CAREY MULLIGAN | Dragged into the underworld in “DRIVE”

One of the most talented young actresses working today, Oscar Best Actress nominee Carey Mulligan (“Never Let Me Go,” “Money Never Sleeps”) stars opposite Ryan Gosling in FilmDistrict's critically acclaimed thriller “Drive.” 

Winner of the Best Director prize in this year’s Cannes Film Festival, “Drive” will be shown exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas (Glorietta 4, Greenbelt 3 & Trinoma) starting Nov. 9. The film is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and adapted from James Sallis's 2005 novel of the same name.

In the film, Driver (Gosling) is a Los Angeles wheelman for hire, stunt driving for movie productions by day and steering getaway vehicles for armed heists by night. Though a loner by nature, Driver can't help falling in love with his beautiful neighbor Irene (Mulligan), a vulnerable young mother dragged into a dangerous underworld by the return of her ex-convict husband Standard (Oscar Isaac).

Mulligan had been a fan of Refn’s past films “Bronson” and “Valhalla Rising” and had even mentioned to her agent that she wanted to work with a director like Refn, but it was only after she expressed interest in the script that she learned who was helming “Drive.”

The actrees’ enthusiasm was matched by Refn's, who immediately ordered small rewrites of Irene's backstory so he could cast Mulligan. In the novel, ‘Irene’ is a Latina. Director Refn confirms, “Originally I was looking for a Latina actress. I hadn’t seen Carey’s films, but the minute she walked in the door, I knew we had our ‘Irene.’ It just cemented the love story in a much more interesting way. It made it more of a ‘Romeo & Juliet‘ kind of love story without the politics that would in this day and age be brought into it if you had different nationalities or different religions.”

Mulligan explains her interest in the part: “Irene's character was a challenge because she's really the pivot point for the film's secondary plot, which is literally about the love triangle between her, Driver and Irene’s husband Standard but dramatically is about where they'll all end up in the most meaningful sense. And it's not an easy decision for her. Driver certainly seems like Irene's knight in shining armor, but Standard is drawn very sympathetically, as someone who's made mistakes but is genuinely trying to turn his life around. Plus she's loved him since she was 17. So to be able to play those two impulses off of one another, especially after Standard and Driver form an uneasy alliance, gave me so much to work with.”

Says Refn: “Since I was a teenager, I've been a big fan of `Sixteen Candles.’ I've always wanted to remake that film one way or another and, in a very unlikely way, I've done that with `Drive.’ Carey has all the intelligence and charm of a young Molly Ringwald. The romantic scenes she has with Ryan make for a very delicate and beautiful contrast to the brutality in the rest of the film.”

RYAN GOSLING takes you for a spin in “DRIVE”

Fresh from the commercial and critical success of his first-ever romantic comedy “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” Ryan Gosling now returns to the psychological thriller genre with the Cannes Film Festival winner, “Drive.”

Winner of the Best Director award at this year's Cannes, “Drive” will be shown soon exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas (Glorietta 4, Greenbelt 3 & Trinoma). The film is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and adapted from James Sallis's 2005 novel of the same name.

In the film, Driver (Gosling) is a Los Angeles wheelman for hire, stunt driving for movie productions by day and steering getaway vehicles for armed heists by night. Though a loner by nature, Driver can't help falling in love with his beautiful neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), a vulnerable young mother dragged into a dangerous underworld by the return of her ex-convict husband Standard (Oscar Isaac).

“I was really intrigued by the role of Driver because the performance demanded this very complex dramatic counterpoint,” Gosling explains. “On the one hand, he's really self-contained, really laconic. There's an economy of movement in the way he carries himself, an economy of words in the way he speaks. He keeps his cards close to his chest and there's an almost poker-faced inscrutability to his reactions. All of which ties into his character, because this is the kind of mechanical self-control he achieves in the flow-situation of driving. [Director] Nic kept saying to me, 'The Driver is half-man, half-machine.'

“On the other hand,” Gosling continues, “Driver is literally psychotic, you know? A Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver-kind of character. Beneath all of that eerie outward calm, there is this reservoir of raging energy and hair-trigger violence. It's like when you're cruising in an automobile and the ride feels so smooth, so stable, so safe—then another car crosses your path. BAM. All that energy, all that mass-times-velocity momentum, is released in a flash of physical violence. And that's basically the character of Driver. He navigates around most obstacles with some very flawless trick-driving, literally and figuratively escaping without a scratch. But when the moment of impact unexpectedly arrives, it is violent and it physically slams you. The challenge is making the audience feel that tightly-coiled energy when Driver is ticking along as smoothly as a stopwatch.”

“Ryan is a real rarity,” says director Nicolas Winding Refn. “He has the charisma and good looks of a leading man and the gravity of a Method-trained, master class performer. For the role of Driver, the film needed an actor who could convey the explosive violence and emotional loneliness of that lone-wolf character, yet also make his personal transformation through love authentic and believable. Few movie stars have that range. Ryan is one of them.”

CANNES winner “DRIVE” starring RYAN GOSLING to be shown in Manila soon

Winner of the Best Director award in this year's Cannes Film Festival, FilmDistrict's critically acclaimed thriller “Drive” starring Ryan Gosling will be shown soon. The film is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and adapted from James Sallis's 2005 novel of the same name.

In the film, Driver (Gosling) is a Los Angeles wheelman for hire, stunt driving for movie productions by day and steering getaway vehicles for armed heists by night. Though a loner by nature, Driver can't help falling in love with his beautiful neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), a vulnerable young mother dragged into a dangerous underworld by the return of her ex-convict husband Standard (Oscar Isaac).

Producer Adam Siegel felt the driver was a rare character – someone who has a purpose, excels at one thing and makes no apologies for it. Producer Marc Platt agreed, noting that the driver reminded him of heroes and movie characters similar to characters Clint Eastwood used to portray.

"I was very taken with this little crime story that James Sallis wrote,” Platt adds. “I felt that the way the world was presented in the book demanded that its true grit be retained in the script. The grit comes from seeing the world from the point of view of Driver in the car. It’s those elements that I felt were critical to retain to make this film a very unique cinematic experience."

Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Hossein Amini adapted the novel for the screen. He felt it was a rare book to receive from a studio because it was short, gloomy and like a poem. Because the novel does not present a linear story but has many flashbacks and jumps around in time, Amini found the adaptation challenging. He felt the non-linear structure made it "a very tricky structure" for a feature film.

“Drive” premiered on May 20, in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. At its first showing to the media, it received abundant praise and received "some of the best responses of the festival.” It was greeted with hoots and howls of joy from the media, with viewers cheering some of the scenes featuring extreme violence. “Drive” also received a 15 minute standing ovation from the crowd.

Likely, it served as a welcome relief to the press with previously serious-dramatic projects being shown earlier. Xan Brooks of The Guardian called the film his guilty pleasure of the 2011 competition, labeling it an enjoyable affair. "Over the past 10 days we've witnessed great art and potent social commentary; the birth of the cosmos and the end of the world. Turns out what we really wanted all along was a scene in which a man gets his head stomped in a lift. They welcome it in like a long-lost relation", he wrote. The festival named Refn best director for “Drive.”