With the London Film Festival now in motion, all eyes turned to Jason Reitman's newest feature Men, Women & Children for the second night of Gala presentations. The director was joined in Leicester Square by producer Helen Estabrook and actors Ansel Elgort and Kaitlyn Dever to introduce a drama that takes a look at relationships in the internet age.
The film is adapted by Reitman and co-writer Erin Cressida Wilson from a book of the same name, by American writer Chad Kultgen. Reitman is no stranger to book adaptations, with Up In The Air, Labor Day and Thank You For Smoking all based on novels. Speaking to Empire, Reitman gave some insight into his process of interpreting this text for the screen.
'Adapting is always a much easier art form than original screenwriting in that you have the text and a co-screenwriter in the book who offers beautiful things and never argues with you. In Men, Women & Children in particular, the author Chad Kultgen had laid out twelve characters so well that it became a question of finding tone of this film and was a subtractive process, rather than an additive one. What do we not include? You know in a book you can have all kinds of detail that you can't show in a film, there's things that you're willing to see in your head that you don’t necessarily want to see on screen. That was some of the choices that had to be made.'
In the film the characters wrestle with both the benefits and pitfalls of digital communication, and in particular the parents' fears about the effect on their children. Producer Helen Estabrook, also at the festival to present **Whiplash **next week, said that when watching she understands the parents' trepidation towards technology in the film.
'I am with the parents, very much so, especially because not having grown up with a phone there's just the idea that as a teenager you'd be texting frequently. I remember as a teenager I was waiting by a phone, waiting for it to ring or hoping it would. So to have it all the time with you, that's crazy to me.'
The young stars Ansel Elgort and Kaitlyn Dever were particularly complimentary of each other's work in the film. In between dashing to take photos with eager fans, Elgort described his co-star as 'spectacular', whilst Dever praised her colleague for his piano skills, which he used to provide entertainment on set. That certainly bodes well for Elgort's next project, a biopic of the pianist Van Cliburn.
Men, Women & Children also stars Jennifer Garner, Adam Sandler, Rosemarie DeWitt, Judy Greer, Dean Norris, Olivia Crocicchia and Emma Thompson. It arrives in UK cinemas on November 28.
Reporting by Jenny Scouler