Zoe Cassavetes

by Elizabeth Johnson

Zoe Cassavetes’ directorial debut film, Broken English, gets under your skin –it’s simultaneously discomforting and reassuring. She captures the loneliness of her main character’s plight, Nora Wilder (Parker Posey), a tried and true neurotic crashing and burning through the fast lane of contemporary Manhattan, while also suggesting there is a liberation of this character’s spirit that is both provocative and disarming. This liberation is a personal and intimate one for Zoe, who carries not only a family legacy on her shoulders, but a generation of accomplished women who move fast and loose through the playing fields of intimacy, success, and, at times, too many choices with which to craft their own fate.

Also starring Gena Rowlands, Drea de Matteo, Melvil Poupaud and Justin Theroux, Broken English was shot in New York in 20 days with a budget of one million dollars. Although Zoe found herself landing comfortably in the driver’s seat with her directorial debut, like most independent films, it took years to bring it to life, and more than once Zoe found herself lying in bed in the fetal position feeling like a “loser.” Being the daughter of maverick filmmaker John Cassavetes and the incomparable Gena Rowlands, she says, did not help her get the movie financed, in fact it might have been a hindrance being compared to her family.
However, growing up in the Cassavetes household, where groundbreaking films like A Woman Under The Influence, Faces and Minnie & Moskowitz were virtually unfolding in her backyard, certainly brought her deep inside the process: “I grew up in a family where they made films in my house and films were all around us. We never traveled on any family holiday we just went with them when they made films. It’s not like somebody picked me up and plopped me into a life like that. I grew up thinking that’s what people do.”
Zoe sought out Parker Posey to play Nora Wilder. In fact, the two spent hours and hours on the lawn of the Chateau Marmont discussing the role and formed a connection that comes through in the film. Parker delivers a stunning performance, layered and filled with nuances. She appreciated the calmness Zoe brought to the set, and her background, too. “It’s in her blood, her DNA, she’s not doing something she shouldn’t be doing, that’s for sure. She had that atmosphere that this is all family,” Posey remarked. “I love John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands and I love those movies and the feel of those movies, there’s an intimacy there, they are so alive and it was very much like that working with Zoe, so I loved it.”
Gena Rowlands, Zoe says, drove a hard bargain and she was lucky to get her. “I always respected my mother as an actress. And it was so great for our personal relationship to work together. She was really respectful. She’s just a pro. It was after when I was in the editing room looking at the film and I thought, this woman, she’s not even doing that much, and she’s so phenomenal because all her stuff comes from the inside. You can feel all that experience and the power she has.”
One of the pivotal moments in the film comes from Gena, who portrays Nora’s mother, as she addresses the many choices women have nowadays - perhaps too many, which begs the question, how do you make decisions when every road is open to you?
Though Zoe might not provide a tidy answer within the film, in her own words, she captures it best: “The goal is to be happy, we all want to be happy and feel like we’re living in the moment.”