Step aside 80 for Brady. It’s a good time to wax existential with other women of a certain age. Whether that was the intention of director Linda Yellen, who reunites the cast of Chantilly Lace decades later for another deep dive — this time in Chantilly Bridge — it may not matter. The sequel to the popular 1993 made-for-TV film is one of those rare and welcome cinematic experiences that takes its time to present an intimate portrait of its characters and the issues they face.
In this case, it’s the modern women — not so much embracing the aging process but determined to thrive no matter what their age. Directed once again by Yellen, an Emmy winner who knows how to draw out raw emotion from her actors, Chantilly Bridge reunites a group of lifelong, steadfast friends who are still chasing dreams, confronting injustices, and sticking up for their convictions.
The sequel stars Lindsay Crouse (Law and Order, Places in the Heart), Jill Eikenberry (L.A. Law), Patricia Richardson (Home Improvement, Strong Medicine), Talia Shire (Rocky, The Godfather), Ally Sheedy (St. Elmo’s Fire, Single Drunk Female), Helen Slater (Supergirl), JoBeth Williams (The Big Chill, Poltergeist), and introduces audiences to Naaji Sky Adzimah.
Jill Eikenberry, Patricia Richardson, and director Linda Yellen shared more about bringing the sequel to life with MovieWeb.
Always Crossing Bridges
The plot here revolves around five childhood friends who haven’t been together since they celebrated the 40th birthday of Natalie (played by Williams), who died shortly thereafter. Twenty-five years later, they’ve re-united to help Natalie’s sister Shelley (played by Richardson), who’s packing up her mother’s house, once their unofficial “headquarters. Shelley was never part of the original core group. So, say hello to some drama and candid dialogue.
Chantilly Bridge tracks its characters over a span of several seasons. Like the changing weather, we come back to them at different intersections of their lives. All the while, they gang moves through tensions, resentments, frustrations, and plenty a glass of wine.
“I thought there was a perfect opportunity cinematically [with this film] to do something extraordinary that no one else had done, which is to use footage of the same actual people in the same roles 30 years earlier, and weave it into the story,” shared director Linda Yellen. “I grew up in the 1970s watching Ingmar Bergman, and he loves the beauty and the landscape of faces. And we don’t have a lot of them in the world today. I had just come from doing a very high-tech snappy movie about millennials called Fluidity about the sex lives of millennials. This film was both such a wonderful departure, and a movie that I knew my friends would go see. And it was still about sex.”
Few topics are spared in Chantilly Bridge, which makes it a refreshing offering on the film scene. Things get real here, yet Yellen delivers perfect drops of levity at all the right moments.
“I just think this is the perfect time for the film to come out, because there is almost nothing for us [women over 50] to watch on TV,” said Patricia Richardson. “I mean, there’s Grace & Frankie, and recently, Women Talking, but it’s a very rare thing for us to see characters that reflect our lives and our issues. But, there’s really some something for everyone in this film.”
Taking Chantilly to the Next Level
For Eikenberry, reuniting with the cast was a “gift.” She also went back and watched the original and made observations between the two films after finishing the sequel: “I believe this film is timely because we as women, that core group of women from the film, have changed so much over the years and I think deepened in a lot of ways. That shows up on screen. That’s one of the reasons I was so moved by it. I really didn’t expect to see that. But I think that’s what we women do. Deepen.”
Richardson’s character may be a newcomer to the core group, but she says she didn’t feel daunted by entering an established dynamic. “Given who they [the actors] are now, they were so welcoming and so good to me,” she said. “We were all talking earlier how we are actors who are reactors. So, for me — for us — it’s really about reacting when people are doing this amazing work. Coming in, I wound up feeling as if I’d known them for a long time.”
To be sure, cinephiles know that Chantilly Lace struck a rare emotional chord when it hit TV back in the 1990s. At that time, it was rare to find an all-star female cast in a movie that so daringly revealed the deeper intricacies of emotions felt by women and the honest truths they may have been concealing. These days, we have Meryl Streep, Francis McDormand, Viola Davis, and director Sarah Polley to turn to.
Eikenberry is quick to point out how the cast collaborated, coming up with new storylines for the sequel. “It really had to do with the things we were all going towards and interested in now. We’ve all been in very different directions, but we got to sort of be part of each other’s new paths in this movie.
“It’s a unique experience when you have to move into the skin of the same character you played,” added Eikenberry. “But because of distance and time, you’re able to take the character any way you want. We recently got to watch the first one, and it was amazing to see how far the women had gone.”
Chantilly Lace, from Quiver Distribution, is available on demand beginning April 14.
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