'It's A Very Moving & Hopeful Movie ': Actor Kate Arrington & Director Jennifer Reeder On 'Knives & Skin'
(CBS Local)-- Moviegoers will be seeing a lot of Kate Arrington over the next few weeks.
The actor and wife of Michael Shannon plays Older Connie Sheeran alongside Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese's new film "The Irishman" and also stars in director Jennifer Reeder's dark coming of age noir "Knives and Skin."
Reeder's film centers around the story of a high school girl who goes missing and how her classmates and adults in a small Midwest town begin to lose sight of morality.
"I read an earlier script of the film, which was so wackadoo, but in such a great way," said Arrington in an interview with CBS Local's DJ Sixsmith. "I was like I am definitely going to do this and I could be saying yes to the worst movie of my life, but I don't care. I wanted to do it either way. The script that we started with was really fantastic. They created this world where everything is so precise and magical. You were really living in this world whenever you were on set."
"For me as the writer, the hardest thing was keeping track of everybody," said Reeder. "Everyone has their own individual arc and breakdown and reassembly. There are couples who work together through the film as one unit. Like any long film, you shoot it all out of order. Every day I had to reorient myself to where we were in the story. Nobody's arc is a straight line."
While Arrington and Reeder have worked on all different kinds of projects in the past, they both loved the freedom they had to explore several important topics.
"It was everything you'd ever want to do as a girl," said Arrington. "I love these women who are able to present in a way that I've never been able to pull off in my life. I love her [Renee Darlington] preciseness and rage. I love that under this polished exterior. When you are making out with a clown, it's pretty freeing. I think she is a very vulnerable woman. It's a very moving and hopeful movie."
"I just kept imagining this unspeakable situation of not knowing where your child is," said Reeder. "In this case for a mother, all of your senses would be heightened and you would become like an animal looking for your child. I knew I wanted to make her character spill into some murky ethics. When humans encounter something they never have before, all bets are off in terms of the response. I think that this happens in real life too."
"Knives and Skin" hits theaters and is available on demand on December 6.