After getting acclaim (including our own) for her role in the independent drama Hellion earlier this year, Juliette Lewis followed it with Kelly & Cal, a project which had its debut at SXSW. Directed by Jen McGowan, the project picked up the Gamechanger award at the festival, honoring female filmmakers, and it’ll be released this fall. The first trailer has landed for the film featuring neighbors, in very different places, who connect.
We said in our SXSW review, “Kelly & Cal follows well-worn territory and manages to make things feel fresh. That’s largely due to the two impressive leads in Juliette Lewis and Johnny Weston, but the way it wraps up proves that a good beginning and middle can’t keep a film from tottering over the edge into something downright disheveled. The film revolves around this idea of uncertainty in life; the unexpected thrills, sadness, terrors, and suck that life can bring you. Motherhood, and parenthood as a whole, can provide all of these things in equal measure, and somehow, this film manages to do just the same.”
Check out the trailer below for the film also starring Alysia Reiner and Cybill Shepherd:
Punk-rocker turned suburban mom, Kelly (a fantastic Juliette Lewis), is nostalgic for a life she can no longer have and uncertain of a future she doesn’t yet fit in. Seventeen-year-old Cal (Jonny Weston in a breakthrough performance) is frustrated at his lack of control over the hand he’s been dealt. When the two strike up an unlikely friendship, it’s the perfect spark needed to thrust them both back to life.
Kelly & Cal opens on September 5th.