INTERVIEW: FrightFest winner ‘Good Woman’ premieres virtually
Photo: Sarah Bolger stars in A Good Woman Is Hard to Find. Photo courtesy of Film Movement / Provided by press site with permission.
Sarah Bolger stars in the new thriller A Good Woman Is Hard to Find, from director Abner Pastoll and writer Ronan Blaney. The revenge flick, which is now available from Film Movement’s virtual cinema, follows the character of Sarah (Bolger) as she searches for the person who murdered her husband.
The crime at the center of the narrative was a harrowing experience for Sarah’s son, Ben (Rudy Doherty), who has been mute ever since the crime took place. When the police in Northern Ireland don’t help her cause, she begins to ask questions herself, and her path eventually takes her to the seedy underbelly of the local drug scene.
Good Woman nabbed five awards at FrightFest in the United Kingdom, taking home trophies for Best Film and Best Actor. Although its United States theatrical release has been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, Film Movement is determined to get the thriller in front of an audience, and their virtual cinema platform has offered them just that chance.
“So, for me, it began in the summer of 2015,” Pastoll said in a recent phone interview. “It was about a month before the world premiere of my previous film, Road Kings, and I was looking for a writing partner. I wanted somebody that I could work with to bounce ideas off and whatnot, and my producer reached out to an agent here in the UK and asked if he could send over some writing samples of some of his clients.”
Pastoll received five scripts, including A Good Woman Is Hard to Find by Blaney. Upon reading the dialogue and unexpected turns of the story, the director was hooked and wanted to meet the writer in person.
“The script blew me away, and not only was this a writer that I wanted to collaborate with, I thought this is a script I want to make, which was unexpected because it’s not what I was looking for,” he said. “I wasn’t looking for another script specifically at that time, but it turned out that Ronan had just finished writing this script. And other than his agent, I was actually the first person to even read it. Because it was a sample, I didn’t know if it had been optioned, or if was it in production or what, but it was amazing to find out that nothing had happened with it yet because he had just finished writing that draft. Then, we met each other, and we got along really well. And the rest is history. That’s how I found it.”
When Pastoll read the script, Bolger immediately came to mind as the actor to lead the way. She is best known for her roles in In America, Once Upon a Time and The Spiderwick Chronicles, and Pastoll thought she would be great as the character, who coincidentally has the same first name.
“It was a pretty straightforward casting process in my mind,” the filmmaker said. “I literally just sent her the script, and within 24 hours of having sent the script, we were on a Skype video call discussing the character. I just knew immediately that she was right for the role, so it was a relatively straightforward casting process in that sense.”
Sarah, the character, is a single mother who is not feeling supported from the local community or local police. She is on her own symbolic island, and that means she needs to take matters into her own hands. For Pastoll, this presented an interesting opportunity to offer up some social commentary.
“We didn’t want to be too on the nose about it,” Pastoll said. “There are things happening in the background of the story that are there for people to try and pick up on. Some things are a bit more outlined than others, but there’s definitely some of that stuff going on.”
There are many suspenseful sequences in the film, and it was up to Pastoll and his creative team, including director of photography Richard C. Bell, to figure out these taut, nail-biting moments while shooting.
“I was lucky enough in a way because I had already been working with my composer and director of photography during the pre-production stage, discussing those elements of how it would look and how the music would play out,” he said. “So, in a sense, I developed a feeling for what it would be like in my head so that when we were shooting it was more about channeling that feeling rather than worrying about how it would piece together. That’s how it came together. Even though the music didn’t exist obviously before we shot the movie, we knew what kind of style we were going for, and the same thing in terms of the photography with the lighting and the way that we approached that.”
It was interesting for Pastoll to work with young actors, including children who had never appeared in a movie before. The director said there were some interesting conversations that needed to be had, and the youngsters learned rather quickly how to perform a scene.
“They were completely new,” Pastoll said. “They had no idea how a film set even ran. I remember on the first day of the shoot, they were questioning, ‘Why do we have to keep doing this so many times, all these different takes, different camera angles.’ They didn’t get it at all, and I remember Sarah Bolger and I looked at each other and were like, ‘Oh, we’re going to have cut the kids out of the movie because they’re too difficult to work with.’ [laughing] They learned so fast. By the second day of the shoot they were their wonderful selves, and as soon as we yelled, ‘Action,’ they would click into the characters. It was actually very, very pleasant to work with them. In a sense, they are my own movie kids. We had such a great time working together on the film, and I’m still in touch with both of them today.”
A Good Woman Is Hard to Find joins an ever-growing list of revenge thrillers with a strong female protagonist. Pastoll recognizes that his new film is the latest entry in this burgeoning section of cinema.
“It definitely fits into that sub-genre in a way,” he said. “I like to think of it as its own thing, but the influences of those types of movies are undeniable.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
A Good Woman Is Hard to Find, directed by Abner Pastoll, is available through Film Movement’s virtual cinema. Click here for more information.
