About the book, from the publisher:Putney should definitely be directed by a woman. Although one of the three central characters is male, we don’t want too much of the male gaze on Daphne’s young body. She is only 13 when she falls in love with 31-year-old Ralph and he has long been obsessed with her. My choice is the amazing New Zealander director, Jane Campion. Since The Piano (1993), she has shown she can do grand and intimate, imaginative and realistic. She has also done “romantic” in Bright Star (about Keats) and off-beat-beautiful-scary in Top of the Lake.Visit Sofka Zinovieff's website.
Campion would be ideal for capturing the contradictions in Putney’s two eras. Firstly, the 1970s, bohemian London household of Daphne as a child, where her father Ed is a writer and her mother Ellie a Greek activist. They live in what looks like seductively beautiful freedom in Putney, and Ralph is an up-and-coming composer who collaborates with Ed. The present day has Ralph and Daphne looking back on their relationship as a “romantic secret”.
Daphne is dark-haired, dark-eyed and half-Greek. In adulthood, she retains some of the grace and wildness of her childhood and is still slim and small-built. Aged 50, she has left behind decades of drug abuse and disastrous relationships to settle down as an artist with a day job. I would choose Penelope Cruz for the role, as I think she can combine the wild and powerful with the vulnerable. In Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Cruz plays a crazy, sexy artist who is also very emotional and I’d like that energy for Daphne, who doesn’t realise how much she has been...[read on]
My Book, The Movie: Putney.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
