We average about one Whit Stillman movie every ten years, which makes the path from 2016’s Love & Friendship to today’s news right on the money. Variety reports that Adam Brody (of the aforementioned, plus Stillman’s Amazon pilot The Cosmopolitans) and Laura Carmichael will lead A Night at Claridge’s, which adapts Patrick Hamilton’s 1947 novel The Slaves of Solitude. Hamilton, it should be noted, originated the material for George Cukor’s Gaslight and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope—a stronger-than-most pedigree among those, living or dead, still being adapted for the screen.
Tom Bennett (also returning from Love & Friendship) and screen veteran Susan Hampshire will co-star in the production, which Altitude is introducing to buyers at Cannes this month. Per Hamilton’s novel, it concerns Miss Roach (Carmichael) who, in South England circa 1943, is cast from her London home and begins living with Vicki, “vivacious German woman” and the “preposterous bully” Mr. Thwaites. A love triangle between Vicki starts with the arrival of Dayton Pike, an American lieutenant, sparking “intense psychological battle,” violence, death. Int the mix are “a mysterious man, an eccentric boss and an otherworldly elegant hotel lead to a resolution”—material that sounds entirely in keeping with Stillman’s petite bourgeoise conflicts.
Variety also has news of a new feature by Felipe Gálvez, whose The Settlers proved one of Argentina’s most notable releases this decade. As is the wont of many international auteurs, he’s moving from a Cannes success to English-speaking stars; one expects this, however, is a better arrangement than most possible paths. (The return of co-writers Mariano Llinás and Antonia Girardi stands as part of that equation.) Sebastian Stan and Ana de Armas will lead and executive produce the espionage thriller Impunity, itself an adaptation of Philippe Sands’ 38 Londres Street. Set to shoot in Spain, Chile, and the U.K., the English- and Spanish-language project “is set against the backdrop of one of the [great? let’s print the legend] legal cases of the 20th century when Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998.”
Espionage enters the picture, literally and figuratively, via “two covert operations”: one “a mercenary recruited by an NGO,” the other “and a Chilean envoy” who become enmeshed in “a labyrinth of conspiracies, betrayals, and geopolitical maneuvering — only to discover, at their own expense, that the real battle for justice is fought far from the courtroom, in the shadows.” Alfredo Castro (The Club), Antonia Zegers (Too Late to Die Young) and Alejandro Goic (1976) co-star in Impunity, which Rei Pictures will produce and Pathé is set to distribute in a number of France, Switzerland, and Benelux.
Deadline reports that Charlie Kaufman will begin shooting Later the War, his first feature since 2020’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things, next year. Channing Tatum, Tessa Thompson, and Patsy Ferran star in the film, an adaptation of Iddo Gefen’s short story “Debby’s Dream House” that follows Peekman (Tatum), a “wildly popular actor-director, famous for blockbuster physical comedies in which he stars with his wife Kiki (Thompson).” Fearing that his success signals shallowness, he—not unlike Jerry Lewis with The Day the Clown Cried—”attempts a serious Holocaust film, while Kiki moves on to create her own one-woman show,” and meets Debora (Ferran), “a poet who has no idea who he is,” and upon seeking her approval, fails.
In typical Kaufman fashion, Later the War “weaves present day reality, films nested within films, and mind-bending dreamscapes to create a world in which Peekman and Kiki, having lost themselves to the pursuit of fame, may find their way back to reality.” Perhaps aiding the vision is a production in Cyprus, which immediately suggests the hollowed, apocalyptic-seeming landscapes of Crimes of the Future—or at least something easier on the eyes than a tax-friendly Shreveport shoot.