I recently had the privilege of being invited to a special presentation for the upcoming action thriller THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB, at the Sony Pictures Studio lot.

First, I was able to experience 20 early minutes of the film. Immediately afterwards, Writer-Director -and fellow Uruguayan- Fede Álvarez (Don’t Breathe, Evil Dead), and the Emmy-winning star of the movie, Claire Foy, answered questions from the attending journalists.

The footage promises a visceral and stylish adventure, both grand-scale and personal. All the scenes are immersive and atmospheric, impregnated with Fede’s Hitchcockian sensibilities. Claire Foy seems to make the character her own and looks incredibly comfortable in the action sequences. The moment when the motorcycle lands on the frozen water -shown in the latest trailer- was great, and it filled me with pure cinematic joy. I can’t wait to see the film!

Read a recap of the Q&A section below.

THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB

All images courtesy of Sony Pictures.

Claire Foy

On portraying an intense character like Lisbeth Salander:

“I was never really worried about the intensity of it, or the inherent energy of that character and how she is. The fight that she has or the aggression or rage that she appears to have. That never really bothered me because I’m a very rageful and vengeful person. (laughs) No, I don’t know why, but that was just something that I got about her. I understood what she was fighting against and for, in herself and outside, and that was the thing that I inherently understood about the character and made me want to play it and made me want to have my own go at portraying that.”

On how her character doesn’t fit into boxes, and rejects labels:

What I really love about [Lisbeth], so much, is her unwillingness to be identified in any particular way. She rejects any labeling, anything society wants to put on her, or anyone else wants to put on her, she lives entirely as herself. And therefore, she will seek pleasure where she seeks pleasure. Whether that’s with a man, or a woman, or on her own. She has absolutely no judgment or ability to identify with other people in that way…Now you can trust in an audience loving a difficult character. She’s not loveable, she’s not polite, she’s not pretty. She’s not everything that you think a female protagonist is supposed to be. She’s hard. She makes really terrible, terrible decisions and you don’t know if you can get behind them. I think that’s the interesting thing about it. Obviously, she’s a survivor of abuse. That’s just how I see her, as a survivor. If that, therefore, means she represents people, represents a certain movement, then that’s amazing.

Fede Álvarez

On adapting the book and meeting Clarie Foy:

“They allowed me to be a writer on it, which allows me to usually take this – whether it’s the story, the book, the material – and take a little bit more of the themes that are a little more personal to me, that I care about. Books have many, many themes, and when you condense them in two hours, you have to pick the ones that are relevant for you, mostly. And the challenge was obviously to find someone who will agree… which is kind of the first conversation we had with Claire. There would be no movie without her. We met in New York and sat down and I think we didn’t talk about the script or the movie or the other movies or anything like that. We talked about families and how we relate to each other and why that’s so interesting and complex and painful, and that the movie was basically going to talk about that. That’s how we started, when Claire said, ‘Sounds cool.’”

On focusing on Lisbeth, like never before:

The main thing you’ll note from the first twenty minutes and you’ll see in the movie is that this is the first movie that’s about her. All the other movies, she’s the whole deal, but it’s Mikael Blomkvist’s story. He’s the guy you relate to. It’s harder to relate to her, naturally, because she’s so different from you. She’s always the character that you follow and Blomkvist is trying to chase behind her, and you cut to her – what’s she doing? But the main character is Mikael Blomkvist. The main character you connect with at the beginning of the first book and all the books and the movies that have been made is that character, and she is the unicorn…this is the first time that we dared to tell a story 100% about her.”

On avoiding “the male gaze” while directing a female-centric film:

“We even had discussions about how the camera will move to not feel like we’re doing the wrong thing. [Claire] reminded me every day, “You’re a male white man, Fede, don’t forget”…but it’s true, there’s a point to that. Every moment, if I’m shooting her, it’s like “Am I making it too sexy right now? Maybe I should pull back.” It was super present in our heads more than it even would be because it was coming right when [the Me Too movement] was happening. It was the perfect movie to honor that, to make sure we didn’t do anything that was stupid exploitation-y. Allowing her to not care about how she’s going to look…Look at the other movies, and other superhero movies where they are so proud that there’s a female in front of it. I still see it a little bit as like, well, but they still ask you to look impeccable, and pretty, and [in] tight clothes and stuff like that. I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m saying at least in this one we didn’t do any of that. We really embraced it in a way that, for a movie of this size, I tell you it has never been done before.”

The film also stars Lakeith Stanfield, Vicky Krieps, Sverrir Gudnason, Sylvia Hoeks, and Stephen Merchant.

THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB will be released in theaters on November 9.

 

Young computer hacker Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist find themselves caught in a web of spies, cybercriminals and corrupt government officials.