You may have seen her in front of the camera in V/H/S, Wild Canaries, 24 Exposures, Uncle Kent 2, and more indies in the last few years, but now Sophia Takal has returned to the director’s chair for the psychological thriller Always Shine. Following Mackenzie Davis (Blade Runner 2), who picked up Best Actress at Tribeca this year, and Caitlin FitzGerald (Masters of Sex) as rising actresses (well, one at least) and the struggle that persists when they become isolated and things turn wicked. Ahead of a release this December, the first trailer and poster have now landed.
I said in my review, “With the excess of low-budget, retreat-in-the-woods dramas often finding characters hashing out their insecurities through a meta-narrative, a certain initial resistance can occur when presented with such a derivative scenario at virtually every film festival. While Sophia Takal‘s psychological drama Always Shine ultimately stumbles, the chemistry of its leads and a sense of foreboding dread in its formal execution ensures its heightened view of a fractured relationship is a mostly successful one.”
Also starring Lawrence Michael Levine, Alexander Koch, and Jane Adams, check out the trailer and poster below.
Two women, both actresses with differing degrees of success, travel north from Los Angeles to Big Sur for a weekend vacation in Always Shine, Sophia Takal’s twisty, psychological drama. Both see the trip as an opportunity to reconnect after years of competition and jealousy has driven a wedge between them,but upon arrival to their isolated, forest retreat, the pair discovers that their once intimate friendship has deteriorated into forced conversations, betrayals both real and imagined, petty jealousies, and deep-seated resentment. As the women allow their feelings to fester, each begins to lose their bearings not only on the true nature of their relationship, but on their own identities.
Mackenzie Davis (“Halt and Catch Fire”) and Caitlin FitzGerald (“Masters of Sex”) give brave and raw performances as Beth and Anna, two women whose ideas of success are dictated as much by external cultural criterion as their own sense of self-worth. Beautifully photographed and assuredly directed by Takal, Always Shine wraps itself in an evocative shroud of dread and paranoia that lingers long after the final frame.
Always Shine opens on December 2.