Following up one of last year’s finest (and most overlooked) films, Benediction, Terence Davies has been prepping his next project for some time. First announcing it two years ago, the English director has written an adaptation of Stefan Zweig’s novel The Post Office Girl, published posthumously in 1982. One of Wes Anderson’s inspirations for The Grand Budapest Hotel, the book is set in post-WWI and follows a female post-office clerk who lives outside Vienna.
Last year the director told us, “We’ve been on this three years now. The script is written and we’re raising the money. But, you know, it will be a co-production, which means if one domino does fall, then everything collapses. It’s the same thing. You know, it took six years to get Benediction onto the screen, and that’s a long time. It’s a long time. And you begin to wonder: was the journey worth it? Should have stayed at home and taken up embroidery.”
It looks like the pieces are now final together as a June production is being planned and a cast has been set. A production notice reveals rising star Sophie Cookson (Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Infinite), the legendary Richard E. Grant, and Austrian actor Verena Altenberger will lead the ensemble.
The film will tell the life of a young woman from a poor background. After she can briefly immerse herself in the noble existence of her rich relatives, she is thrown back into her old life in the village through no fault of her own. In Vienna, she meets Ferdinand. Together they plan to escape the fate predetermined by their social background.
“Stefan Zweig’s novel set in post-war Austria sows the seeds for the rise of fascism, the end of the Empire, and ultimately the Second World War. This is a story of two people who realize they are inextricably bound to their social and economic realities by circumstance,” the producers noted.