DOCUMENTARY-MAKER LAURIE COLLYER’S PRIZE-WINNING FEATURE DEBUT SHERRYBABY IS A FILM ABOUT A YOUNG WOMAN WHO HAS BEEN DEALT ALL THE WRONG CARDS BUT IS STILL DETERMINED TO PLAY HER HAND. BUT WHAT MAKES IT REALLY POWERFUL, SAYS NICK RODDICK, IS MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL’S PERFORMANCE IN THE TITLE ROLE.
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This summer, at the Karlovy Vary Film
Festival, one of a handful of events to be
accorded A-grade status in the highly
competitive world of international film
festivals, documentary-maker Laurie
Collyer’s debut feature, Sherrybaby, took
the top prize. I saw the film there at its
first screening, and I wasn’t surprised that
it won the award. Sherrybaby contains such a powerhouse
performance by Maggie Gyllenhaal that it was
impossible not to be carried along by it. Having co-star
Danny Trejo in town to promote the film helped attract
attention, too. Everyone recognises Trejo, who has one of
the most memorable faces in the movie industry today.
But Sherrybaby is Gyllenhaal’s film. Not only does
she play the title character, Sherry Swanson, a former
addict trying to rebuild her life and reconnect with her
young daughter after two years in jail: she makes
Sherry’s selfishness and childlike irresponsibility both
understandable and touching.
From abuse as a child (there is one especially eerie
scene where she is visited by her father, who seems to
want to pick up where he left off) through heroin
addiction and petty theft to feed her habit, Sherry has
lived a life where everything that could do has gone
wrong. “She comes out of prison full of hope in a way
that, for a 23-year-old, is naïve,” admits Gyllenhaal.
“But she was in prison for the early years of her 20s and
a drug addict before that, so I think she is kind of like a
kid. She gets out of prison feeling like she’s going to
take the world and make it hers, and when things go
wrong for her - which they do almost immediately - she
falls from a high, high place. I think that’s a much more
interesting movie and a more interesting woman than
someone who starts out really angry at the world.”
Gyllenhaal, older sister of Jake, who was Oscarnominated
last year for Brokeback Mountain, has
always been careful in her choice of projects, winning
stardom with a brave and sometimes even difficult-towatch
performance in Secretary. Collyer did not write
the part of Sherry for her. But, once it was written,
Gyllenhaal was the first actress she showed it to.
“I chose Maggie for this role because I believe she is
the most exciting actress of her generation,” wrote
Collyer in a statement that accompanied the screening
of the film in Karlovy Vary. “She has a sparkling mind, a
wealth of emotion and miles and miles of charisma. She
has the ability to turn the darkest, most difficult characters
into someone you would want to know. On top
of all that, she has the integrity of an artist. I jumped at
the opportunity to work with her, and our collaboration
is the reason I can call myself a director today.”
The film was shot on location in a blue-collar New
Jersey neighbourhood in July and August 2004 on an
intense, 25-day schedule which involved Gyllenhaal in as
many as four gruelling scenes a day. Collyer’s 2000 film,
Nuyorican Dreams, about American life as seen by a
family of impoverished Puerto Ricans in New York, won
top prizes at festivals around the world. And she
approached the scripting of Sherrybaby as if it were
another documentary, interviewing former addicts, excons
and mothers who had been separated from their
children by jail terms. What she found was a sub-culture
of people who had allowed themselves to fall, but whose
attempts to get back up again were constantly frustrated
by a corrupt and uncaring system.
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