InCauseway,Lynsey takes a job cleaning pools as she tries to get back on her feet.
But she often gets in them, finding a sense of calm and healing in the water.
Lawrence, however, was a bit more playful.
Wilson Webb/Apple TV+; Inset: Tracey Biel/Getty Images
“In the course of shooting this movie, I wound up in pools,” says Neugebauer.
“There’s a video of Jen trying to throw me in the pool.
And we both fall.
LILA NEUGEBAUER:I have really been a theater director for the last 15 years.
In my heart, I had always hoped to make movies.
But about a year before I read this script, I had started saying it out loud.
It was very non-traditionally structured, lyrical, patient, sensitive.
There was aslow, slow burn to it.
I attached myself to it, and then, this movie came into being in an accelerated way.
And I was asked, would I like to have dinner with her?
And it was a really strong, immediate connection between us.
Was moving from stage to film harder or easier than you anticipated?
In some ways, I almost didn’t have a calibration for how difficult I anticipated it to be.
I predicted that it would be full of new challenges, new mountains to scale.
What constitutes the difficulty of filmmaking is the endurance required.
Our story is an extreme instance of that.
In the theater, when the play opens, my contract ends.
They carry the story with them.
But as a filmmaker, you carry it every day.
But it’s also thrilling.
A lot of theater directors when they make their feature debuts are stuck in the proscenium.
What were some of the techniques you used to check that you avoided falling into that trap?
I don’t think I knew that was a trap.
One of the great discoveries was all the through-lines from directing theater.
Admittedly, this is not a hugely dynamic camera.
We always wanted the sensitivity with which we handled the characters to be at the foreground of our choices.
Our choices were motivated by our desire to handle the characters with great care.
It was important to me and Diego that style never overburden substance.
That created an opening of space between us.
It was very organic, very natural.
I walked away feeling hugely galvanized with a feeling of creative urgency.
I remember that very well.
And that bore out in terms of her performance.
She energetically holds stillness with such potency.
I’ve know Brian since I was 19, a very long time.
We are old friends.
Sheherself talked about it a little bitthis week.
Was that something that the two of you discussed?
I loveWinter’s Bone.
Jen and I never talked about it.
I’m a huge Debra Granik fan, but we didn’t talk about her.
We never talked about her performances in any other films.
That was apparent to me from our first conversation.
Did you seek any advice from her?
Thank you for bringing up Elaine.
All I want to do is talk about Elaine.
She’s my idol.
I learned so much just from being in a room with Elaine May.
That was one of the great privileges of my life.
Elaine told some really good stories while we were doing that production, about many of her creative endeavors.
And I will say I was listening closely.
I love the metaphor of pools and the healing power of water, particularly in that climactic argument scene.
What was it like filming in pools so much?
We definitely had camera operators in the pool.
This is a movie which is very patiently paced in general.
People are thinking between the lines a great deal.
In that scene, we are in a very reactive register.
The stakes of calibrating those performances were very high for me, and for Jen and Brian.
That was a difficult scene it was a personal scene, a scary scene.
And everyone had to dig deep to deliver it.
Causewayis in theaters and onAppleTV+now.
