HATCHING PLANS AT PARTIES: David Oyelowo says it was a conversation with Angelina Jolie at Tom Cruise's birthday party that led to her role in #ComeAway. pic.twitter.com/curX9E3Euh
Come Away had its world premiere in Sundance but there was no formal red carpet with cast and filmmakers. Contrary to earlier reports, Angelina is not listed as a producer of the film. With a director making her live-action debut and a writer making her feature film debut, this was the biggest question mark in her 2020 slate. Given the mixed to negative early response (50% on RT from just 6), David Oyelowo owes her a big one. He can play Conall's long lost brother in Maleficent 3.
She was last photographed out and about Jan. 6 at Universal.
Directed in her live action debut by Oscar-winning animation superstar
Brenda Chapman, the film stars David Oyelowo and Angelina Jolie. While
Oyelowo is unable to be in Sundance because he is in London shooting for
Netflix the George Clooney-directed adaptation of Good Morning Midnight,
he ducked Clooney for a moment between takes to tell Deadline why the
film means so much to him, and how he cleverly got Jolie to take the
leap with him as they play parents of children who respond to a family
tragedy by becoming Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, fusing elements
from both places into the narrative. OYELOWO: Audiences always gravitate to the familiar,
that’s coming at them in a fresh way. Like having Peter Pan and Alice
from Alice in Wonderland and the world of Neverland and Wonderland
combined in a way that is both grounded and yet feels fantastical. And
also the fact they approached me to play the father of both Alice and
Peter, which means you are getting to see it in a different way than
you’ve seen before, with a different kind of Alice and a different kind
of Peter. Fresh, though familiar. Having four children myself, I have
watched how sophisticated they are in relation to how they deal with
grief, the difficult sides of life, and how they use their imaginations
not just for play but as a coping mechanism. Marissa Kate Goodhill’s
script did such a good job of capturing that.
That’s how Angie’s involvement came about. We’ve been friends for a
long time, not really because we had worked together as actors, but
because we share this thing of having lots of children. I have four and
she has six, and we’ve had moments where our kids have gotten together
and it’s something with ten kids running around. We’ve also had
conversations about being a good parent while being a busy parent and
how we cope and how our kids cope in what at times are rarefied
circumstances. Angie would see me do independent films over the years
and after one in particular, Nightingale which she saw and
liked, she told me, ‘my goodness, I just never get offered anything like
that.’ And I said, ‘shut up. That’s not true!’ She said, ‘no one ever
comes to me with that kind of film.’ So when Come Away came my
way, I thought, I’m going to call her bluff. I said, ‘I’ve got one for
you, and not only is it an independent film, you get to play a mother,
which you say you never get to play on screen.’ To be fair, within four
days she was on board.
David Oyelowo and Angelina Jolie play the parents of Peter Pan and Wonderland's Alice in the first live-action feature by 'Brave' director Brenda Chapman. Read the review of 'Come Away': https://t.co/Wjsb8zItb3#Sundance
An airless film about childhood fantasies that comes to life only fitfully, Brenda Chapman's Come Away is
aimed at children but so pickled in grown-up grief that few kids are
likely to connect with it. Making her live-action debut after directing
the 2012 Pixar hit Brave, Chapman finds some charming ways to
visualize her young heroes' imaginings, but is less successful at
connecting with the characters as flesh-and-blood children. A wealth of
familiar storybook material and a cast including Angelina Jolie and
David Oyelowo will draw attention, but a handsome production and
beautiful cast aren't enough to get this fantasy off the ground.
The film's conceit is that Peter Pan (Jordan Nash) and the Alice who
explored Wonderland (Keira Chansa) were brother and sister, who once
lived an idyllic life in the English countryside with their brother
David (Reece Yates) and parents Rose and Jack Littleton (Jolie and
Oyelowo). The siblings frolic constantly in the woods, and Chapman's
camera sees the elements of their make-believe (bows and arrows, pirate
ships) as vividly as they do. Indoors, the scene is so gentle and loving
it seems encased in amber, except for those occasions when Rose's sour
sister Eleanor (Anna Chancellor) comes around, full of opinions about
how girls like Alice should properly be raised.
From the start, Chapman and screenwriter Marissa Kate Goodhill fill
the frame with objects that allude to the worlds Lewis Carroll and J. M.
Barrie created. Stuffed white rabbits and looking glasses, pocket
watches and lifelike shadows fill the Littletons' world, and on occasion
the film makes a big deal about it: A very pleased-with-herself Rose
sits Alice down to give her a tiny bell she had a tinker make, and when
the child isn't impressed, she spins a tale about how it's the earthly
form of Alice's very own personal fairy. It's one of the sweeter moments
in a film that sometimes, as with recurring talk of the "dream dust"
that grants access to the fantasy world, lays things on a little thick.
