Blue Jay 1

While the talents of Sarah Paulson have be on display in Martha Marcy May Marlene, Mud, 12 Years a Slave, Carol, and more, the actress just got some deserved recognition with her Emmy win earlier this week. Ahead of a role in Ocean’s Eight, her latest film, Blue Jay, is a two-hander which finds her reconnecting with Mark Duplass‘ character as they were high school sweethearts 20 years prior. Ahead of a release in just a few weeks, the first trailer has now arrived.

We said in our review, “Blue Jay is Lehmann’s debut as a director and he shows a tremendous assurance in his craft. He builds up claustrophobic moments that can tell a world of emotions with such few words. The mid-life crisis that these two characters face is universal, and the questions of purpose and fate are as well. Instead of filling his frames with ceaseless dialogue, which has become a staple in most indies featuring Duplass, Lehmann is unafraid of having moments of pure silence. He also focuses his lens of Paulson’s ever-changing eyes, filled with both longing and resentment. Her character Amanda has gone through life’s toughest obstacles and endured, but not without her fair share of scars in the process.”

Check out the trailer and poster below.

Former high school sweethearts Jim (Mark Duplass) and Amanda (Sarah Paulson) have been out of touch for more than 20 years — but by sheer coincidence, they run into each other at a grocery store back in their alpine hometown of Crestline, California. Jim’s mother has died and he’s here to put her house on the market. Amanda is visiting her pregnant sister. They get to talking, first over coffee, then over beer and jellybeans. Before they know it they’re at Jim’s mother’s house, where everything sends them spiraling back into the past. Jim and Amanda’s lives have taken different directions, yet here they are, reconnecting like nothing has changed.

Alex Lehmann’s feature debut is a tender, wise chamber drama about finding yourself adrift in mid-life, longing for something essential that you fear has been lost.

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Blue Jay arrives in theaters on October 7 and on VOD four days later.

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