CLOSE Jennifer Lawrence talks about her role in her new movie 'Red Sparrow.' USA TODAY
After training for four months to play a Bolshoi prima ballerina, "I was accomplished enough to match a ballerina’s body, which led to me screaming that I needed a block of cheese," says "Red Sparrow" star Jennifer Lawrence. (Photo: Dan MacMedan/USA TODAY)
BEVERLY HILLS – Jennifer Lawrence will absolutely crush you in an Instagram animal-off.
“I already have you beat because I have a (expletive) deer licking a kitten and I have a (expletive) wallaby eating some chips,” says Lawrence, 27, grabbing her phone at a corner table at the Beverly Hills Hotel after a mention is made of being attached to a certain baby hippo named Fiona.
There are zero cuddly moments in Red Sparrow, Lawrence's new psychological thriller (in theaters Friday), in which she plays Dominka Egorova, a Bolshoi ballerina-turned-spy who is trained to seduce and ensnare her targets. The film is based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Jason Matthews, a former CIA agent who wrote of a real Russian program called Sparrow School.
The film marks a major shift for Lawrence, who has spent years taking on emotionally dense, mature roles — think American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook, the latter of which won her an Oscar — while steadfastly avoiding jobs that rely on sexuality and nudity.
The closest she'd come, she says, is during a moment from her last movie, mother!, in which her sweater is ripped by rabid fans who descend upon her home with Javier Bardem, representing the destruction of Mother Earth.
“(Director) Darren (Aronofsky) showed me the footage,” which revealed her bra underneath. “I’m like, ‘Well, that’s not violating enough,' so I took my bra off. So that was kind of a moment for me, I was like, 'My boob’s out! My boob’s out, I’m on set!' But up until that point I had never really done anything that sexual.”
Francis Lawrence, who directed three of the dystopian films that launched Lawrence to international stardom, says he began to broach the idea of Red Sparrow during their last Hunger Games promotional tour in 2015.
"I remembered conversations we had when she was 21 or 22 making Hunger Games, when she said she wasn’t really interested in making movies with nudity or any sort of overt sexuality," he says. "So as I was developing it and it was obviously clearly going to be a big part of this, I was very nervous that she wasn’t going to want to do it."
They talked openly about it, and when the script was ready, so was Lawrence.
"Obviously, it’s very sexy, and I wasn’t quite sure yet where my head was on that, so I just wanted to talk about it (with Francis Lawrence)," she says. "We both knew I was going to have to decide to do the scenes as they’re written or another actress should do the role. And here I am. I’m still alive."
"As much as people think if you’re a celebrity or famous person then you must have, over the years, developed thick skin … she’s still a person," says co-star Joel Edgerton. (Photo: Murray Close, 20th Century Fox)
The director showed his star the final cut of Red Sparrow before anyone, including producers and the studio, "so she had the right to yank anything out that she didn’t want to (show). ... She never did it, but I gave her that option.”
Red Sparrow arrives in the middle of an intensifying Me Too movement, with conversations growing nationwide about consent. “It used to be normal if a man who was in a position of power (over) me, an executive, could put his hand on my leg. And now I feel like they won’t be doing that to young people,” Lawrence says.
Jennifer Lawrence shares abuse story: I had to lose 15 pounds, pose nude
She still has no idea why disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein, who produced Silver Linings, left her alone.
“You look at these women whose careers have been absolutely dismantled by Harvey Weinstein, because he picked them as they were coming up, before they were huge. And then he would spread rumors through the studios that they were crazy, and they wouldn’t get hired and their careers were being ruined and they had no idea why. I don’t know why them and not me. I don’t have, like, a predatory mind, so I don’t know what those (kind of men) are looking for.”
CLOSE Dominika Egorova, played by Jennifer Lawrence, is left with an uncertain future after her dancing career suddenly ends. Then she finds herself in a world of violence when she becomes a dangerous spy. USA TODAY
Weinstein aside, Lawrence has started drawing more careful lines around her personal life. She’s no longer taking selfies with fans. (Two just asked her in the hotel bathroom.) She’s grateful to them, she says, but it became too much.
Even today, Lawrence flinches when a fellow diner pulls out a phone. “Sorry, I just see cellphones and I just (jump)," she says, casting a wary eye at the surrounding tables.
More: Harvey Weinstein sorry he used Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence in his defense
Recently, "because I’m single, somebody was talking about setting me up with someone. And she’s like, 'You need to be with somebody who’s, like, in tech.' " Lawrence raises an eyebrow. "Just while we’ve been sitting at this dinner, how many people have come up to me? Like five, six?"
She's clearly thinking: How would someone outside this life handle that? Lawrence sips her tea. "I just had to carve out a life that was better for me, with less anxiety."
