By Erin Free
A truly brilliant Oscar winning actress, Jodie Foster is also a highly accomplished director, with four fine films (Little Man Tate, Home For The Holidays, The Beaver, Money Monster) to her credit. Hardly prolific behind the camera, Foster’s minimal directorial credits may be partly due to the emotional suffering that she has experienced at the hands of her dream project, Flora Plum. Set in the forties, the Steven Rogers-scripted drama tells of the eponymous teenage girl, who becomes part of her uncle and aunt’s ragtag travelling circus, which is peopled with all manner of oddballs and influences, both positive and not-quite-so-positive. Her most meaningful relationship is with The Beast, an acrobat and “freak” whose body is covered with coarse hair, and who serves as the film’s unlikely romantic hero.
Foster opted not to reprise her role as FBI agent Clarice Starling in the 2001 The Silence Of The Lambs sequel, Hannibal, in order to direct Flora Plum, and cast Claire Danes and Russell Crowe in the lead roles. When Crowe seriously injured his shoulder while training for the role, however, Flora Plum was effectively shut down, but Foster continued to work hard to get it made. She remounted the film with Danes and Ewan McGregor, and then flirted with Evan Rachel Wood for the title role.
Foster was still trying to get Flora Plum made when interviewed by FilmInk in 2005, but the film now appears to be over. “You can’t just give up on something that you love so much and have invested so much into,” Foster said. “It’s possible that I won’t make the movie in the next few years, but I can’t imagine walking away from it. It’s a very ambitious film, and that’s why it’s been very difficult. It’s expensive, and it has a quirky European feel to it, which isn’t that popular in the United States.” With that kind of movie still unpopular, Flora Plum would appear to be very much a broken dream for Jodie Foster, as evidenced by the difficulties she experienced in mounting her most recent film. “Why these mid-range movies are very, very rare now is because they aren’t franchises,” the director said of her new effort, Money Monster. “They are original content, and original stories, and they’re really about character and emotions.”
