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Charged with alternating currents of teen angst, sardonic wit, nervous dread and impudent sensuality, “Daydream Nation” suggests “Juno” as reimagined by David Lynch, or a funnier, sunnier “Donnie Darko.” Canadian writer-director Mike Goldbach is arrestingly inventive as he interchanges tones and upends expectations throughout an offbeat narrative about a sarcastic, sexually precocious 17-year-old, played with striking self-assurance by Kat Dennings, who barely maintains her bearings after moving to a small town only slightly less weirdsville than Twin Peaks. Although far too eccentric for mainstream auds, pic could perform well in select sophisticated markets.

Whip-smart and wickedly droll, Caroline Wexler (Dennings) is appalled when her widowed father (Ted Whittall) moves them to a backwater burg where the sky is perpetually overcast because of a nearby, long-burning industrial fire, and students at the local high school spend most of their time finding ways to get high.

Thoroughly bored yet still brazenly cheeky, Caroline sets her sights on seducing Mr. Anderson (Josh Lucas), a handsome teacher who tries, and fails, to maintain his cool in the face of her single-entendre come-ons. (Assigned to write an essay about the historical figure she most admires, she turns in an ode to Monica Lewinski.) Shortly after they launch their age-inappropriate affair, however, Caroline realizes her lover is heavily weighed down with emotional baggage. All things considered, she may be better off having casual sex with Thurston (Reece Thompson), a lovestruck stoner classmate.

Trouble is, Thurston complicates matters by getting serious, and Anderson makes matters worse by getting furious. Meanwhile, lurking in the background is a serial killer who periodically preys on young people.

Taking his cue from a title borrowed from a Sonic Youth album, Goldbach manages — with the aid of Jon Joffin’s moodily evocative lensing — to give this, his debut effort as a feature helmer, the look and feel of a dream that is nonetheless focused and specific. It’s a first-person fantasia, narrated with equal measures of acerbity and anxiety by Caroline, who periodically pauses to offer an anecdote (such as one describing the serial killer’s first killing) tinged with magical realism.

Dennings effortlessly affects the air of a wise-beyond-her-years cynic — specifically, a Canadian cynic — whenever she lets loose with a snarky observation (“There’s more incest in this town than in an Atom Egoyan film!”). But she’s every bit as deft at conveying the emotional vulnerability and fretful confusion just below Caroline’s saucy, prickly surface.

Lucas strikes the right balance of neediness and creepiness, and gets a surprisingly big laugh during a throwaway scene that pays a backhanded homage to, of all things, “Taxi Driver.” Thompson is aptly engaging, as is Andie MacDowell as his understandably concerned mom. Whittall makes the most of a thinly written role, dryly cracking wise in a manner that indicates Caroline is very much her father’s daughter.

Shot mainly on location in Fort Langley, British Columbia, “Daydream Nation” benefits from superior production values. Of particular note is a soundtrack of smartly chosen pop and alt-rock tunes, including Emily Haines’ achingly wistful cover of Neil Young’s “Expecting to Fly.” Pic’s final image is nothing short of wrenchingly beautiful.

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click the image to be taken to the gallery

It’s a hot-as-hades late spring Kat Dennings lounges in a Toluca Lake café. Having seen the actress in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, she’s easy to spot. She is striking—Leonardo DiCaprio’s eloquent Kings of New York character Amsterdam Villon would have referred to her as a “prim lookin’ stargazer”—doe-eyed, fair-skinned, full-lipped, and somehow sage-like despite her youth. Dennings greets with a firm shake, even though she’s just observed the reciprocating hand in question perform a perspiration-reducing brow wipe. She has either a bohemian respect for the putridity of the human body or is painfully polite. Not necessarily words you would use to describe the usually sarcastic and rye characters that she is known to portray. Rather, she’s genuinely welcoming, the results of which spill into the kind of girlish, sissified chatter that inspired The Baby-Sitters Club with weekly story lines.