But trusting is tricky. The night before, Lawrence was at Ellen DeGeneres’ birthday party, cutting loose in a room of fellow A-listers. Unbeknownst to her, candid photos of Lawrence inside the bash appeared in a tabloid the next day.
Related: Jennifer Lawrence slams 'ridiculous' controversy around her Versace dress
Recently, Joel Edgerton, who plays the FBI agent seduced by Dominika, watched with annoyance when Lawrence was forced to explain she chose not to wear a coat over her Versace dress during a brief photo shoot with the cast last week in London.
“Does everything she says or does have to be turned into some kind of controversy?” he asks. "I think it would be a shame if Jen started to build a wall or put filters up. That’s just one part of her nature and her spirit that I think everybody loves. Now, it’s sort of mutated at times into the thing that people like to criticize, and I think they should all just shut up.”
Jennifer Lawrence (with Joel Edgerton) called controversy that sprang up because she didn't wear a coat over this Versace dress in London "utterly ridiculous." (Photo: Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)
Part of what's grounding Lawrence right now, she says, is political action. She was “losing her mind” during the last presidential election. President Trump, she says, reminds her of men she encountered Hollywood. “I was just kind of flailing because I just know that guy. I’ve seen that guy a million times. … I’ve met the dude that’s going to point at you and be like, 'I’m going to make you rich.' And he’s lying."
Now, instead of making another movie in 2018, the actress is spending the rest of the year traveling the country trying to get young people engaged with the non-partisan anti-political corruption group Represent.Us.
“What I’m trying to do and (the group's) entire mission is bringing both sides of the aisle together on things we agree on," she says. "We agree that corruption should not be legal in America. I think we agree on gerrymandering, I hope. It’s not a partisan thing."
Pretty normal, right?
And then she gets a text from Jennifer Aniston. “Look how normal I am," she grins.
CLOSE Jennifer Lawerence's new movie 'Red Sparrow' depicts a strong woman. She explains how that role impacts the Me Too movement. USA TODAY
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The nudity in Jennifer Lawrence's new film Red Sparrow has been picked up on in several reviews of the movie due to how unexpectedly explicit it as and how random it feels at times. For me, it felt as if at least one of the scenes was added just to boost box office sales.
Lawrence herself has defended the scenes, however, and said that they were empowering for her.
"The insecurity and fear of being judged for getting nude, what I went through, should that dictate decisions I make for the rest of my life?" she said at the Red Sparrow premiere on Monday night (via Variety), referencing the phone hack that saw her personal images stolen and posted online.
"This movie changed that and I didn’t even realize how important changing that mentality was until it was done. But I also really challenged myself in ways that I never really had before. The foreign accent. The dancing. It was really taking on a very different leaf."
As for the filming of the scenes and working with her Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence, she added: "We talked about it extensively, which was really important for showing up on the day and there being no surprises.
"I knew exactly what was going on and also there was one moment he came out to give me a note and just looked at me like I had clothes, and then I just felt like I had clothes on. I was surrounded by professionals and everybody was completely professional."
One scene sees Lawrence strip completely naked and lie spread-eagled on a table, her character taking part in a seduction training program for Russian spies.
“Look, I wasn’t sure she was going to want to do the movie," Francis Lawrence (no relation to Jennifer) said. "And I pitched her the idea in general, but I didn’t tell her much about the content.
"She liked the idea of the character in general, and I sort of filled her in a little bit along the way, but I wanted her to wait for the script. She thought about it, because clearly she knew what the content was going to be. And as soon as she said, ‘I want to do it,’ I said, ‘OK, I’m coming over to your house and we’re having a really frank conversation.'"
Red Sparrow opens in UK cinemas 1 March.
“Do you know how long it takes to peel the skin from a human body?” a torture-happy Russian goon asks in “Red Sparrow.” I imagine it feels about as long as sitting through this atrocious spy thriller, in which Jennifer Lawrence plays a prima ballerina who goes to whore school.
I’m not kidding. The film’s unquestionable high point is Lawrence’s character bellowing the accusing line in her Boris-and-Natasha accent: “You sent me to whore school!”
Other than this “Showgirls”-esque howler and Mary-Louise Parker’s amusing turn as a drunk, corrupt American senator’s aide, there’s little to recommend “Red Sparrow” — a throwback to old Hollywood in its belief that gratuitous rape and violence are the best way to create a heroine with backbone.
That’s almost beside the point, though: Director Francis Lawrence (“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”) makes a hash of the already convoluted plot (based on a novel by Jason Matthews) and wastes a lead who’s capable of being this year’s “Atomic Blonde” (she even gets a platinum dye job halfway through).
