James Gray’s Paper Tiger, the biggest American film in this year’s Hollywood-lite Cannes Film Festival, debuted on Saturday night to a spirited, six-minute standing ovation.
Paper Tiger follows Hester and Irwin, played by Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller, respectively, who are raising a family in 1980s Queens, when Irwin’s flashy brother (Adam Driver) sells him on a moneymaking endeavor that leaves them in the crosshairs of the Russian mob.
“To be very pretentious about it, the intention was to try to make a very classical drama,” Gray told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the film’s premiere. “People sometimes shit on that idea, ‘classical’ — they equate it with ‘old-fashioned,’ but the two are not the same thing. Internal conflict, struggle, love, emotion — that is never old-fashioned.”
Johansson told THR, “It had so many elements that I loved. It’s a big story inside of a small story.”
Of her character, a stay-at-home mom who’s determined to fight for more but faces fewer options when tragic news sets in, Johansson said, “I liked the idea of Hester being feminine and soft and graceful because she has a lot of chutzpah inside her.”
