What do you get when you make a Woody Allen film with Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Parker Posey in an unconventional awkward love triangle and throw in some existentialism? You get Irrational Man and the first trailer for it has arrived.
Director Woody Allen has kept a tight lid on the script for this film, so much so that even the stars had pages of it withheld during filming. But the trailer gives us an initial taste of what we’re in for, with Phoenix inhabiting another slightly off-kilter character undergoing a bit of a mid-life crisis.
Philosophy professor Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) is at rock bottom emotionally, unable to find any meaning or joy in life. Soon after arriving to teach at a small town college, Abe gets involved with two women – Rita Richards (Parker Posey), a lonely professor who wants him to rescue her from her unhappy marriage; and Jill Pollard (Emma Stone), his best student, who becomes his closest friend. While Jill loves her boyfriend Roy (Jamie Blackley), she finds Abe’s tortured, artistic personality and exotic past irresistible. Even as Abe displays signs of mental imbalance, Jill’s fascination with him only grows. Pure chance changes everything when Abe and Jill overhear a stranger’s conversation and become drawn in. Once Abe makes a profound choice, he is able to embrace life to the fullest again. But his decision sets off a chain of events that will affect him, Jill and Rita forever.
Irrational Man will screen in Australian cinemas from 20 August 2015 through EntertainmentOne
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