Indie Focus: Sarah Polley’s ‘Take This Waltz’ is a tricky dance

Actress Sarah Polley’s breakthrough feature as director and screenwriter, 2006’s “Away From Her,” an examination of an older couple grappling with the realities of aging, earned her an Oscar nomination for adapted screenplay. Her new directorial effort,”Take This Waltz,” which opens in Los Angeles on Friday and is already available on video on demand, concerns a love triangle of people at the other end of their lives struggling to settle into who they are going to be as they mature.

A melancholy chamber piece shot through with offbeat humor, the film begins when Margot (Michelle Williams) meets Daniel (Luke Kirby) on a business trip, and the two form an instant connection. After returning home to her husband, Lou (Seth Rogen), Margot discovers that Daniel has just moved in across the street. They try at first to respect the boundaries that separate them, but finally fidelity proves too much for Margot.

The film, shot in Toronto and Nova Scotia in summer 2010, captures both the flush feelings of summer and the blossoming of new romance with a literary flourish as geysers of words tumble from the characters’ mouths. It would be easy to assume “Take This Waltz” is another adaptation (the previous film was adapted from an Alice Munro story), but it is actually an original screenplay by Polley.

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“I enjoy reading books and short stories more than I like watching movies,” said Polley, whose acting credits include “The Sweet Hereafter,” “Go” and 2004’s “Dawn of the Dead,” during a phone call from Toronto.

“I think I wanted it to seem a little bit hyper-real,” Polley added of the film’s tone, “somewhat exaggerated in terms of color and romance and that feeling of diving into a really luscious world, capturing that feeling of desire and the initial way that romance makes the world pop out. So both visually and in terms of the way the characters behave, I think there is a slight fairy tale element to it.”

Even as the film covers the rather emotionally loaded territory of a woman leaving her husband for another man, Polley never intended for viewers to take sides or for the film to adopt the point of view of any one character. Williams’ Margot may be the focal point, but it’s not just her story.

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“I feel like I didn’t as a filmmaker have judgment on who she should be with or what she should do,” said Polley. “It wasn’t like I had a position I wanted people to take, but I am surprised that people saw the characters differently depending on whatever their position is from their own relationships.”

In his role as the other man — “the wrecking ball,” as he puts it — Kirby knew that on the one hand his character could in some ways be the bad guy, but that was also something that quickly left his mind.

“I thought we were making a movie about two people who fell in love,” Kirby said. “I really began to think we were telling this love story, and it took a while for me to clue back into the fact that what we were seeing was the whole story and this huge dilemma.”

Though Polley, 33, herself has been divorced and subsequently remarried, she is careful to note that the film is not intended as a reflection of her experience. (“An unfortunate coincidence,” she said of any apparent connection.)

Although the women had never worked together, Williams, a three-time Oscar nominee, has admired Polley from a distance, even looking to her career as a guide for her own.

“I saw ‘The Sweet Hereafter’ when I was 15, and it kind of set me on the path that I’m currently following,” Williams said. “I didn’t know that movies like that existed or work like that existed and I just thought, ‘Gosh, that’s the place I want to live in, that’s for me.’”

The two definitely came together on their shared love for the Scrambler, an amusement park attraction in Toronto featured prominently in “Take This Waltz.” After transforming the experience of the ride into something dreamy and romantic, Polley includes a moment when the music stops and the lights come on to reveal the rather unappealing cement bunker that actually houses the whirling attraction.

For Polley, who will soon be acting again in Wim Wenders’ 3-D family drama “Everything Will Be Fine” while also adapting the Margaret Atwood period piece “Alias Grace” for herself, the ride came to capture some of the broader themes of the film.

“It’s always a shock to my system when I’ve ridden that ride and the lights come on and you realize it’s all sort of been in your head in some way,” Polley said.

Though she was talking ostensibly about the Scrambler, she could just as easily have been referring to the heady early days of romantic attraction or even filmmaking itself when she added, “You enter into this other reality and then it’s done.”

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