BROSNAN AND THOMPSON AS PARTNERS IN CRIME IN THE ROMANTIC COMEDY “THE LOVE PUNCH”

It’s a dream team pairing in the upcoming romantic caper, “The Love Punch,” starring ever-sassy Emma Thompson and always-charming Pierce Brosnan as ex-couple who reunite to steal back the money stolen from their retirement fund.    

Photo courtesy of Axinite Digicinema

                “The Love Punch” sees middle aged and divorced, company owner Richard Jones (Brosnan) looking forward to a worry-free existence as he arrives at his office on his last day of work. Much to his dismay, he discovers that the management buyout of his company was fraudulent. The company is now bankrupt and the employee pension fund - including his own - has been embezzled. Enlisting the help of his ex-wife Kate (Thompson), Richard sets out to track down the shady business man behind this, Vincent Kruger. Before they know it, Richard and Kate are caught up in a cat and mouse caper across Europe in a whirlwind of intrigue, mad chases and jewelry theft during which they rekindle their romance.

 

                Five years after “LAST Chance Harvey’s” international success, screenwriter and director Joel Hopkins wished again to team up with Emma Thompson. Straight away, the actress was excited about the story of a couple, divorced for eight years, who embark on a roller-coaster journey. And just as she came up with the name of Dustin Hoffman for “Last Chance Harvey,” it was she who thought of Pierce Brosnan for this new project.

 

                "I got excited by the idea of this ‘classic’ movie couple," Hopkins explains. "The starting point is to find a pairing that really excites me even before writing the script and then build a story around them. I really like to cast the movie in my head while I'm writing.”  Nicola Usborne, Hopkins's wife and producing partner, agrees: "We've worked together for fifteen years and Joel always begins with characters or preferably with actors and then builds an arc around them".

 

                Pierce Brosnan is enthusiastic about the filmmaker: "Joel as a director has a very good ear for the rhythm of comedy and for the articulation of speech and pacing of dialogue", he says.

 

                Emma Thompson compares the way Hopkins directs actors to the careful making of a dessert: "It's very delicate and it's all about finding the right balance of ingredients", she comments. "It's really like a soufflé doing this kind of work - you have to get the air into the mix just to make something that really rises. That's what you want in a director – someone who absolutely collaborates and lets you try things but who also tells you 'I want it like this and not like that'.”

 

                The director will look back fondly on the production of the film: "I've always had a relationship with France", he admits. "I found the crew very invested in the project as a whole, not just in their departments, but interested in the whole project, helping the whole film come together. Perhaps in England, people are a little more inside their departments and less interested in the process as a whole".

 

                Emma Thompson agrees: " In France, I noticed that the camaraderie existed between all the partners. You'll be at lunch, which is like a family thing, and everybody sits down to eat and talk with each other, and even have a glass of wine. Not me, though. I live like a nun when I’m shooting".      

 

                Pierce Brosnan is just as excited about France as the director: "I've come here over the years with James Bond, but this has been the most in-depth experience with a 100% French shoot", he contends. "You're surrounded by this sense of cinematic history, and it permeates your being.”

 

                Producer Clément Miserez concludes: "I dream of doing “Love Punch 2” and “Love Punch 3” any time, and of working again with Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson, because they're both nice and humble, and the whole crew would tell you just the same!"

                “The Love Punch” will open at a cinema near you on April 19 (Saturday) from Axinite Digicinema.

ACTING ROYALTY EMMA THOMPSON PLAYS QUEEN ELINOR IN “BRAVE”

Two-time Oscar-winner Emma Thompson provides the voice of Elinor, the Scottish Queen who has her own plan in mind for her daughter Merida—a plan that’s been predestined since long before either of them was born, in Disney/Pixar's new 3D animated feature, “Brave.”

Emma Thompson as Queen Elinor

 

             A vision of grace, wisdom and strength of character, Queen Elinor is fiercely dedicated to the well-being of her family and kingdom. As the measured, diplomatic counterpoint to her more impulsive husband, King Fergus, Elinor carries the weight of the kingdom on her shoulders in order to maintain the fragile peace between the volatile clans. Elinor strives to instill in Merida the knowledge and manner of a royal, expecting complete commitment to Elinor’s standards. But her vision of her daughter’s future is at odds with Merida’s rebellious spirit and desire to forge her own path, which ultimately causes Elinor to face calamitous consequences. 

Photos courtesy of Walt Disney Studios

             “Elinor is beautiful, but under a great deal of pressure,” says production designer Steve Pilcher, “which is tough to showcase visually. We added a shock of white hair that really shows her backstory—this woman has suffered some stress in her life, her daughter’s rebellion is likely just the tip of the iceberg. That unspoken history and bit of imperfection makes Elinor more interesting.”

             According to Pilcher, the design team studied paintings of Lady Macbeth, among other tragic heroines, incorporating the heavy robes and thick fabrics they observed to illustrate the weight Elinor bears. Emma Thompson says it’s that attention to detail and intense research that makes Pixar successful. “I was terribly pleased to be asked to come and work for Pixar, because their films are works of genius and extraordinary art,” she says. “And the thing that really made me want to do ‘Brave’ even more than my worship of their work is that it was set in Scotland. I’m half Scottish, and I live there for three or four months of the year. Scotland to me is the land of the free, the land of the brave. The Scottish landscape is epic and lends itself to epic emotion. 

             “Scotland is really a character in the film,” Thompson continues. “The filmmakers didn’t just look it up in a book. They went off and spent all this time in Scotland looking at different landscapes, addressing the landscape with the story. There’s a real connection with the countryside—they loved it as everyone does because it’s the most beautiful country in the world.”

             Thompson also had an affinity for her character. “Queen Elinor is a character I like very much because at one time she was quite feisty—Merida’s spirited personality comes not only from her father but from her mother as well—but Elinor has managed to put that stuff she had when she was young in a box and she’s stitched it up nicely. The two of them have to work out which bits of the other they’re okay with containing and becoming.”

             Co-director Mark Andrews says Thompson captured the essence of Elinor. “Emma is royalty in the acting world and she knows exactly what Elinor needed to be. She is queenly and regal and noble, but at the same time, she can be bawdy and funny. She can be very serious and theatrical—then crack a joke. That’s exactly who our queen is. Emma gives Elinor just the right amount of emotion, earthiness and humor.”

             Animators often reference video footage of the actors recording their lines and sometimes incorporate subtle gestures, expressions and mannerisms into the characters’ physical performances. Thompson could see a bit of herself in Elinor. “I love the way they’ve captured my eyebrows in my character. My eyebrows are always in this kind of questioning, slightly worried shape, and they got that just right.”

             Thompson concludes, “‘Brave’ is full-hearted, exciting, adventurous and very funny in many places, yet emotionally rooted in reality. The calibrations of the story and the way it moves emotionally is pure Pixar; it’s real and beautiful. It has everything I would want in a story, including just enough magic to make trouble.” 

             Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International, “Brave” takes aim at Philippine theaters on August 01, and will be presented in Disney Digital 3D™ in select theaters.