But �the room� is an Amer�i�can indie film called Remem�ber Me, beau�ti�fully crafted with an air of thought�ful melan�choly by direc�tor Allen Coul�ter. This is the story of a New York uni�ver�sity stu�dent estranged from his wealthy father, in trou�ble with cops, and intrigued by the daugh�ter of one detec�tive who has already smashed his face in dur�ing an alley fight. The film just debuted on DVD fol�low�ing its mod�est the�atri�cal run, timed to coin�cide with Friday�s release of The Twi�light Saga: Eclipse.
In Remem�ber Me, Pat�tin�son gets to play a real human being in a roman�tic drama pop�u�lated by other func�tion�ing humans. They are flawed, com�plex, inter�est�ing peo�ple played by Pierce Bros�nan, Chris Cooper, Lena Olin, won�der�ful child actress Ruby Jerins and Aus�tralian dis�cov�ery Emile de Ravin as the object of Pattinson�s burn�ing desire. No one drinks blood, although this saga is rife with tragedy.
Coul�ter, a New Yorker, is on the phone explain�ing how Pat�tin�son, already cast in the first Twi�light, was eager to find an anti�dote � some�thing rad�i�cally dif�fer�ent � even before its release. Exec�u�tives at Sum�mit Enter�tain�ment, pro�duc�ers of Twi�light, were look�ing to help out.
�Hon�estly,� Coul�ter recalls of an early lun�cheon meet�ing with Pat�tin�son, �he was not known, Twi�light had not been released and there was no way to see it. We just knew he was inter�ested. Sit�ting in front of us was a guy who was scruffy, intense, charm�ing, unpretentious.�
Pat�tin�son was freshly returned from Mex�ico and aston�ished because he had been besieged �by 50 girls at the air�port,� future Twi-hards who knew him from pre-release pub�lic�ity. �Lit�tle did he know that this was not even the tip of the tip of the ice�berg,� Coul�ter says, laugh�ing. �Nor did we.�
After lunch, Coul�ter told pro�ducer Nicholas Osborne: �I don�t know why but I have the instinct that this guy could do it.� It would also clinch the pro�duc�tion deal because Sum�mit would com�mit to the $16 mil�lion bud�get. �Clearly,� Coul�ter says now, �that�s not lost on a direc�tor. That cer�tainly gets your atten�tion. But, if we didn�t think he was right, we would have said no.�
The �yes� came, Coul�ter recalls, �because he seemed to under�stand the role. He had the kind of scruffy attrac�tive�ness we needed and a hid�den inten�sity. He was kind of secre�tive in a way that I thought was kind of inter�est�ing, given who his char�ac�ter is and how he�s con�flicted about his father. So we said: �Let�s just take a flier!�
�It was after that I saw Twi�light and had to admit that, if I had seen it before, just because it is so rad�i�cally dif�fer�ent, I might have hesitated.�
The Twi�light films, Coul�ter says, are like silent movies and Pat�tin�son is like 1920s star Rudolf Valentino. Pat�tin�son was also about to go viral. �It might have given me pause because some�one that famous brings a cer�tain amount of baggage.�
One prob�lem now might be type�cast�ing. �There will be peo�ple who can�not accept that this young man is doing some�thing dif�fer�ent from Twi�light,� Coul�ter says. �Or they may have an atti�tude about Twi�light and about his fame, about his face being on the cover of mag�a�zines, and that may influ�ence how they see the movie.
�That is some�thing that, in my opin�ion, the movie will out�live and, at that point, peo�ple will sim�ply see it as a young man in a role. And, in my opin�ion, I think he is per�fect for the role.�
Amer�i�cans not in the mood
Remem�ber Me, which co-stars Robert Pat�tin�son and Emile de Ravin along with a rogues gallery of great char�ac�ter actors, is a roman�tic tragedy � not a roman�tic com�edy. That already makes it dif�fer�ent from most Hol�ly�wood movies, espe�cially with its melan�cholic mood.
�I didn�t think of it as dar�ing,� says Amer�i�can direc�tor Allen Coul�ter. �But it�s not a mood that most Amer�i�cans nec�es�sar�ily sign up for. I just thought it was true to the story.�
Indeed, Amer�i�cans did not sign up. Remem�ber Me earned $55 mil�lion world�wide, just $19 mil�lion of that in North Amer�ica despite the star power of Twi�light star Pat�tin�son (he was cast before Twi�light was released and became famous dur�ing the Remem�ber Me shoot). Remem�ber Me, like other chal�leng�ing films that look at youth romance in an intel�li�gent way, is now look�ing for its audi�ence on DVD.
Remem�ber Me includes ref�er�ence to 9/11. �It just seemed like the ulti�mate ver�sion of what this whole story was about,� Coul�ter says, �which is the event that shat�ters your life and changes its direc�tion. It was a gam�ble, to be hon�est, and one that I wres�tled with really until the film was fin�ished. But it was a gam�ble that I was also will�ing to take.�
Any Amer�i�can film�maker who even men�tions 9/11 within a fic�tional story is tak�ing a risk because many peo�ple are still so sen�si�tive about the sub�ject. �For some, it was some�thing that they wish I had not done,� Coul�ter admits. �And, for oth�ers, I think it worked in the way I intended. But every�body felt the need to be as respect�ful and del�i�cate as possible.�
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