Coming off his stellar Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward documentary The Last Movie Stars, Ethan Hawke’s latest foray behind the camera is on the narrative side with the Flannery O’Connor biopic Wildcat. Marking a family affair, the film stars Maya Hawke as the celebrated Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor’s mind as she ponders the great questions of her writing. Following stops at Telluride and TIFF last year, it’ll now open in theaters on May 3 and the first trailer has arrived.
Here’s more of the synopsis: “In 1950, Flannery (Maya Hawke) visits her mother Regina (Laura Linney) in Georgia when she is diagnosed with lupus at twenty-four years old. Struggling with the same disease that took her father’s life when she was a child and desperate to make her mark as a great writer, this crisis pitches her imagination into a feverish exploration of belief. As she dives deeper into her craft, the lines between reality, imagination, and faith begin to blur, allowing Flannery to ultimately come to peace with her situation and heal a strained relationship with her mother.”
Ethan Vestby said in his TIFF review, “Upon opening with a deeply unfunny fake trailer for a hothouse ’60s melodrama about the film’s subject, Flannery O’Connor, my heart sank. Wildcat is a film of one misguided choice after another, the difficulty in articulating the creative process through non-corny means leading Hawke down a path straying from conventional drama, yes, but perhaps he should’ve taken a cue from Terence Davies’ recent poet biopics A Quiet Passion and Benediction instead of indulging in lame sense of humor.”
See the trailer below for the film also starring Laura Linney, Phillip Ettinger, Rafael Casal, Cooper Hoffman, Steve Zahn, Vincent D’Onofrio, Alessandro Nivola, Christine Dye, Willa Fitzgerald, and Levon Hawke.
Wildcat opens May 3.