Few prospects excite us more at IndieWire than news of a new Carrie Coon performance, and the actress’ upcoming turn in Guy Nattiv‘s “The Liberation” gives her one of the meatiest characters of her career. The film has already played at several major fall festivals, including Telluride and Toronto, launching Coon into the heart of the Best Actress race — but we won’t complain about watching it again when it hits theaters this winter, courtesy of Bleecker Street.
An official synopsis for “The Liberation” reads “Rita (Carrie Coon), a woman in midlife haunted by the weight of her past, encounters magnetic young spiritual leader Ricki (Lily James) and leaves her family to follow her to an all-female commune. But when her daughters Ella (Bella Ramsey) and Jo (Odessa Young) arrive unexpectedly and become drawn into the group’s seductive world, Rita is forced to choose between the family she left behind and the life she believes can save her.”
When IndieWire’s Kate Erbland reviewed the film out of TIFF, she singled out Coon’s rich performance as a clear high point of the film.
“Rita has long felt like she was standing on the outside of her life, and the brief flashes we see of the joy the group (before it so clearly becomes a cult) elicits in her, the feeling she is part of something, is profound,” the review reads. “It makes her later time in the cult so much worse, with a slack-jawed, blank-staring Naia trying to tell her kids that no, no, things are really great, she’s happier than she’s ever been, this is what she wants. That she needs to be freed from this is a bit of a given, but ‘The Liberation’ gently pokes holes in the idea that her “outside” life is so much better. Perhaps there is no place for Rita in this world, a horrific revelation that Coon’s performance drives home with significant power.”
The film’s theatrical release is just a couple months away, but if you can’t wait that long to get your Carrie Coon fix, check out her recent appearance on IndieWire’s Screen Talk podcast, where she discussed her performance in the film as well as her larger career.
Bleecker Street will release “The Liberation” in theaters on Friday, January 8. Watch the trailer below.
the-liberation-trailer-carrie-coon-cult-drama
