A one-minute teaser posted online promotes the upcoming Ryan Gosling film, "Lost River," formerly called "How To Catch a Monster," that was filmed in Detroit last spring.
Gosling, the Hollywood heartthrob, spent time last spring in Detroit directing his first feature. Originally called "How to Catch a Monster," the film is now called "Lost River" and is among 19 films selected for the Un Certain Regard sidebar at the Cannes film festival this Friday.
The short trailer shows – surprise! -- the forlorn side of Detroit, and includes a burning house and a burning bicycle.
According to Slash Films, Un Certain Regard (A Certain Look) is the category to showcase films by newcomers to Cannes or that are a more unusual than typical competition titles.
This film features Christina Hendricks of “Mad Men” as Billy, “a single mother of two who is swept into a macabre and dark fantasy underworld while her teenage son discovers a secret road leading to an underwater town.”
Iain De Caestecker, who also appears in the film, told the online journal Empire:
"Ryan works in a very free way, he's constantly in an artistic frame of mind."
As for the film itself, "all I can really say is that it centres around a family. There's my character, Bones, his mother and his younger brother. There's also a girl next door played by Saoirse Ronan, called Rat. It's about this family living in a town called Lost River, which is perhaps a place that was once full of family and happiness and love, and is now this town that's slowly descending into a place without any hope. This family is holding onto the foundations of their house and everything they think they need to hold onto."
In Detroit, Gosling and crew were spotted filming at E. Jefferson and Chalmers, near Masonic Temple and at a Midtown Montessori school.
Gosling got to know Detroit during filming in the city in 2011 in “The Ides of March.”
David Lancaster, co-president of Bold Films, which is producing and financing the movie, told the Free Press last year that Gosling believes Detroit “is an extraordinary place that is on the cusp of something very interesting.”
