SPOILER ALERT: This story addresses major plot points, including the ending of “Young woman and the sea», currently showing in cinemas.
As Joachim Rønning read the script for “The Young Woman and the Sea,” he took small notes as he went along. When he got to the end, his first thought was, “This is incredible.” His next thought was: how could he capture what he had just read on the screen?
“Young Woman and the Sea” tells the story of Trudy Ederle, played by Daisy Ridley, who in 1926 became the first woman to swim across the English Channel. But a case of measles, which nearly killed her and left her with severe hearing loss, stood in her way, as did sexism. Yet she overcame the obstacles. Rønning’s challenge was balancing story and motivation, continuing the journey with the character, and then being there as she achieved that goal.
The filmmaker wanted to punctuate the film with such moments, particularly towards the end of the film: “When she gets lost in the dark and people go out onto the cliffs and light the fires, I found that so incredible. I hope I can translate that to the screen, so that these moments become important.
It all started with Rønning making the film as real as possible. “I wanted to be on the ocean. I wanted to be in the real elements with Daisy Ridley swimming in the currents and cold water,” says the director whose credits include “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” and “Kon-Tiki.”
The film was shot on location in Varna, Bulgaria, with production using interior sound stages, water tanks, and, of course, the cold waters of the Black Sea.
Rønning worked closely with his cinematographer Oscar Faur. Faur was no stranger to filming water having worked on the disaster film ‘The Impossible’ with Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor and Tom Holland. Their conversations revolved around the best way to capture Trudy in the water. “We built special platforms. We practiced in a tank with the photo equipment. He designed cables and cranes so we could capture all the swimming in the film,” says Rønning.
Ridley practiced a lot to play Trudy. “She started training for months and months, swimming in open water with Siobhan-Marie O’Connor, the English Olympic medalist swimmer. They trained and she learned menstrual swimming – how they swam 100 years ago. Rønning continues: “When she entered the water, she was tough. She never complained and always sought to, asking “Do you want one more?” » and his lips turned blue.
In addition to having to swim in freezing waters, Trudy also encounters a swarm of jellyfish in the film. “The jellyfish element is one of the rare synthetic elements. When you make a film like this that takes place in the real world – and it’s a period film – if it doesn’t feel real, you’re excluded from the story,” says Rønning. “We worked really hard on creating this jellyfish sequence and have been planning this for a long time. We had Daisy in the water with jellyfish that later became animated animals.
The final moments of her swim were a monumental achievement for Trudy and Rønning wanted to capture this spectacle. He says: “We had 1,000 extras in the middle of the night, on the beach in the middle of nowhere, all dressed up and they had been there since six o’clock, and we were shooting until six in the morning on several nights. . Daisy has made it to land, again in freezing waters, and it’s such a feeling of accomplishment.
As for all the elements of the narrative – Trudy’s story, her family, the stages of her swimming career and her attempts to swim the English Channel – Rønning credits one person for providing balance in the film’s narrative.
“I have the king of rhythm as a producer, Jerry Bruckheimer,” he beams. “I learned so much from him. When it comes to how the audience feels, he has a remarkable ability to feel the viewer’s pulse and know when something is dragging.
Gn entert
News Source : variety.com
