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May 01, 2006
Feels like the Beetles' first American concert
Some folks waited in line for four hours at last night’s Tribeca Film Festival to see the North American premier of Driving Lessons. For fans of Rupert Grint (the redhead of Harry Potter fame), it was probably worth it.
The screening was a giant teeny-bopper convention, and when Rupert entered the screening hall, I though maybe I was in the wrong place—was this a Justin Trousersnake concert? Even my girlfriend had to restrain herself.
Rupert Grint arrives at the screening [more pics]
I’d never heard of this Grint fellow; I figured it was an interesting movie. Director Jerry Brock put together a semi-autobiographical plot that goes something like this: Grint’s character is a shy and awkward boy of 17 living in London with a needy, over-sheltering, over-religious mother (Laura Linney) and an aloof father. He goes to work as a personal assistant for a salty, washed-up, impulsive, alcoholic actress named Evie. She is played by Julie Walters, who played Molly Weasly in the Harry Potter series.
Walters exposes Grint to a brave new world when she tricks him into going to a literary festival in Edinburgh. She convinces Grint to drive—he had suffered three accidents under his mother’s tutelage—and they end up at a camp site, where Walters exclaims, “I understand now why the working classes have kept camping a secret so long.” Still within his mother’s close orbit, Grint insists on getting home. Walters promptly swallows the car key, leading Grint to call his parents to explain that “I can’t come home until Evie poos the key.” By the time he returns, Grint has lost his virginity, drank large volumes of alcohol, gone to nightclubs, and learned to dance. Most importantly, he has learned to be “my own man,” no longer existing to satisfy the desires his parents.
Walters’s performance steals the show, as she develops a character of extraordinary complexity, at once needy and boldly assertive, childish and old-fashioned, angry and warm. Tiffany even said it was the best screen acting she had ever seen. Grint certainly holds his own, playing a character much like he is in real life, quiet and awkward.
Q&A after the show. [enlarge]
The Q&A after the show, a hallmark of Tribeca shows, allowed the teenyboppers to ask Rupert for hugs, though he stayed after for autographs and pictures too.
It will be interesting to see if Driving Lessons gets distributed nationally. If yesterday’s premier was any indication, it will find a willing market and, according the LA Times, is "obvious Oscar bait."
Posted by adrianjo at May 1, 2006 05:49 PM