Winner of the Art Cinema Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, She’s Lost Control, has finally obtained a limited theatrical debut in New York and Los Angeles.
Check out the trailer below:
The drama, starring Brooke Bloom (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close), follows the unusual occupation of Ronah: a sexual surrogate in NYC who assists clients with their chronic issues in physical intimacy. Once she meets fair-haired Johnny (Marc Menchaca), however, both her professional and personal life become tangled in an emotional knot.
German-born director Anja Marquardt thought up the screenplay hook for She’s Lost Control after discovering an article about robotic Japanese caretakers, and soon became inspired by the dichotomy of an individual’s increased isolation in a continually expanding, digitally connected environment. She tells Indiewire:
Living in NY there is a lot of life on every corner, yet it’s hard not to feel that we’re growing more and more comfortable distancing ourselves from our emotions. Using surrogate forms, at the touch of our fingertips, of connecting to others. Outsourcing our most intimate moments. That idea was the kernel of the story and I wanted to explore that contrast.
The plot echoes the tragic themes of Spike Jonze’s 2013 drama Her, about a lonely man whose greatest and most meaningful human connection is with an operating system. In an interview with Hammer to Nail, this similarity is brought to Marquardt’s attention, to which she replied:
I saw it for the first time…and I just was blown away by it, I love it so much… I think thematically if there was a film in the past year, or five years, that I feel like is a brother in spirit to my film it would definitely be Her.
Marquardt kept her first feature-length project within an intimate reach throughout production, earning credit as its screenwriter, director, and editor. She’s Lost Control was nominated for Best Feature at the Berlin Film Festival, and went on as one of the official selections for the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s 2014 New Directors/New Film series.
It is slated for theatrical release on March 20th.