Maggie Gyllenhaal is a Staten Island early-childhood educator lacking something meaningful in her life who starts obsessing over a gifted student, which leads to problems too good to reveal. Suffice to say, when you watch “The Kindergarten Teacher,” Sara Colangelo’s American remake of the similarly-titled Israeli drama, you are transported into what Gyllenhaal described to me as the psyche of a “starving, vibrant woman’s mind.”
Colangelo, who stunned more than a few moviegoers with her 2014 feature directing debut “Little Accidents,” creates a film with its own unique identity, the fleshing out of a woman who desperately needs to find meaning in her life. However, the movie belongs to Gyllenhaal, in an awards-worthy performance, who, along with Colangelo’s patient camera, keeps playing with our heads throughout the proceedings. The fact that she maintains a sort of sympathetic nature to her character makes this brilliant film all the more mysterious to the eyes.
I spoke to Colangelo and Gyllenhaal about the film, which premiered on Netflix this past Friday.
Lars Von Trier is working on the 15th—and likely final—film of his career, “After,” and according to his producer, Peter Aalbæk Jensen, the screenplay is supposed to be completed this month