Both regular on screen since the 80s, this is the first time that the director and the actress have come together on a film.
Revealed as screenwriter of Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader quickly moved on to directing with twenty-five films on the clock since 1978. Martin Scorsese’s film, Palme d’or at Cannes in 1976, already dealt with the subject of redemption which will never leave him. Until Master Gardener which hits theaters Wednesday, July 5. He joins Sigourney Weaver as the owner of a garden that she has maintained by a horticulturist with a heavy past, embodied by an inspired Joel Edgerton.
Theorem
Narvel (Joel Edgerton), a passionate and meticulous horticulturist, devoted to the refined Miss Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver), must take on his great-niece, Maya (Quintessa Swindell), a young pre-delinquent, as an apprentice. This arrival upsets the house where a chaos settles revealing the secrets of Narvel.
Author of the screenplays for all his films, and for other directors, Paul Schrader refines the suave and disturbing staging of Master Gardener. Behind closed doors in a garden, his film has a scent of Theorem by Pasolini. Like “the visitor” played by Terence Stamp at the Italian, Maya will cause a sensual and dangerous mess in the household. Identified with an exterminating angel of the bourgeois morality of the time (1969), in Theorem, at Schrader, Maya will dismantle the ethical presuppositions of Miss Haverhill. In Sanskrit, Maya signifies the illusion of duality in the universe. In the film, it is she who will reveal Narvel and Miss Haverhill to themselves, taking them out of their Manichean vision of the world.
Redemption
Narvel’s secret, whose whole torso is impregnated in a powerful image, is the starting point of the redemptive path he will take. Maya will be the key to this by opening a breach in the wall of conventions, through its urban roots transposed into the garden. The horticulturist, on the other hand, undertakes a mission to wash away his past faults. After learning about plants, a stage of seduction, sex will be the key. At the same time, Miss Haverhill continues her bourgeois affair with her employee, and it is in her jealousy that she reveals her anger towards him and her protegee. The first go towards the light, the second lives a redemption in reverse, towards darkness.
Paul Schrader is fine-tuning his screenplay and directing. While appealing to archetypes, it is not Manichaean, but questions the duality in redemption. Taxi Driver (as screenwriter), Hardcore, The Feline, Sentinel, so many titles where the author-director slips his favorite subject, which has now reached its completion. Till next time.
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The sheet
Gender : Drama
Director: Paul Schrader
Actors: Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, Quintessa Swindell, Rick Cosnett
Country : USA / Australia
Duration : 1h50
Exit : July 5, 2023
Distributer : The Jokers