“In a way Cannes was my test screening. I had only seen the film in my basement before I saw it in Cannes,” Ryan Gosling said while at SXSW regarding his directorial debut. “We were just making it at my house; everything about it was just so small and so personal and intimate. Then I ship off the film and suddenly I’m in a tuxedo watching it in this giant theater. The whole thing, I was unprepared for all of it. But it’s part of the film’s history now. I wouldn’t change any of it. I love the film; I’m proud of it. I can’t control people’s reactions to it.”
Indeed, we weren’t fans of it at Cannes, saying in our review, “It’s not dumb because it’s a weird movie where crazy things happen, or because Gosling is reveling in weirdness for the sake of weirdness — David Lynch made a career out of that (he also explores the meaning of that weirdness) — but mostly because Gosling has taken a really droll and standard plot, added a bunch of weird images, and expects the combination to somehow create a miracle.”
However, we’ll see how audiences take to it shortly, as the film starring Eva Mendes, Christina Hendricks, Saoirse Ronan, Ben Mendelsohn, Matt Smith, and more, will arrive early next month. Set against the surreal dreamscape of a vanishing city, following a single mother of two who is swept into a macabre and dark fantasy underworld, we have a new trailer for the film. Although billed as a featurette, it’s a montage of snippets from the film, and certainly has me quite intrigued with its imagery. Check out the new NSFW trailer below, along with the full soundtrack from Johnny Jewel, and a batch of new behind-the-scenes images.
Lost River hits theaters and VOD on April 10th.