As posted about before, Trespass will be premiering at the Toronto Film Festival next month, and we now have exact dates! The TIFF website has also added film details and a mini-review/preview.
Trespass will receive it’s world premiere on Wednesday September 14th at the Roy Thomson Hall at 9:30pm. This will be the red carpet event, which we hope Nicole will be able to attend. The film will also receive a screening the day after, at the Visa Screening Room (Elgin) at 2:30pm.
View the Trespass page at the TIFF website.
A seemingly straightforward home invasion evolves into something far more complicated in Joel Schumacher’s terse thriller that reunites the director with past collaborators Nicholas Cage and Nicole Kidman. Full of double-crosses, explosive violence and riveting performances, Trespass doesn’t waste any time penetrating boundaries or getting under our skin.
Programmer’s Note
Trespass gets right down to the business of violating boundaries. It opens with Kyle (Nicolas Cage) steering his luxury convertible through the Louisiana woods, nearly home yet still working, making desperate calls to real-estate clients unresponsive to his hard sells. Kyle arrives at his isolated, museum-like mansion to find his wife Sarah (Nicole Kidman) arguing with their adolescent daughter Avery (Liana Liberato). Avery locks herself in her room; Kyle keeps taking business calls; Sarah just wants a nice family dinner. So domestic tensions are already peaking when unexpected visitors arrive, wearing masks, making demands and packing heat.
It seems at first like a standard home invasion — one that might end quickly and cleanly enough, leaving the family bruised, shaken-up and robbed, but otherwise intact. However, negotiations between Kyle and the intruders become complicated. He won’t open the safe. He analyzes his assailants’ plan and pokes holes in it. He even attempts to strike up a business deal with them. Trespass keeps us wondering what this nervous, barking, bespectacled man could be up to.
Meanwhile, disquieting glances of recognition are exchanged between Sarah and one of the invaders. Intermittent flashbacks tease us with the possibility of some past dalliance. But what really happened? Does Kyle know? And what do we make of this masked man’s conflicts with his cohorts, one of whom is his brother and who claims to be doing all this for the sake of their ailing mother? The film piles on the questions — and matches every one with startling twists.
Trespass reunites Joel Schumacher with Cage, whom he directed in 8MM, and Kidman, who worked with him on Batman Forever. The familiarity makes for risky, vulnerable performances, with Cage emphasizing Kyle’s internal battle between mania and calculation, and Kidman giving Sarah different layers of anxiety. Schumacher keeps things on a tight leash, using sudden push-ins and close-ups to convey narrative as effectively as possible. The result is a terse thriller that builds to an explosive resolution.
- TIFF.net