Love “Breaking Bad” and miss watching Bryan Cranston scale new heights of self-destructive behavior? You’re in luck. Robin Swicord’s “Wakefield” has found a home. A press release announced that IFC Films has acquired the drama, which sees Cranston playing a father and husband who abandons his family and hides in their attic. Walter White may be gone, but Cranston has found another fictional family to wreak havoc on.
An adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s short story, “Wakefield” follows “successful suburbanite commuter Howard Wakefield (Cranston), [who] takes a perverse detour from family life: He vanishes without a trace. Hidden in the attic of his carriage house garage, surviving by scavenging at night, Howard secretly observes the lives of his wife (Jennifer Garner) and children and neighbors,” the film’s official synopsis details. “‘Wakefield’ becomes a fraught meditation on marriage and identity, as Howard slowly realizes that he has not in fact left his family; he has left himself.”
Swicord made her feature directorial debut with 2007’s “The Jane Austen Book Club,” a romantic drama starring Emily Blunt and Maria Bello about — as its title suggests — a book club that discusses the works of Jane Austen. Her screenwriting credits include “Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Little Women,” and “Matilda.” In 2009 Swicord received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
When we asked Swicord what she’d like people to think about after watching “Wakefield,” she said, “I’d love for people to find themselves crowded with a variety of competing thoughts, along the lines of, ‘Where will this story go from here?’; ‘What was going on, on her side of the story?’; ‘Could I ever forgive him?’; ‘Could I ever do what he did? And what do I think would happen if I did?’; ‘Could this man have changed as much, without doing something as drastic?’; and ‘What does it take to reclaim yourself? What has to be sacrificed?’”
The film’s theatrical run will begin May 19 in New York. You can catch “Wakefield” on VOD May 26.
