TORONTO – Sarah Polley’s sophomore stint in the feature filmmaker’s chair wasn’t any less nerve-wracking than her first.
In fact, the acclaimed actress-turned-movie-maker says the process of creating “Take This Waltz” was “definitely a lot scarier” than it was with her feature directorial debut, “Away From Her,” because it involved her original screenplay.
By contrast, “Away From Her” – for which she won a Genie Award for best direction and an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay – was based on Alice Munro’s short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.”
“It was a short story I loved, so even when I didn’t necessarily have confidence in myself as a filmmaker, I had confidence in the story. And even if the script wasn’t perfect, I knew that at its spine there was a story that I loved,” Polley, 32, said in an interview just days before Saturday’s eagerly awaited “Take This Waltz” debut at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“When it’s something you’ve invented from scratch, it’s a lot harder to have that kind of confidence and that kind of faith throughout the process. But it’s also really exciting and rewarding because you’ve come up with an idea, completely in isolation, you know – lying on your bed staring at the ceiling, and then all of a sudden there it is; you have all these amazing collaborators to help you make that real and tangible and physical.
“I think it’s thrilling and it’s also a lot more terrifying.”
“Take This Waltz” stars two-time Oscar nominee Michelle Williams as Margot, a 28-year-old writer who questions her marriage to a cook (Seth Rogen) when she meets a handsome, rickshaw-driver neighbour (Luke Kirby) during a sweltering summer in Toronto. Sarah Silverman co-stars as Margot’s sister-in-law, who is a recovering alcoholic.
Polley said she started writing the screenplay when she was editing “Away From Her.”
“I think that all my short films, and then ‘Away From Her’ and this film, are all about looking at long-term relationships and the intricacies and complexities and maybe underlying, uncomfortable moments and decisions in long-term relationships. So this felt like an extension of them,” said the Toronto native, who recently married PhD law student David Sandomierski and is expecting a child with him (she’s 3 1/2 months along).
“Although it’s an extremely different film from ‘Away From Her’ in many ways.”
“Away From Her” and “Take This Waltz” are similar in that they both paint an unvarnished portrait of what the years can do to a relationship.
But while “Away From Her” features a couple in the twilight of their lives, “Take This Waltz” has characters still coming of age.
“Take This Waltz” also has much more humour than “Away From Her.”
Polley said it wasn’t intended to be a comedy but she felt it was important that the film have a sense of joy and playfulness about it.
“It’s a film about desire and falling in love and about how addictive that is and so I felt like to achieve that, we had to feel as an audience, I think, some of the things that you feel at that stage in life,” she said.
“There’s a sort of vibrant colour that the world takes on and a playfulness and a kind of hysterical laughter that all of a sudden intrudes into your life, I think, when you’re in that state, so I wanted the film to reflect those things.”
Polley – who said she’s now working on another adaptation for the big screen – set and shot “Take This Waltz” largely in Toronto last summer. Filmed largely on a steadicam, the scenes are visually vibrant with rich colours popping through the urban landscape.
“I love this city and I love living here and I think, probably to a degree, I romanticize it and I kind of wanted to give it that sheen that I see it with,” said Polley.
“I think it’s a really vivid city, a really dynamic city, a really alive city, and there is this kind of colour and heat and humidity and sultriness to the city in the summer that I think that we don’t necessarily hear people talk about and it’s not necessarily something we’ve celebrated about ourselves.”
Before filming, Polley hadn’t quite figured out Margot’s persona. Williams brought a lot to the character, she said.
“I had a basic idea of this character but I felt like there was a lot about her I didn’t necessarily understand, even though I had written it, and I felt that Michelle really filled in all those blanks and really expanded it and made it something much richer than I had written,” said Polley.
“I think that Margot is in a state of asking some really difficult questions in life: about relationships and about what happens to passion when familiarity takes over, can those two things coexist, what does it mean to feel like you’re never going to experience the first kiss with someone again and to put that part of your life behind you and is that the best thing for her at this point in this marriage or does she need to move beyond that?
“I feel like she’s not always likable to everyone but I feel like a lot of people understand her.”
“Take This Waltz” has some nudity, including a scene in which Margot and Silverman’s character, as well as several other women, soap up and chat in a public shower at the YMCA.
Polley said she goes to the YMCA in Toronto and it’s common to see women of all ages, shapes and sizes, completely comfortable with being naked around each other and chatting.
“I think probably for 12 years I’ve thought to myself: ‘It’s so weird that I’ve never seen this in a movie.’ Like, nobody would ever casually put young women and old women and big women and small women in the same frame and just have them talk without it being a joke,” she said, noting she was really offended by a scene in the film “About Schmidt” in which the big laugh comes from Kathy Bates being naked and Jack Nicholson being horrified by it.
“The idea of women over a certain age, their bodies being a joke to an audience was really quite offensive to me. I’d always sort of thought, ‘But this happens all the time and it’s not funny, it’s just normal.’ … So I’d always imagined that scene in a film somewhere and I was really happy that it made sense in this film.”
The 36th Toronto film festival runs through Sept. 18.
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