Susanne Bier‘s Serena has had a long and tumultuous road to the big screen. It recently premiered at the London Film Festival to lackluster ratings and upon the announcement Magnolia would distribute the feature some bad word of mouth continued with one prospective buyer saying, “The film was so edited, it made no sense.” Another called the performances “uneven, particularly Lawrence’s [descent into madness].”
A regular commenter here on RopeofSilicon, by the name of Winchester, recently shared similar sentiments saying:
The buyer’s sentiments are correct…whatever Bier started out with (which I’m guessing was a lot) it’s been edited down to nonsense. It’s hard to even say if the wooden performances are a result of the editing or simply weren’t there to start with and the editing makes them worse. Especially Lawrence. Gorgeous photography is the only plus this one has and even at that it’s nowhere near enough. I was one of two people in the cinema. I’ve never been in a screening as empty as that before.
The film stars Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper and follows newlyweds George (Cooper) and Serena Pemberton (Lawrence) who travel from Boston to the mountains of North Carolina where they begin to build a timber empire in 1929. Serena soon shows herself to be the equal of any man: overseeing crews, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving a man’s life in the wilderness. Together, this king and queen rule their dominion, killing or vanquishing all who stand in the way of their ambitions. But when Serena learns that she can never bear a child, she sets out to murder the woman who bore George a son before his marriage. And when she starts to suspect that George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons’ intense, passionate marriage begins to unravel as the story moves toward its shocking reckoning.
Magnolia Pictures will release Serena on iTunes / VOD on February 26, 2015 and in theaters March 27, 2015.
Watch the official U.S. trailer below.