Then, as Peter and David are off near a lake fighting imaginary
swordsmen, the sky darkens and thunder rumbles. We don't need an
additional shot of hundreds of black birds taking flight to know
something horrible is about to happen, but we get it. Suddenly David is
dead, and the Littleton home will never be cheerful again.
Loss is a staple of children's tales, of course. But Come Away spends
most of its long-feeling running time exploring the shadow of this
event. Rose begins to drink, goes maybe slightly mad, is distant with
her surviving children; Jack returns to a London underworld he had given
up for Rose, attracting the attention of villainous creditors. Aunt
Eleanor plants seeds of snobbery in Alice. And poor Peter, feeling
responsible for his brother's death, imagines that his life is
elsewhere, off with some band of Lost Boys. When he hatches a plan to
get their dad out of debt, it's so wrong-headed there's no way to enjoy
its fantasy elements. (Though an encounter with a top-hat wearing
oddball played by Clarke Peters contains more mystery in its brief
minutes than most of the rest of the film.)
A framing device finds a grown-up Alice (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) recounting
parts of this story to her own children — Wendy, Michael and John — and
the film does intend to tie itself up nicely into the stories as we know
them. But that presents hard emotional work for the viewer: How are we
to connect the dots between this birth of Peter Pan and the wonders
he'll later show to Wendy and her brothers, without just feeling sad for
the boy who never grew up, and for a family that lost not one but two
sons in that fateful lightning storm?
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (Kids)
Production company: Fred Films
Cast: Jordan Nash, Keira Chansa, Reece Yates, David Oyelowo, Angelina
Jolie, Anna Chancellor, Michael Caine, Clarke Peters, David Gyasi, Gugu
Mbatha-Raw
Director: Brenda Chapman
Screenwriter: Marissa Kate Goodhill
Producers: Leesa Kahn, James Spring, David Oyelowo, Steve Richards, Andrea Keir
Director of photography: Jules O'Loughlin
Production designer: Luciana Arrighi
Costume designer: Louise Stjernsward
Editor: Dody Dorn
Composer: John Debney
Casting directors: Reg Poerscout-Edgerton, Lillie Jeffrey 94 minutes
Does it get there?It’s certainly an odd message for a
film, given that it ultimately seems to conclude (as Gilliam repeatedly
has) that fantasy utterly trumps reality, and that there’s no downside
to refusing to grow up. And the fantasy Come Away is selling often feels overripe and forced. Oyelowo gives a tense, complex performance, but Jolie feels like she’s still playing Maleficent,
with a lot less camp and facial prosthetics. And the kids’ performances
are broad, brash, and artificial, in a way that sometimes keeps the
audience at a distance.
But if nothing else, the production design and
cinematography are striking. Chapman’s color palette is rich and
vibrant, and John Debney’s tinkly, transportive music-box score
punctuates the sense that the whole movie is taking place inside a
nursery well-stocked with terrific toys. Audiences may resist the moral
of this movie, but they’re likely to get caught up in the execution.
The most meme-able moment: At one point
in the movie, Rose is so distraught over recent events that she turns to
alcohol for relief. When Alice catches Rose knocking one back, she
decides her mother’s special drink is a magic potion, maybe because it’s
stored in a fancy crystal decanter. When Alice has her own emotional
crisis, she steals the decanter and says, “Magic potion, please take me
away from here!” before knocking back the booze. It’s a “Same, girl!”
gif waiting to happen.
When can we see it?Come Away is an independent production that premiered at Sundance, and it’s currently seeking distribution.
David
Oyelowo, 42 and Angelina Jolie, 43 have been friends
for years thanks to their children.
“We mainly know each other
because we both have lots of kids and they have play dates now and
then. I think that’s partly why we were drawn to playing parents
together,” Oyelowo told Us at the Ebony Power 100
Gala on Friday, November 30. in Beverly Hills.
Oyelow and his
wife, Jessica, have three sons and a daughter.
When Oyelowo
and the Oscar winner were filming their new Peter Pan and Alice In
Wonderland-inspired movie, they had lots of young visitors. “All the
kids came to enjoy and see what their parents were doing, “ he told Us. “It was a very child-friendly set and both of
us are producers on it. We were the bosses, so we allowed our families
to come and say 'hi.'”
Oyelowo loved every minute working with
Jolie. “Myself and Angelina Jolie play the parents of Alice and Peter,”
he explained. “It was a beautiful experience to shoot. Angie, who has
been a friend of mine for a very long time, was heaven.”
Shooting
wrapped on Come Away in October, and now Oyelowo is getting ready for
the holidays. He will spend Christmas in Los Angeles with relatives from
Australia, England and other parts of the U.S.
