Ever Moore complex
‘Wedding’ showcases real-life parallels for iconic actress
Julianne Moore has no trouble playing complicated, real women — as she does in Friday’s heartbreaking “After the Wedding.”
At 58, Moore ranks among the few bankable female stars who have no reservations playing mothers of grown children, powerful businesswomen or as in her Oscar-winning “Still Alice,” an Alzheimer’s patient.
In “Wedding,” Moore’s Theresa Young is a corporate CEO at a crisis point.
As her daughter is to be married in an elaborate wedding, Theresa summons a stranger from India, Isabel (Michelle Williams), to discuss funding her orphanage.
Theresa and Moore share obvious parallels: Both began with nothing and achieved extraordinary success.
“I love that aspect of Theresa,” Moore acknowledged. “She is somebody who desired to do a company and have a family and managed to do both.
“I wanted to do that — and I think now, ‘Oh man, I’ve got a 21-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter.’
“I was back in Boston at the Coolidge Corner and at BU (where she was a theater major). I talked about the things that influenced me, the revival houses in Cambridge, and I was thinking, ‘How did this happen?’ ”
“Wedding” is a familial collaboration. The film’s writer-director is Bart Freundlich, her husband of 23 years.
He adapted Suzanne Bier’s Danish Oscar-nominated film of the same name.
“We produced this together, too, which was a first for me. I was involved in developing the script and as a producer I contacted Michelle,” Moore revealed.
Working professionally with your spouse is “a creative partnership. But it is different. I turn it off when I go home and Bart can’t. For the director it never stops.”
Bier’s 2006 original is quite different with two men in the roles Moore and Williams play.
“It started because Bart wanted to do an American adaptation and he didn’t want to diminish it by just doing a copy.”
When Moore hinted she would be interested in the role, “He did a re-imagining. By making the characters female he’s wrapped up the drama and the choices. It’s a much more deliberate decision when a woman is doing this.”
“Wedding” she calls, “A meditation on life and the choices you make and what’s important at the end of the day. It comes down to the people you love, the children you want to help grow up. It’s also about the beauty of life.”