Miramaxing out

>> Patricia Rozema makes her first American film with Mansfield Park

by MATTHEW HAYS

Photo by Caroline Benjo

Canuck director Patricia Rozema sounds cool and confident as she chats from her Toronto home. But she admits to being daunted by her most recent project, a well-heeled period piece based on one of Jane Austen's famous novels, Mansfield Park.

"Sure, she's one of the great writers of the English language. But I was free to do anything I wanted with it, and that was attractive."

Rozema, perhaps best remembered for the decidedly contemporary romances I've Heard the Mermaids Singing and When Night Is Falling, says much of the preparation felt like scholarship. "I devoured all things Austen--books, letters, diaries. I then wrote it as a contemporary piece. Then I translated it to period English."

Rozema has also included a twist similar to the one Cronenberg threw into his adaptation of Naked Lunch. "I augmented the book with Austen's own letters and journals. I wanted to include some biographical information about Austen herself.

"I thought it would be so much different, doing a period film. And certainly, there were constraints. You can't just turn the camera the other way if you feel like it, because there's a hydro wire in the way. The actors couldn't really ad lib, either. It was a much more script-focused process."

As for working with America's most prominent indie studio and distributor, Rozema says she didn't feel that different about being Miramaxed. "Oh no. Miramax has been Rozema-ed! Really, in a way it felt like going home. They were the American distributors for Mermaids, so I've known Harvey [Weinstein] for years. We've been dancing around various project ideas for a long time, and then this came along."

As for dealing with a larger company on a bigger budget, Rozema says the main difference was "that I had to agree with more people then I used to. I had to find consensus with several people as opposed to just one or two."

In the past, Rozema has been somewhat reluctant to be labelled as gay, but not now. "I'm homosexual, you know that. But it's not the definitive definition to my work and my life. It's tough, because you want each of your works to be seen in a new way each time. Already, people have started speculating about the characters in Mansfield Park. Yes, there's lesbian innuendo between a couple of the characters. But it's there in the book."

Mansfield Park will screen as the opening film for the World Film Festival along with the Cannes-Award-winning NFB short When the Day Breaks on Friday, August 27 at 7:30pm, by invitation only. The films will also screen on August 27 at 10am at the Imperial and August 28 at 4:30pm at the Loews