with director Jason Reitman after the 2007 teen-pregnancy hit Juno and 2011’s darkly comic Young Adult, which also starred Theron.
UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS
3. Even as she was writing Tully, Cody was well aware that a film that portrays a mother who is barely holding it together — and that tackles uncomfortable questions of how class intersects with parenting — threatened
to touch a third rail in movies. “In TV, I’ve definitely noticed that people are more willing to embrace the flawed female protagonist, but there’s still something about the mother,” she says. “We can deal with an unlikable woman who’s freaking out. But if she’s freaking out on children, we’re out.”
4. For evidence of the risks, Cody needed to look no further than her own resume. While Juno proved a runaway hit, grossing $231 million worldwide and earning Cody an Oscar for original screenplay, Young Adult — whose central character, an acerbic alcoholic divorcee, proved off-putting to many viewers — failed to connect with a large audience.
THE MYTH OF THE SUPERMOM
5. Still, as raw and edgy as Cody’s script seemed, when Reitman first sent a copy to Theron, the actress immediately connected with it as a single mom of two young adopted children. “I had just come out of my dark tunnel,” Theron says. “My little one was 6 months old and she had just moved out of sleeping in my room and was slowly starting to sleep through the night.”
6. In a culture that often expects women to present a soft-focus image of maternal perfection to the world, Theron knew a film delving into the emotional minefield of motherhood had the potential to strike a chord. “We’re so honest about everything — we share what medication we take, what happens in our bedrooms — but we don’t talk necessarily about this stuff,” says the actress, who gained nearly 50 pounds for the role. Both as the father of a young daughter and as a filmmaker drawn to flawed, messy characters, Reitman was similarly excited by the prospect of probing some of the darker corners of child-rearing.
TARGETING MOTHERS
7. Focus Features, which is releasing Tully, has made a particular effort to target mothers in its marketing campaign for the film. In the run-up to its release, Tully has stirred concerns from some that the film does not treat Marlo’s postpartum mental-health struggles with sufficient seriousness and nuance. “Motherhood is hard, yes, but it is not this,” Diana Spalding, a midwife and pediatric nurse, wrote in a piece on the website Motherly.
8. But Cody believes that the film, which has received largely positive reviews since its debut at the Sundance Film Festival, will resonate with many mothers who rarely see the challenges of parenthood dealt with honestly onscreen. “I’ve had so many moms reach out to me who’ve only seen the trailer, saying, ‘I’ve been waiting for this movie,’” Cody says.
9. In the three films he’s made with Cody, all of them centered on female characters, Reitman sees a clear thematic through-line. “All the films deal with this feeling of being unsure of where you are in the arc of your lifetime,” he says. Juno is about growing up a little too fast. Young Adult is about maybe growing up a little too slow. And Tully is about that moment where you have to say goodbye to a portion of your childhood but you’re not sure if you’re ready for where you are in this moment.”
MALE DIRECTOR
10. Though some might ask whether a female director would have been a better fit for a film about the complexities of motherhood, Theron pushes back against that idea. “What makes it really beautiful is that Jason is searching for the truth of what it feels like to be a woman,” she says. “We need that. We have to be careful that we don’t throw a general blanket on what a female story should look like or who should make it.”
11. Having dredged Tully out of her own most difficult moments as a mother, Cody is now eager to see how the film’s story — which unfolds in unexpected ways the filmmakers have been careful not to spoil — will resonate with parents and nonparents alike. “It’s the type of movie that you want people to discover and interpret. You don’t want to give everything away.”