Canadian at the helm of 'Kit Kittredge'
Film Director Patricia Rozema says she fell in love with story
TORONTO - Kit Kittredge: An American Girl might seem an oddly American choice for famed Canadian director Patricia Rozema to take on, but the filmmaker says she fell in love with the story about a feisty young girl defending the rights of the homeless during the Great Depression.
"It didn't seem American-centric, because America didn't own the Depression - it happened here, it happened in Europe," Rozema said in an interview earlier this week in downtown Toronto in advance of the film's Fourth of July release.
"I simply loved the values the script was giving kids. Kit's a journalist, she's fighting for social justice, she's learning not to feel shame for having to wear dresses made out of feed sacks - all that felt like it could be contemporary, although I had no idea all these foreclosures were going to be happening in the U.S. when the movie came out, and that the film would actually end up being quite contemporary."
The film, starring Abigail Breslin of Little Miss Sunshine fame, Chris O'Donnell and Julia Ormond, is based on the American Girl series of children's historical novels that has spawned a wildly successful line of dolls and accessories.
Filmed entirely in Toronto - eagle-eyed Torontonians will recognize the Don River valley, in particular, as it fills in for a 1930s "hobo jungle" in Cincinnati, Ohio - Kit Kittredge gently explores issues of class, race and gender.
Rozema, 49, one of Canada's best-known and most celebrated filmmakers, says she's delighted the movie is getting a positive reception. And she admits it's a squeaky-clean choice compared to her last job, directing the HBO series Tell Me You Love Me.
The groundbreaking show about three troubled relationships caused a sensation with its graphic sex scenes when it aired last summer, with whispers that the sex was real. Rozema has denied it.
The director, who was born to a straitlaced Dutch Calvinist family in Sarnia, Ont., laughs at the contrast between Kit Kittredge and the steamy HBO show as she runs her hands through a mane of thick ash-blond hair.
"I felt like it wasn't crazy or sensational; it was actually interesting terrain for couples," she says of Tell Me You Love Me.
Rozema's two daughters, aged four and 12, were tickled that their mother was taking on one of the American Girl stories.
Her 12-year-old accompanied her to the film's premiere in New York, and the occasion lead to a special mother-daughter moment, Rozema reports.
"She said she was proud of me afterwards," Rozema says, her eyes briefly tearing up. "I had no idea that that would move me so much, to hear she was proud of me, but it did."
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