‘Room’: How a Dark Indie Became 2015’s Left-Field Oscar Contender
Hi! Do you know how to spell ‘Prosecco’?” These are the first words Brie Larson says when she jumps on the phone, calling somewhere from deep in the heart of London. She has been doing interviews all day and has a screening later in the evening, and though the 26-year-old actress could not sound more chipper, she’s already thinking ahead to the meal that awaits her in a few hours. “There’s a nice, long dinner in my future, so I’m mapping out my drink order.” Asked if she’s planning on getting her beverage delivered to her hotel suite, Larson lets out a noise that sounds like a cross between reverb-heavy guffaw and a gunshot. “No, we’re definitely going to a restaurant. I can actually leave my room to eat now!”
Anyone who’s familiar with the premise of Room, the big-screen adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s bestselling novel, would not blame the actress for wanting to get out a bit. The story of a kidnapped young woman held captive with her son (played by seven-year-old Jacob Tremblay), Larson spends much of the film playing, arguing, sleeping, crying, laughing, plotting — and yes, eating — inside a domicile only slightly bigger than a proverbial bread box. But in Irish director Lenny Abrahamson’s hands, what might have been another Lifetime channel tearjerker is carefully molded into a tender, touching and nervewrackingly tense story — a combination that, along with Room‘s two central performances, has turned this modest drama into a left-field festival hit and a buzzed-about Oscar contender.
According to Donoghue, the idea of writing about parenthood had been on her mind when she happened to stumble across a news story about Elisabeth Fritzl, an Austrian woman who had been imprisoned in a basement and raped by her father for decades. “I was right in the maelstrom of motherhood when I first heard about it,” she says. “My children were four and one and a half, and I was going through that phase where you constantly feel like you’re being broken and remade by the experience of raising kids. So when this story came across my radar, I thought: A locked room would be a great way to shine a bright spotlight on the everyday heroism of being a parent — from the limitations and boredom as well as the magical moments. It just took things to an immediate extreme.”