After over a year since we got a glimpse at a still from SERENA, we finally have a trailer for the drama directed by Susanne Bier that reunited Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence after SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK. Playing a very different couple than in that movie, SERENA centers on the tumultuous marriage of George and Serena Pemberton. The Depression-era drama definitely looks ambitious.
Even though they appeared in AMERICAN HUSTLE for David O. Russell, Lawrence and Cooper didn’t share much screen time. SERENA was filmed between those two Oscar nominated films and represents a very different type of movie for the duo. Where Russell’s films had a sense of humor, SERENA looks like almost like a melodramatic mini-series you would have seen on network television in the 1980s. That is not to say it looks bad as the cast also includes great performers like Toby Jones and Rhys Ifans.
The film 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.
SERENA has yet to find a U.S. distributor, but with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as the leads, you can rest assured this will see screens in North America. I definitely get a different vibe off of this trailer than what I expected and maybe that is because it was made before these actors became Oscar magnets. It will definitely be worth watching as both Lawrence and Cooper are capable of some stunning on screen magic.