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half-light
“I WOULDN’T WANT TO GO THROUGH IT AGAIN, BUT WHEN YOU LOOK BACK AT THE FOOTAGE, YOU FORGET WHAT WAS HAPPENING BEHIND THE CAMERA AND YOU JUST SEE WHAT YOU CAPTURED”
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“The films that I remember Demi doing most recently were GI Jane and Charlie’s Angels, where she had a very tough persona. But I also remembered films she made earlier in her career such as Ghost, where she had a touching vulnerability about her. And I liked that because her character in Half-Light has both of those attributes: I needed somebody who had both vulnerability and yet could also display a sense of fortitude and strength as she tries to regain control of her life after this tragic event.”
For the role of the young son, Rosenberg and his producer - Joel B Michaels, who most recently produced Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and is currently producing Basic Instinct 2 - were initially having difficulty until seven-year-old Beans Balawi breezed into the room.
“He’s actually pretty experienced for a seven-year-old,” says Rosenberg. “He’s been in commercials, television and movies: he’s a very talented young guy. We looked at a lot of kids and I was despairing for a while because we hadn’t found anyone. We were a couple of weeks away from shooting and didn’t know what we were going to do. And he just came in and stole the audition. A lot of the kids were very shy, but he walked in, shook my hand with confidence and introduced himself. I did the looping with him the other day and he was just fantastic: he’d watch it once and turn to me and say ‘How about like this?’ And he’d go straight into it!”
Like many directors these days, Rosenberg finds himself harking back to what is increasingly seen as the ‘golden age’ of postwar cinema: the late sixties and early seventies, both in the UK and Hollywood, when films broke free from formula and achieved a mixture of style and plot which have since been ironed out again.
In Half-Light, he says, there a number of discreet homages to Don’t Look Now - perhaps inevitable in a film which starts with the drowning of a child - but also because “it’s definitely a favourite film of mine”. Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and Cul de Sac are other reference points - films in which suggestion is a strong source of tension. “What I think we’ve achieved,” he says, “is something which is not only very atmospheric, but deeply frightening at the same time, and they’re the most haunting films of all.”
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HALF
LIGHT
A Joel B Michaels/Garth H Drabinsky production, in association with Samuels Media & VIP Medienfonds 3. A Half-Light Company
production
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Prod: Joel B Michaels, Garth H Drabinsky, Clive Parsons, Steve Samuels; Dir/Scr: Craig Rosenberg; Ph: Ashley Rowe; Prod des: Don Taylor; Cost des: Ruth Myers; Ed: Bill Murphy; Casting: John & Ros Hubbard; Mus: Brett Rosenberg
With Demi Moore (Rachel Carson), Hans Matheson (Angus), James Cosmo (Finley), Kate Isitt (Sharon), Therese Bradley (Morag), Beans Balawi (Thomas Carson).
International distribution: Lakeshore Entertainment
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