#41. The Lodger
Director/Writer: David Ondaatje
Producers: Michael Mailer (The Night Job) and Ondaatje
Distributor: Stage 6 Films (Sony)
The Gist: Adaptation of the bestselling novel, The Lodger, by Marie
Belloc Lowndes, this is re-set in
West Hollywood, California with two converging plotlines. Overwhelmed by
tensions in his personal life, LASD detective Chandler Manning (Alfred Molina) becomes
engaged in a complex cat-and-mouse game with a maniacal killer who begins
emulating the 100-year old murders of Jack The Ripper along Sunset Boulevard in
West Hollywood. Simultaneously, the film follows the growing yet uneasy relationship between a
psychologically unstable landlady, Ellen Bunting (Davis) and a handsome
stranger, Malcolm Sleight, who appears one day and rents her guesthouse in West
Hollywood.
Fact: Passion project (read more here) was also the basis for Alfred Hitchcok’s first ever movie.
See It: Ondaatje’s directorial debut has all the elements of being a great contemporary mystery thriller.
Release Date/Status?: New Sony division might go the film festival route before domestic release. Perhaps Los Angeles Film Festival or Venice?
 |
 |
