There were 11 years between director Terence Davies’ The House Of Mirth and last year’sThe Deep Blue Sea, but it seems that despite saying he doesn’t actually like directing all that much, it won’t take him as long to get his next movie on screen.
Variety reports that he’s now bringing to fruition a long-cherished project called Sunset Song. Producer Bob Last announced at the Berlin Film Festival that the project has now moved to the casting stage, with a shoot planned for either later this year or early 2013 in Scotland and Sweden.
Davies must be pleased The Deep Blue Sea was so well received as he’s been trying to get Sunset Song made for over a decade, but didn’t get much traction until people had seen his Rachel Weitz starring flick. The planned movie is based on Lewis Grassic Gibson’s 1932 novel about farmer’s daughter, Chris Guthrie, who struggle against life filled with pain and family dysfunction. It’s certainly not a jolly tale, as it opens with Chris mother committing suicide and poisoning two of her other children.
Davies career is certainly an interesting one, with much of his directing career, such as The Terence Davies Trilogy and Distant Voices Still Live, often seeming like a direct response to his difficulty coming to terms with his sexuality (he still says he hates being gay) and his childhood. Sunset Song seems like another indirect response to the latter, but we’ll have to wait and see.