First Look: Cynthia Nixon as Emily Dickinson in Terence Davies’ ‘A Quiet Passion’
Matt Brennan
The “Sunset Song” and “The Deep Blue Sea” director’s long-awaited portrait of the American poet—in the works since “Sex and the City” star Cynthia Nixon was cast in the lead role in 2012—now has a handful of sumptuous period stills for your perusal, courtesy of production company Double Dutch International. Filming began in Belgium in May.
READ MORE: “Cynthia Nixon Plays—and Narrates—Emily Dickinson in Two Films”
“A Quiet Passion” follows Dickinson from her schoolgirl days in Amherst, Mass. to her years writing in near-total isolation, where she produced a body of verse that counts among the finest and most inventive in American literature. (Her poetry was only discovered by her family, in 40 bound volumes, after her death in 1886.)
The film, which costars Jennifer Ehle as Dickinson’s sister and intellectual companion, Lavinia; Keith Carradine as her father, Edward; and Emma Bell as the young Emily, is not the only Dickinson/Nixon project in the works. Earlier this year, UK-based production company Hurricane Films, which is producing “A Quiet Passion,” launched a Kickstarter for Dickinson doc “Phosphorescence: Words Into Shining Light,” narrated by Nixon and directed by Davies’ longtime producer Sol Papadopoulos.
No word yet on distribution plans—Double Dutch International is handling international rights, while UTA and Indomitable Entertainment have domestic rights—but Hurricane had hoped to launch “Phosphorescence” in 2016; if the two films can be seen as companion pieces, then we might expect “A Quiet Passion” to be released around the same time.
