As superhero films dominate the Hollywood tentpole marketplace, smaller productions are finding more interesting ways to expand the storytelling boundaries of such tales. This year, Julia Hart follows up her excellent drama Miss Stevens (which was a break-out role for Timothée Chalamet) with her own take on superheroes in Fast Color. Starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a woman with special abilities that must go on the run, the film premiered at SXSW last year and now the first trailer has debuted ahead of a March release.
“My husband and I came up with the idea for the movie when we became parents,” Hart tells EW. “I just felt this superhuman strength that I had never felt before when I became a mother. So, the idea for the movie came from this notion that mothers are superheroes. I realized that I’d never seen a movie where there was actually a superhero who was a mother. That was the origin of it, about these three generations of women — a grandmother, a mother, and a daughter — using their relationship with each other to understand, and accept, and use their powers.”
John Fink said in his review, “Fast Color, like A Wrinkle in Time, provides an empowering message without much to latch on to. Hart, who impressed with her debut drama Miss Stevens, offers a banal, tired narrative, despite strong performances and occasionally beautiful visuals.”
See the trailer and poster below.
“Fast Color” stars Mbatha-Raw as a woman who comes into her own after discovering she has superhuman abilities. When her powers are discovered, the woman is forced to abandon her family in order to protect them. Years later, her mission to remain unseen brings her back home. Starring opposite Mbatha-Raw is an ensemble featuring Lorraine Toussaint, Saniyya Sidney, Christopher Denham, and Emmy winner David Strathairn.
Fast Color opens March 29.