Having just wrapped her latest film, Thor, Dennings admits that she is exhausted, but eagerly describes the experience as if she would be willing to do it all again tomorrow. “I was awestruck,” she gushes. “It’s the most fun I’ve ever had.” The film, based on the popular Marvel comic, has already attracted media buzz and is expected to draw a massive following, torturously virginal 15-year-old boys notwithstanding. Thor’s cast also includes the lauded and appropriately Norse Stellan Skarsgård, whom Dennings and Natalie Portman, also a fellow castmate, prompted to teach swear words in Swedish—naturally. Dennings recalls a particularly juicy expletive and with very little prodding she invokes skit bollar (“shit balls” to those south of the Artic Circle).

There is more oohing and ahhing over the cast, working with legendary director Kenneth Branaugh, and more about the swarthy Skarsgård, but Dennings was particularly thrilled to be able to include her brother Geoffrey, with whom she is very close, in her work trip. “It was cool to bring him to set,” she says. “Usually he’s like, ‘Oh, a sex scene with Josh Lucas… I think I’ll stay home.’” She’s referring to another new film called Daydream Nation in which she plays an acerbic teenage girl who simultaneously begins an affair with her teacher (played by Lucas) and a fellow classmate. The town short circuits and calamity ensues.

One can’t really blame her brother for his hesitation, considering her early role in Sex and the City, in which she plays a 13-year-old nymphette. Along with bit roles in CSI, ER, and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Dennings’ voluptuous body has lent itself to some pretty salacious characters and she doesn’t apologize for it. Her characters tend to be confident in their skin, smart, teenaged, and very, very spirited… you do the math.

Desiring a break from the usual, albeit very cool and sexy Parker Posey-esque, roles, Dennings made the film Defendor with Woody Harrelson, which she describes as her most challenging part to date. “Sometimes you read a script and you think, ‘I can’t do this,’ and that was one of them,” she says. Dennings herself is a self-described homebody: she has never smoked and barely drinks. Yet, in the film, she plays a crack-smoking 15-year-old runaway hooker named Kat Debrokowitz—the irony of the shared name is not lost on her. Debrokowitz is dark, emotional, and also 20 pounds lighter than Dennings. “I decided to lose the weight on my own,” she explains. “No one asked me to. I did research and it seemed like part of the character.” Still, don’t expect to see Dennings in size 0 jeans—when it comes to body politics and show business, she has very firm ideas and expectations. Personally, she feels comfortable with her hour glass physique, but she also knows that acting is her job and as such may require her to be physically malleable for certain roles. “There is a point when you’re not getting the roles you want,” she lets on. “I realized this is part of my work.”

True to character, she avoids straying into the too serious and makes a joke, “I want an excuse to go nuts and only eat vitamins!” Luckily, she wasn’t saddled with a body-dysmorphia-projecting “show mom” growing up. On the contrary, Dennings was raised in a remote part of Pennsylvania, and home-schooled, meaning her sizeable family of seven has long been very close-knit. In fact, when Dennings moved to Los Angeles, her family came along to support her. She’s even begun writing scripts with Geoffrey. “Where I’m lame, he’s awesome,” she says with a grin, “and where he’s lame, I’m awesome.” They sold their first script and were promptly put onto the Black List 2008, a misleadingly ominous title that means they are up-and-comers to watch.

When the youngest member of the Dennings clan is not in the midst of a salty scene, or writing one, she can just as often be found nose-deep in a novel. “When I’m not working, I’m reading or sleeping,” she says. This sets her off and the remainder of the interview is spent discussing favorite authors and books, Dennings’ being Haruki Murakami and The Phantom Tollbooth. Conversation organically meanders onto the topic of Edgar Allan Poe, which leads to Christopher Walken’s YouTube-able reading of Poe’s The Raven. If you are at all familiar with Dennings’ prolific video blogging, then you’ll know she has quite the crush on Mr. Walken—dreamy and creepy all at once. Who could resist?