But where Charlize Theron’s double-agent character dispatched assailants with brutal physical precision, Lawrence’s is mostly required to be eye candy, despite her past as a lead in the Bolshoi Ballet. You’d think all that training might come in handy, but director Lawrence (no relation) never lets her use her dancer’s legs to strangle even one bad guy. What gives?
We meet Dominika Egorova (Lawrence) as she’s headlining the ballet and caring for her ailing mama (Joely Richardson), but her career is scuttled when a careless male dancer breaks her leg.
Strapped for cash, the resourceful Dominika agrees to spy for her politician uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts) and soon finds herself shipped off to Sparrow School, where the state trains nubile men and women in espionage via seduction. And lock picking. But mostly seduction.
When Dominika fends off a near-rape by one of her classmates, she’s punished for it by having to strip naked and re-enact the scene in front of a class. (Somewhere, there’s a porn director planning a “Red Sparrow” satire in which these pervy impulses can be liberated from an R rating.)
A prestigious cast keep straight faces here, including Jeremy Irons and Ciarán Hinds as Russian officials and Charlotte Rampling as the severe matron (“You vill call me Matron”) of the Sparrows. Joel Edgerton plays a CIA operative with the most American of names: Nate Nash, cultivator of a Russian mole, who thinks he can flip Dominika. She plays along while reporting back to her bosses, and off we go.
There will be double-crossing. There will be a hilariously bad sex scene. And there will be (gag) flaying.
A decent eleventh-hour twist isn’t enough to redeem what’s come before, which the film would have you see as a righteous indictment of Russia’s corruption and misogyny. Too bad it resembles countless bad sexploitation flicks set right here at home.
THE greatest disappointment about Red Sparrow is that it could’ve been so much more than it was, so thank god it looked beautiful because it is a badly written and confusing film.
Jennifer Lawrence stars as Dominika Egorova, the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet whose illustrious career is cut short when her dance partner lands on and breaks her leg during a performance. Needing to care for her sick mother, she approaches her uncle Ivan (Matthias Schoenaerts), a deputy in Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR) for help.
He extorts her into becoming an agent, first sending her off for training at the bureaucratically named State School 4 to become a “Sparrow”, the SVR’s fleet of attractive men and women who use their sexual wiles to corrupt their targets.
She’s tasked with finding out the identity of a mole in the Russian government from CIA agent Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), but her alliances are never clear as she navigates through the dangerous field of betrayal, self-interest and survival at all costs.
The spy flick was billed as an exciting action thriller, if the trailers were anything to go by, but in reality it is actually a slow burn about Russian fatalism whose two hours and 20 minutes isn’t completely redeemed by the pay-off at the end.
And you do wonder if there is going to be a pay-off as you sit through Lawrence’s inscrutable performance, trying to puzzle out just who she was double-triple-quadruple-crossing at any given moment — it’s exhausting. Is that genius or befuddlement?
Lawrence gives a fairly wooden portrayal, but it feels like it wasn’t her choice. It feels like the hand of director Francis Lawrence, because we know she can give more.
The characterisation is woefully shallow, including Edgerton’s character who was ostensibly the male lead. At one point, someone says Nate is clearly an “emotional” guy though there is no evidence of it in the way the character is written.
It’s a quirk of the film that it likes to tell you what people are, rather than showing it, like the many times Dominika is praised for being a brilliant spy though she appears to be fairly ineffective most of the time.
It also means some brilliant actors — Jeremy Irons, Ciaran Hinds, Sakina Jaffrey, Charlotte Rampling and Bill Camp — are wasted in thankless supporting roles that don’t differentiate from one another, other than some are meant to be American spies and others are Russian spies with terrible Russian accents.
The only person who gets to have any fun is Mary-Louise Parker who plays an inebriated political staffer — there definitely should’ve been more of her, if anything for a bit more levity. Belgian actor Schoenaerts as the nefarious uncle is also quite watchable, and he kind of even looks like Putin with that haircut.
Red Sparrow struggles to balance its story with its visual ambitions. It’s a gorgeously put-together movie with well-composed shots, especially of Lawrence walking through the streets of old Europe lined with fading buildings. Its production design and the restrained use of technology on screens also mean Red Sparrow has the feel of an old-school spy thriller despite its modern setting.
It doesn’t have the stylistic flair and energy of something like Atomic Blonde or anywhere the nuance of the Russian spy thriller TV series The Americans.
There’s no doubt Red Sparrow aspired to be more — it wanted to tell a story about female agents in a world where men try to control your body and your fate, and it wanted to say something about the Russian soul. But Justin Haythe’s script mostly misses the mark. At least it’s pretty.
Rating: 2.5/5
Red Sparrow is in cinemas from Thursday, March 1.
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