“All I do is wait,” Marion Cotillard writes to her lover in a new trailer for “From the Land of the Moon.” “I need you to talk to me,” she begs. The trailer suggests that many of her letters have gone unanswered, but still she persists. She refuses to give up on love.
Nicole Garcia’s period drama sees Cotillard playing Gabrielle, a free-spirited woman from a small town who dreams of romance and true love despite pressure from her parents to embrace a more stable, conventional relationship.
The spot for the French-language romance doesn’t reveal much of the film’s plot, but an official summary helps fill in the blanks. Gabrielle’s “parents marry her to José (Àlex Brendemühl), an honest and loving Spanish farm worker who they think will make a respectable woman of her,” the synopsis details. “Despite José’s devotion to her, Gabrielle vows that she will never love José and lives like a prisoner bound by the constraints of conventional post World War II society until the day she is sent away to a hospital in the Alps to heal her kidney stones. There she meets André Sauvage (Louis Garrel), a dashing injured veteran of the Indochinese War, who rekindles the passion buried inside her. She promises they will run away together, and André seems to share her desire.”
But Gabrielle and André won’t be able to run away together if he refuses to correspond with her. Gabrielle threatens that she won’t continue to write to him, but wonders, “What will I do? What can I do?”
In addition to directing, Garcia penned the script for the film. It’s an adaptation of Milena Agus’ 2006 best-selling novella of the same name.
“From the Land of the Moon” received eight nominations at the César Awards — France’s equivalent of the Oscars — including Best Director, Best Film, and Best Actress.
Cotillard won an Academy Award in 2008 for portraying French singer Édith Piaf in “La Vie en Rose.” She earned a second nomination in 2015 for “Two Days, One Night.”
Garcia’s previous directing credits include “Going Away,” “A View of Love,” and “Charlie Says.” She’s also an actress. “My American Uncle,” “Alias Betty,” and “Little Lili” are among her acting credits.
“From the Land of the Moon” opens July 28.
