A look at ‘Dietland’
Dark comedy feels timely in the #MeToo era.
After five years of working as a director on movies like “Money Monster,” and TV series such as “Orange Is The New Black” and “Black Mirror,” Jodie Foster is finally back on the big screen.
In “Hotel Artemis,” which is set in a riot-torn Los Angeles of 2028, the actress plays the Nurse, a former physician who now exclusively patches up wounded criminals.
While Foster has always been known for her willingness to play gritty roles — see “Taxi Driver,” “The Accused” and “Silence of the Lambs” — “Hotel Artemis” allowed the actress to strip away any hint of glamour.
“I really wanted to do a physical transformation,” says Foster, 55. “I really wanted to feel that this was a different character than how you would normally see me. I thought that was important. I had to fight for it during production. It was not as popular as you might think.”
While some actresses might battle producers for more wardrobe changes and an increased hair-and-make-up budget, Foster was insistent that she look as drab and dingy as possible.
“There is something really extraordinary about seeing a character who has lived through so much,” says the actress. “She obviously was a terrible drinker. She lost her medical license because of that.
And she’s lived through the death of a child, and has been inside this awful, unhygienic place for the last 20 years, eating … takeaway tacos. There’s something beautiful about seeing the rawness of how that emotionally
plays on somebody’s body and the physicality of their face. I didn’t want to lose that.
It wasn’t just the chance of digging deep into her role which got Foster hooked on “Hotel Artemis,” which costars Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, Jeff Goldblum and Dave Bautista.
“The movie is so original,” Foster explains. “I don’t know about you, but I feel hungry for original content. I feel like feature films now are just rehashes of television shows, or the same old thing over and over again.
But there’s something really fresh about this (movie). (I like) the combination of an almost-nostalgia for Los Angeles and this retro/vintage kind of Wong Kar-wai world (in the middle) of a sci-fi, futuristic, dystopian, kickass film.”
As soon as she read the screenplay, Foster picked
up on the movie’s themes, which slyly encompass everything from wealth inequality and environmental issues, to police brutality and the runaway costs of health care.
“I’m so appreciative of this film, and (how it looks at) water in Los Angeles. What are we going to do when the water runs out? Is it just rich people that are going to have water?
(The movie also examines) the effect of police brutality and how that’s seeped
into the culture and the militarizing our police department. The inequalities between rich and poor: all of these things are in the movie, the new technologies in medicine … these concierge services where people are, like: ‘Oh, I’ve got money, so I’ll just have my own doctor.’ That’s what’s happening now.”
Foster is one of the few former child stars who has been able to enjoy a long and prestigious career as an adult actress. The two-time
Oscar winner is well aware of how lucky she’s been to be able to beat the odds.
“I started when I was 3,” she says. “When I was 15 or 16, my mom said: “Well, you know you’ll never be an actor when you grow up? Your career will be over by the time you’re 16 or 17. So what are you going to be after that?
So I went to college. Then I thought I would go to grad school and do all that, and then that changed (and I went back to acting.) Then my mom said: ‘You know, by the time you’re 40, your career will be over?’ So I’ve had a lot of time in my life where I just assumed I would do something else.”
In fact, Foster has done something else by pursuing an alternate career as a filmmaker. She made her directorial debut 27 years ago with “Little Man Tate” and has continued helming movies through the years. Over the course of her career, she’s seen lots of things change — and stay the same — in Hollywood.
“There’s been talk about (getting more) women directing for the last 15 years,” notes Foster. “When I first started in the film business, there were no women, period.
There was maybe a makeup artist, every once in a while, that I would see, or maybe a script supervisor, but there were no women anywhere. It was me and a bunch of guys, which was great.
I had great fathers and brothers that really are a part of my education as a filmmaker. And then, little by little, that changed — very little by little.
For some reason, directing is the last thing to change. There’s always been more women directors in Europe, and now there are increasingly more women directors on television. But in the feature world, especially the mainstream feature world, it is still really tough.”