“Hilarious, shocking and profound” is how Vogue describes new film Bad Behaviour, which opens in New Zealand today.
Bad Behaviour, a dark comedy set in a wellness retreat, stars Jennifer Connolly alongside a host of local talent that includes Ana Scotney, Marlon Williams and Tom Sainsbury. It's directed by Alice Englert - a well-known actor and director who also happens to be the daughter of New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion.
Photo: Supplied
Englert is no stranger to the spiritual retreat herself, she tells Jesse Mulligan.
“I went to a lot of spiritual retreats growing up. And I think my favourite thing about them was it was at that age where you're starting to feel like you have to put on a front as an adolescent.
“You're beginning to learn that there's a way you're supposed to be and going to these places where people were trying to blow that all up for really, I mean, for better or worse was… just made me feel different about the world.”
The film has an impressive ensemble cast. Connelly came onboard after Englert wrote to her.
Alice Englert Photo: Supplied
“I wrote to her with like, every ounce of passion and good ideas I could possibly squeeze out of myself, because she's just perfect.
“Jennifer has always been someone who I think has taken risks. And she's always been someone who has this incredible ability to be both of this world and kind of feel like maybe she came from a different one.”
She's also “really funny,” Englert says.
“She's really frickin’ funny. It's kind of like the secret weapon. I feel like we've been really lucky. I mean, it's not secret If you're a Jennifer Connelly fan, you know what I'm talking about."
Connelly, Englert’s mother in the film, plays a child star who's now seeking enlightenment.
“She has really been living on the fault line of that privilege and oppression.
“And her whole personality is like two tectonic plates rubbing together. And that is an explosive energy that I was really drawn to.”
That mother-daughter relationship has deep comic potential, says Englert
“The thing about that deep stuff, especially that deep mother stuff, is that no matter how deep you go, it's still so funny.
“Like things that are tender, are hilarious. I mean, the film is kind of like about that process of tragedy composting into funniness."
The film has already been garnering critical plaudits; Letterbox called it “perplexingly glorious” Indiewire says Englert is “already a formidable, fully-formed filmmaker.”
Englert says audiences seem to get it too.
“What has been so insane working on it for so long by myself I was like, I don't know if anyone's going to find this funny and they don't have to like they really don't. But it's actually so fun to watch it with people.”
