Reitman, Cody reunite for another chapter
Collaborators on Juno and Young Adult return for coming-of-age tale
Every five years or so, Montreal-born director Jason Reitman teams up with screenwriter Diablo Cody to take stock of their feelings and fears about life, then render their struggles with identity onto the big screen.
“We started what will hopefully be a lifetime filmmaking journey in which we are partners, in which we are telling kind of the story of our lives,” Reitman said in a recent interview at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox theatre. “We’re around the same age, and we’re experiencing similar things.
“The idea of closing one chapter and opening another is very much on our minds.”
Both now parents, Reitman and Cody have reunited for Tul
ly, set to hit theatres Friday, marking the latest instalment of a perhaps unintentional coming-of-age trilogy about extended adolescence.
The dramedy follows Charlize Theron’s beleaguered Marlo as she wades through the trials and tedium of raising two kids and a newborn, until a sprightly 26-year-old night nanny named Tully, played by Vancouver-born actress Mackenzie Davis, swoops in to take care of both mom and baby.
The writer-director duo made their joint debut in 2007 with critical darling Juno about a smart-mouthed teenager thrust into adulthood by an unplanned pregnancy. Their 2011 followup, Young Adult, also starred Theron as a middleaged washout who tries to woo her teenage sweetheart away from his wife and infant.
If Junois about growing up too fast, and Young Adult is about growing up too slow, Tully is about raising children while letting go of your own childhood, Reitman said.
“All three touch on this idea of not knowing where you’re sup- posed to be within the arc of your own life, and always feeling like you’re actually not the right time,” he said. “When you become a parent … you start to think of your younger self as not a different time, but a different person.”
Opening close to Mother’s Day, Tully has been lauded by critics as an unflinching ode to motherhood, but Reitman says it’s not. Rather, he said, it uses motherhood as a “location.”
“I think real humour and real humanity comes from authenticity,” Reitman said. “As a location, we want (the depiction of motherhood) to be accurate in the same way that I think James Cameron would want the Titanic to look accurate.”
To capture the first few gruelling months after giving birth, Reitman said he asked a group of young mothers to fill out a questionnaire about their own experiences looking after newborns, some of which were mined for the movie.
At the film’s emotional core, Reitman said, is the “magical relationship” between Marlo and Tully. In their late-night chats, Marlo finds in Tully the youthful curiosity that was drained from her after her attentions shifted to child-rearing, he said, and unburdens herself of the self-judgment that plagues many modern mothers.
“There’s a thrill to becoming a parent, but there’s also periods of feeling alone. And those periods of feeling alone are something that we don’t often talk about, which only makes them feel more lonely,” Reitman said.
“I hope when you watch this movie, it makes you feel less alone.”