Force Majeure
It’s the second day of this year’s Venice Film Festival and Noah Baumbach’s sublime Marriage Story has just landed. In the lush Excelsior Hotel, patrons buzz around downstairs trying to catch a glimpse of the cast; above them, on the first floor, Laura Dern marches with purpose in Total Film’s direction. In towering Louboutin heels and an arresting red and black-striped Dior dress, it’s as if she’s come in character, as Los Angeles divorce lawyer Nora Fanshaw.
Chronicling the separation and increasingly painful divorce of a New York theatre couple, director Charlie (Adam Driver) and actress Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), Baumbach’s film takes a vicious turn when Nicole moves back to L.A. to live with her mother, taking their young son with them, and is advised to get lawyered up. Enter Dern’s fearsome Nora, who comes armed with hugs, herbal teas and handkerchiefs for her clients and a barbed-wire baton for the ex-partners.
“I’ve been privileged to play some pretty
