INDULGE: Give us your take on this very unique movie.

TIMOTHEE: It’s a love story. It’s a story that chronicles the coming of age for Maren played wonderfully by Taylor Russell, and it’s as much about falling in love. When we developed the script with Luca and Dave (Writer, David Kajganich) it was the peak of COVID. I think something that was relevant to all of us was being isolated and this idea that, absent religious focus or strong community — which a lot of people didn’t have during covid — your reality was the story you told yourself to get by, how to make sense of what was going on in the world. And I thought there was something very powerful in those stories of isolation.

INDULGE: How did you approach the role of Lee?

TIMOTHEE: I felt that the cannibalism, their eating condition, was a strong metaphor for either childhood trauma or addiction, or just carrying something you can’t quite make sense of, or something you carry shame with. And I was attracted to this character of Lee because I felt he had created a delicate glass castle in himself and believed that he had really figured out how to game the system to survive in this condition. But his biggest vulnerability, like a lot of people’s vulnerabilities when they spend so much time alone, is true love, real love. It’s support, care, kindness. So when he finds that with Maren, it’s his greatest strength in many ways, it’s the opening of the colors of the universe he has never got to experience, but it’s also — without giving anything away — the hardest thing for him to go through because those moments when you’re able to fall for someone else, is when you look more closely in the mirror. And what he sees is terrifying.

INDULGE: So do you think it this generation’s “road movie”?

TIMOTHEE: I think it’s an “on the road” love movie inspired by the likes of — and I’m not claiming on the level of, but nonetheless — Badlands and True Romance, and not so much with a modern twist because it takes place in the 80’s, but with a modern sensibility of the younger generation and the despair that a lot of people live with today — global warming, war, post-pandemic, lots of stuff.

INDULGE: What was it like to work with Director, Luca Guadagnino again after “Call Me By Your Name”?

TIMOTHEE: Luca is — no matter how pretentious the word — a true auteur and he is directing from a sensibility of his cultural upbringing from his youth. And that is way different from mine, it is way different from yours, and he is strong to that perspective and deeply passionate.

INDULGE: What do you hope audiences will get from this movie?

TIMOTHEE: I think I’m most excited for audiences to experience a story that’s sincerely zigzagged and goes is whatever direction it wants to go based on the whims of Luca Guadagnino. I think that’s rare nowadays!

— Kelly Fine