It has been six years since we’ve heard from Mary Harron, at least on the big screen. The director who made waves with the one-two knockout of “I Shot Andy Warhol” and “American Psycho” stumbled with the workmanlike and disappointing “The Notorious Bettie Page” and spent the next few years largely working in television. Well, she’s back and headed to Venice with the hopes that her latest effort “The Moth Diaries” will put her on the map. Certainly, with the story centering around vampires, she’s locked onto a genre that is currently en vogue.
Starring Scott Speedman, Lily Cole, Sarah Gadon (“Charlie Bartlett,” “Cosmopolis“) and Sarah Bolger (the little lead girl from “In America” all grown up), the film is based on the debut novel by Rachel Klein and follows a sixteen-year-old girl at an exclusive boarding school and her obsession with her roommate, Lucy, and a new classmate named Ernessa. The mystery behind this new student, such as why she has a moody aura about her and has pale skin, is all recounted in the narrator’s diary, which shapes the structure and POV of the story. The mystery only deepens when the inexplicable relationship between Lucy and Ernessa develops, Lucy begins looking and acting more like her friend, and fear spreads throughout the boarding school. So in short, it’s a vampire flick and we just hope there is something new and/or refreshing being brought to the equation.
“The Moth Diaries” will make its world premiere in Venice where it will also be on the hunt for distribution, and it will and in TIFF in September. Here’s the logline and more pics from the film below. [TIFF/RopeOfSilicon]
Acclaimed director Mary Harron returns to the Festival with this chilling and evocative vampire tale set at an all-girl boarding school. Based on the popular novel by Rachel Klein, The Moth Diaries is a sinister and sensually modern film about dark pasts, the circulation of desire and the fragile line between the real and imagined.
