We can only imagine the phone call/lunch date that happened between writer/director James Gray and regular star Joaquin Phoenix about Gray’s next film, Low Life. “So, Joaquin, I just created a scumbag of a character who forces an innocent woman into a life of prostitution and I thought of you first!” “Um… thanks?” But clearly the pair is excited to be working together for a fourth time.
And by pushing the shooting schedule until next year, Gray has also landed Marion Cotillard to co-star in the film, which will find her as a Polish woman who looks to immigrate to America. The sea crossing turns into an ordeal when her sister falls terribly ill and she’s forced to start trading sexual favours for medicine and food. Despite keeping quiet about what transpires on board, when she lands at New York’s Ellis Island (which presumably places this story before 1924, when that immigration station largely fell out of use), she’s issued with papers that make her out to be a moral-free harlot.
With nowhere to go, she falls in with a charming scum bucket (Phoenix) who pushes her into a life on the streets. Her one chance at salvation comes via Phoenix’s cousin, a magician who falls for her and tries to help her out. Gray is currently talking to the in-demand Jeremy Renner to snatch that role.
Cotillard, meanwhile, will spend some of this year working on The Dark Knight Rises, while Phoenix is going to be appearing in Paul Thomas Anderson’s still-untitled religious drama.