Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 5, 1993 TAG: 9302050307
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
RETURN TO ROMANCE
Western Virginia's Hidden Valley is no longer hidden.The rugged, remote hills surrounding the valley co-star with Jodie Foster and Richard Gere in "Sommersby," the Civil War drama that returns romance to movie theaters when it opens today.
With a budget speculated at more than $25 million, the film also returned a good deal of cold, hard cash to Hidden Valley and the other Virginia sites where it was filmed.
The filming was shrouded in mystery and replete with rumors of delays and on-set trouble. But at the movie's recent premiere in New York, the stars and director were effusive - about the state and the movie.
"Virginia was the most beautiful location in which I've worked," said leading lady Foster. "That valley was not just a landscape or a backdrop; it was more a metaphysical landscape - a character in the film. I fed off the land in trying to reach the character."
Gere, "Pretty Woman's" rich boyfriend and the officer of "An Officer and a Gentleman," said the film "walks a thin line between desire and reality. It was something I wanted very much to explore in a movie."
The story behind the filming is almost as complex and challenging as the drama itself.
The two stars stayed at The Homestead resort in Hot Springs for six months. Foster, who won her second Oscar (for "Silence of the Lambs") while preparing, had to learn to handle a horse-pulled buckboard. Gere spent hours learning how to persuade a stubborn mule to perform its chores.
Both actors had to learn period dances. And both had to work extensively on perfecting the accent, which they admit is different from a usual Southern dialect.
"It's from a more isolated area," Foster said. "It's more unsophisticated and a bit harsher."
"Sommersby" is based on the popular 10-year-old French movie "The Return of Martin Guerre," which starred Gerard Depardieu. Set in medieval France, it concerned an identity mystery that has become a legend in Europe.
Transferring the legend to the American Civil War is both logical and natural, says director Jon Amiel. "You need the upheaval that would destroy identity."
The "Sommersby" plot revolves around Jack Sommersby, who returns after seven years to his Tennessee hometown after the war. In the interim, his wife, Laurel, has raised their child and tried, somewhat unsuccessfully, to keep the plantation going.
She has been persistently courted by Orin Meecham, a nearby landowner who lives for the day when she might finally admit Sommersby is dead and consent to marry him. Sommersby had been abusive and insensitive, as well as ineffectual in managing his lands.
Upon his return, he is a changed man. He leads the residents of Vine Hill into planting tobacco, a new crop that eventually turns their poverty into prosperity. At home, he's a much more passionate lover than Laurel remembers.
Could this be the same man? The audience, as well as the townspeople, soon begin to wonder. The looks are similar but this is a more noble, gentle person. Laurel knows right away that things aren't the same, but she keeps quiet.
To believe the film, you have to believe that Jack Sommersby's identity could be in question.
"You have to remember that the Reconstruction era was the apocalypse for these people," said Foster, who plays Laurel. "It was the end of the world as they had known it. This guy comes in and gives hope. It was easy to look the other way. It's the case of a public person versus a private person."
Gere, in addition to playing Sommersby, was executive producer of the movie.
"Producer is a silly title," he said. "I helped to get the project together. That's all."
The production team was the same one that turned out the megahit "Pretty Woman," which grossed more than $200 million in the United States alone.
" `Sommersby' is about masks," the actor said at the Regency Hotel, the day after the highly successful premiere. "The theme is identity. It's about lies and falseness. It's about `Who am I?' versus `Who do I want to be?' When I read the script, I was fascinated. There was very little dialogue in it. It's a visual drama."
The producers, though, are trying to downplay comparisons to the classic French movie. They are aware critics tend to compare a movie to the original - and the remake seldom comes out ahead.
"I never saw `The Return of Martin Guerre' until after we had finished `Sommersby,' " Gere claims. "I didn't want to fall into the trap of making comparisons, or reacting to it."
Foster, who is fluent in French, said she hadn't seen the French movie in 10 years and took another look only recently.
The casting is unlikely. For both actors, it is a change of pace to romance - particularly for Foster. Up to now, she has played tough, courageous and independent women, as in her two Oscar roles - a rape survivor in "The Accused" (1988) and an FBI agent in "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991).
"I don't think courage and independence have to be separate from romance," she snapped when the subject came up. " `Little Man Tate,' a movie I directed, had romance in it - even though it was between a mother and her little boy. There are all kinds of romance."
Foster, who takes on only one film a year, claims "Sommersby" is "more about commitment than romance. It is commitment that causes him, Sommersby, to be able to be born again. . . . It's a movie about redemption."
But will audiences accept a romance? "I guess I'm a romantic more than a cynic," said Foster.
"Cynicism is a defense for those who can't cope," she added. "Audiences want a return to old-fashioned fare."
Gere feels the movie is similar to classics like "A Tale of Two Cities" and "A Man for All Seasons" in its pursuit of nobleness.
"One angle, too, is that love is something we are selfish about," he said. "It is something we hold for our own. Most men associate love with their own home. I do.
"I think of love in terms of my wife and home," said the actor, who is married to supermodel Cindy Crawford. "We'll step over homeless people in the street to go to our home to be personal."
During filming, the press was kept off the set and denied interviews, fueling continued rumors that the on-screen lovers weren't getting along and that the production was falling behind schedule.
Foster claims she and Gere got along well but, "I gave him a good deal of freedom, in a way, because there was no big relationship off-screen.
"We didn't hang out together when we weren't filming. That's not because we don't like each other, but I think it helps the film. All of the intensity shows up on the screen."
Filming the bedroom scenes was "no problem," says Foster. "By current movie standards, they were pretty prudish. There was nothing really sordid about them. We were going more for romance than, you know, vulgarity. I enjoyed the love scenes, if you want to know the truth."