For too long, Hollywood has forced half-baked romantic subplots down the throats of its female-led films, but not with Miss Sloane.
The film, releasing on December 15 in the UAE, stars Oscar-nominated Jessica Chastain as the titular Elizabeth Sloane, a sleep-deprived, work-obsessed and ruthless lobbyist who has no desire for a social or romantic life. When the gun lobby comes knocking on her door for help winning the female vote, Sloane goes to every length to make sure they don’t get ahead.
“A logical, emotional reaction to seeing one [gun-related] atrocity after the other would tell you that a responsible government would do something about that, to try and limit the access to weapons of mass destruction, but it never shifts. Why would that be the case?” asked British director John Madden during a sit-down interview with Gulf News tabloid!.
In an attempt to answer his own question, Madden directed this: a popcorn thriller, designed to entertain and surprise with over-the-top plot twists.
“Because of its subject matter, a lot of people want to style the film as a sort of polemic, which it’s not, and it’s not intended as that,” Madden said.
Jake Lacy stars opposite Chastain as Robert Ford, a handsome, oft-shirtless male escort, unlawfully hired to fulfil Sloane’s needs. In one scene, Ford confronts Sloane for treating him as less than human, but a rare moment of vulnerability is swiftly discarded, as the film refuses to bow to Hollywood’s need for bleeding heart sentimentality.
“They have a connection that could have gone somewhere, but I think it’s a credit to the writer, to John and to the story that there’s not a final scene where Ford pulls up in a corvette and says, ‘Jump in, babe,’ and they take off to the sunset, like some sort of crime pulp thing,” said Lacy.
Lacy added that most Hollywood films have a forced romantic element, regardless of whether they’re female-led or male-led. In both cases, the burden is placed on the woman.
“If it’s a male-driven film, we have a woman who’s playing a role that’s one dimensional, and you’re like, ‘That sucks that that’s the role that has been written for you, essentially.’ Or in the case where a woman is the lead, then it’s sort of like, ‘We have to have a man complete your story, so just find a way to make this work,’” he said.
Madden had no interest in reducing Sloane to any such emotional climax. There are no childhood traumas or caustic scars behind her cold, calculated and restless character. At one point, she reassures her doctor that she’s finally going to get some rest before going to a late night party to network.
“She’s somebody who’s extinguished in her life everything that would, from her perspective, get in the way of what she wants to do. She’s stripped away anything emotional, anything spiritual, anything sexual, so she can compartmentalise it and keep it where she needs to have it,” said Madden.
Back in her clinical hotel room, Ford lives by a strict code of ethics that is absent from the immoral political arena Sloane is so accustomed to.
“He’s such a counter-intuitive example of the breed, and paradoxically a kind of intimacy — obviously a sexual intimacy, but that’s transactional and completely controlled by [Sloane] — develops in spite of everything,” said Madden.
Introduced halfway through the film, Lacy arrived on set a month after Chastain had been in that world. As the new kid on the block, he worried no one would like him.
“Those nerves come out of fear and self-obsession. And as soon as they’re addressed in those terms, in my experience, they’re gone, and you can get that needless, cluttered garbage out of the way and actually be present with another person and work on the material,” said Lacy.
“Every time I start a project, a week before, I’m grumpy. I’m just salty, and my wife is like, ‘Here we go. It’s going to be fine. You’re gonna be good.’ At some point I recognise that it’s just fear and that goes away and you dig in,” he added.
Lacy admitted he wasn’t sure how audiences outside of America would react to a film with such a specific political language, but believed there was a universality behind a woman who will do whatever it takes to achieve her goals.
He lamented on the current state of politics in America and the election of President-elect Donald Trump, which happened shortly after Miss Sloane wrapped filming. He hoped the film could shed some light on how things work behind the scenes and inspire people to take charge.
“[I’m in] complete disagreement with almost every stance that he’s taken, every opinion he’s expressed, every action that he’s taken, every tweet he’s sent out. I just am absolutely ashamed that that’s what is what our country has decided,” said Lacy.
Miss Sloane pulls back the curtain on the influence that money and lobbyists have on the narrative and “the point-of-view discussed through media outlets and ultimately, legislation.”
“We as the public are being fed an opinion or point of view that has been crafted to get us to get on board, and my hope would be that people can take a little bit of pause to try to see why someone would want this to happen beyond claiming that it’s based on conviction that I don’t think exists in politics,” said Lacy.
Don’t miss it!
Miss Sloane releases in the UAE on December 15.
