Director Jean-Marc Vallee is on a 'Wild' ride in Hollywood

by Kity Smith Clothes Designer

While filming "Wild," director Jean-Marc Vallée set some de-glamorizing ground rules for his lead actress, Reese Witherspoon: She couldn't wear makeup, had to cover the mirrors in her trailer and wasn't allowed to lighten the load in the comically massive backpack worn by her character, Cheryl Strayed.

"The film is called 'Wild,' not 'Nice' or 'Sweet,'" Vallée said, explaining his stripped-down approach, a performer-friendly style of filmmaking that relies on natural light, handheld cameras and lean crews.

At age 51, with eight finished features, Vallée has worked steadily as a filmmaker for more than 20 years in Canada and the U.S. But he's enjoying increased recognition in Hollywood recently as a director who shepherds actors through some of their strongest and most taxing performances, dexterously capturing cinema's trickiest special effect, human emotion.

"Dallas Buyers Club," Vallée's raw 2013 drama set during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, won Oscars for Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, both of whom transformed and exposed themselves and showed audiences new range beyond their heartthrob personae.

"Wild," which opens Wednesday in select theaters, stretches Witherspoon well beyond the chipper roles for which she's best known, including her Oscar-winning turn as sweet but steely June Carter in the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line."

An adaptation of Strayed's bestselling 2012 memoir of her 1,100-mile solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, "Wild" tracks its protagonist's inner journey as she recovers from the death of her mother, Bobbi (Laura Dern), a painful divorce from her husband (Thomas Sadoski) and reckless experiences with sex and drugs. Vallée shot the film for about $15 million as a modern, female-driven western, with Witherspoon's tiny frame set against the wide vistas of California and Oregon, nature as her antagonist and Bobbi, appearing ethereally in flashback, as her greatest love.

"I knew this was going to be a really hard movie, and I just didn't know if I was going to be able to do it, physically and emotionally," Witherspoon said at the Telluride Film Festival in August, where she, Vallée and Dern shared a table the morning after "Wild's" first public screening. "I also knew Jean-Marc wouldn't turn the camera away."

Strayed's agent had sent "Wild" to Witherspoon's agent before it was published, and within days of reading the galley, Witherspoon bought "Wild" with her own money, enticed by the rare opportunity it presented her to evolve on screen.

She and her producing partner, Bruna Papandrea, saw Vallée's 2005 French-language film "C.R.A.Z.Y.," about a sexually confused teenager in 1970s Montreal and "The Young Victoria," his 2009 drama starring Emily Blunt as the British monarch, as well as footage from "Dallas Buyers Club," which wasn't finished. They were drawn to the urgency and fluidity of his direction, Papandrea said.

The producer said she had to woo Vallée into reading the "Wild" script; he has a tendency to burrow deeply into whatever project he's working on, and when Papandrea called, he was preparing to make a romantic drama.

'Gen.' Vallée

With salt-and-pepper hair around his temples and a soft, Quebecois-accented voice, Vallée can seem deceptively low-key. But at work he's intense, even he admits, holding firm to his opinions even when producers and studio backers raise objections. He has two grown children; for fun he likes to DJ at clubs in Montreal, where he lives.

"I'm Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde," Vallée said. "Adrenaline makes me change. I've got emotional material, so I try to give everything to it. I guess I become a little bit of a general. I become a little bit pushy and directive."

"There's a surety with Jean-Marc, which all good directors need to have," Papandrea said. "I love when directors spar with me, because it means they know what they want."

When he did finally read the "Wild" script, the idea of a maternal love story hit Vallée with particular force; he was mourning his own mother, who had died of cancer in 2010. "My mom was like Bobbi, so positive," he said. "The book was so emotional. Who says, 'My mother was the love of my life'? Who says that? The love of your life is a soul mate." Read more here: black prom dresses uk