There’s one thing that connects some of my favorite American independent films of the last few years: cinematography of Sean Price Williams. Following Listen Up Philip, Kate Plays Christine, Heaven Knows What, Golden Exits, Marjorie Prime, Queen of Earth, and Good Time, his latest project is Thirst Street, from director Nathan Silver. Ahead of a September release, the first trailer has landed for the film following an American flight attendant who tries to make a romantic connection in Paris and things don’t go as planned.
“Sean [Price Williams] and I were talking and one key image was that crazy image from Fassbinder’s Lola (1981) where she’s sitting in bed and there are a million different colours on her,” Silver tells The Seventh Art. “We talked about always looking for ways to heighten the lighting and we used anamorphic lenses in Paris and then when we were in the U.S. we just had a zoom. We knew that we wanted [the latter] to have a gauzy look, we wanted it to have a different look than the Paris section – just slightly.”
Starring Lindsay Burdge, Damien Bonnard, Esther Garrel, and Lola Bessis, and featuring narration by Anjelica Huston, check out the trailer below.
Alone and depressed after the suicide of her lover, American flight attendant Gina (Lindsay Burdge, A TEACHER) travels to Paris and hooks up with nightclub bartender Jerome (Damien Bonnard, STAYING VERTICAL) on her layover. But as Gina falls deeper into lust and opts to stay in France, this harmless rendezvous quickly turns into unrequited amour fou. When Jerome’s ex Clemence (Esther Garrel) reenters the picture, Gina is sent on a downward spiral of miscommunication, masochism, and madness. Inspired by European erotic dramas from the ’70s, THIRST STREET burrows deep into the delirious extremes we go to for love.
Thirst Street opens on September 20.