Road to Nowhere

Colour, HD CAM
USA, 2010, 121 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Young director Mitchell Haven decides to cast an unknown actress as the lead in his new film, with the aim of turning her into a star. The young woman fascinates him since she is mixed up in a crime whose trail leads right to an influential Southern politician. Mitchell’s work on the film rapidly becomes a deadly game from which he soon realises there is no escape. His obsession with the film and with the mysterious young woman flips over into a compulsive desire to discover the truth – a truth just as elusive and complex in art as it is in life. Mitchell’s eclectic journey to nowhere takes him from North Carolina to Rome, Verona and London....  Stylised as neo-noir, this romance toys with the relationship between fiction and reality in the grand style of Wilder’s Sunset Blvd., Fellini’s 8½ and Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Cult director Monte Hellman returns to the limelight with a film which delighted American critics and also received well-earned kudos at last year’s Venice IFF.

About the director

Monte Hellman (b. 1932, New York City) studied drama at Stanford University and film at UCLA. Like a number of filmmakers from the New Hollywood generation, he gave his debut under the patronage of producer Roger Corman (the low-budget horror Beast from Haunted Cave, 1960). He became a legend of the American independent scene thanks to the road movie Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), which acquired cult status and was screened at KVIFF in 2007 in the New Hollywood section. He also directed the war film Back Door to Hell (1964), featuring Jack Nicholson in one of his early roles, whom he also cast in the antiwestern Ride in the Whirlwind (1965) and the western The Shooting (1969). Hellman was executive producer on Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992). In 2010 he was awarded a Special Lion at the Venice IFF for his life’s work.