Art imitates life
Johansson’s real-life split helped shape ‘Marriage Story’
VENICE, Italy — Noah Baumbach’s divorce drama “Marriage Story,” critically acclaimed and generating Oscar buzz, stars Scarlett Johansson as a Hollywood actress unhappily married to a New York theater director (Adam Driver).
For Johansson, Baumbach’s movie arrived at a crucial moment. Married (for the second time) to a French businessman, Romain Dauriac, she had privately begun divorce proceedings.
Baumbach’s autobiographical films include the 2005 “The Squid and the Whale” about his parents’ divorce. “Marriage” is a comedydrama inspired by his own divorce from actress Jennifer Jason Leigh (they have one son, 9).
In a reverse of how things are usually done, Baumbach first wanted to meet his actors, discuss mutual life experiences and only then write the screenplay.
“This film has so much of all of us,” Johansson, 34, recalled. “It felt like no time had passed between us when we met. I blew into the room, ordered a glass of white wine and started complaining.”
As she spoke about her imminent divorce, “He said, ‘Funny you should be talking about this. Maybe this is a project you won’t want todoorsee.
“It was a cathartic experience to share with him and almost him share with me.”
Asked about the pitfalls of being an actor and playing one, “That was not difficult to imagine — although my mom was managing my career since I was a kid. So there’s some similarity I recognized.
“Although the family that Nicole (the character I play) comes from, you know the dynamic wasn’t the kind of the family I grew up in.”
Nicole’s mother is a comical eccentric (Julie Hagerty of “Airplane!”) and she has a sister. Nicole became famous in high school in a TV series about high schoolers. She came to Manhattan to lose the “sex kitten” image, become a “serious” actor. She leaves because she feels, ultimately, she’s really an LA person and that’s where “home” is.
“The dynamic of her family is a big part of who she is and why she becomes an actor,” Johansson said. “I think she struggles to feel legit as an actor and that’s the dynamic that makes them” — Nicole and Driver’s Charlie — “come together and come apart and that’s obviously complicated.”
“Through a divorce we could explore a marriage,” Baumbach said. “I wanted closeups because this movie is about these faces.
“There’s a point where the lawyers” — Laura Dern, Ray Liotta, Alan Alda — “take their voices from them. So I knew we’d be resting on these faces.”