So, what’s up next for the budding ingénue? Dennings says she would love to be offered another action role or even a period piece. When asked about the quality of her English accent, she quips in a voice intentionally reminiscent of something between The Count and Mrs. Doubtfire, “Terrible. I sound like James Mason.” So a casting in the remake of The Age of Innocence as stuffy old Countess Olenska might be a long way off, but we can imagine Dennings making ripples as Hollywood royalty in no time at all.

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The scans from the article in Now Magazine are now up in the gallery. Click the picture above to be taken there. :)

Kat looked absolutely smoking as she posed for Daydream Nation portraits on TIFF’s third day. She was joined by director Michael Goldbach and co-star Josh Lucas in the portraits studio. They all look adorable together. :D

See the rest of the pictures here in the gallery.

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Kat looked absolutely radiant at the Daydream Nation premiere last night at the Ryerson Theatre in Toronto, Canada. There isn’t much out there in terms of pictures yet, but I’m assuming they’ll start trickling in during the day as photographers get organized and upload online. From what I can gather on twitter and various small blurbs on blogs, the film has been well-received :)

So far, you can check out the following albums in the gallery for TIFF images:
TIFF Daydream Nation premiere & Q&A.
TIFF Portraits 2010.
TIFF 2010 interviews.
CANDIDS – TIFF September 10, 2010.

Daydream Nation has been added to another festival’s lineup this fall, also in September. The Atlantic Film Festival is held in Halifax, Nova Scotia every year, and lasts for ten days.

Mike Goldbach’s film is set for one screening thus far, at 9:30 PM on Tuesday September 21, the venue being Park Lane – 4. Maybe Kat will show up for this screening too? :) Let’s home so. In the meantime, TIFF opens tomorrow.

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TIFF is set to open in two days, and Kat is on the front page of their website. If you’re going to the festival, Daydream Nation is set to screen 6 PM September 10th at Ryerson, and 12 PM September 11th at AMC 3. Can’t wait for actor portraits and premiere pictures. :)

In the meantime, Andersonesque has this to say about the film:

This Canada First opener by Mike Goldbach (Don McKellar’s co-writer on Child Star) is a gorgeously shot portrait of small-town desperation that’s plenty beguiling until it becomes too clear how much Goldbach has borrowed from Tom Perotta and Alan Ball’s forays into similar thematic and geographic terrain. Luckily, the movie’s best scenes are as whip-smart as Kat Dennings – she carries the day as Caroline, a high schooler who clinches her aspiring bad-girl status by seducing her English teacher (Lucas). Traces of Donnie Darko can also be discerned in Daydream Nation’s many portents of imminent teen apocalypse and it’s all effectively (if somewhat excessively) scored to songs by Stars, Emily Haines and Sonic Youth.

After making waves in Defendor and Nick And Nora’s Infinite Playlist, Kat Dennings takes out citizenship in Daydream Nation, showing why she’s one of the big screen’s most fascinating rising stars

By Susan G. Cole

Look at Kat Dennings’s brief career and you have to think that the entertainment gods have been smiling down at her from the start. I mean, check out her co-stars – Robert Downey Jr. in Charlie Bartlett, Woody Harrelson in Defendor, Michael Cera in Nick And Nora’s Infinite Playlist. She’s just wrapped up the shoot for Thor, directed by Kenneth Branagh. Not the typical resumé of a 24-year-old with no training.

But Dennings is not a typical young actor. Even when she plays a high school student, like the love interest in Charlie Bartlett or Nora in Nick And Nora, she imbues her female characters with a ferocious intelligence.

The Philly-born, L.A.-based performer always seems to be the smartest kid in the story – but never in that teacher’s pet kind of way. She looks out from the screen and right through you. And she always has an edge.

All those qualities drive her performance in Daydream Nation, the debut feature from Michael Goldbach that’s kicking off the Canada First slate at TIFF.

Dennings plays Caroline, who’s moved to a small town with her dad just after her mother’s death. She definitely doesn’t belong among the stoners or the do-gooders, and she can’t find anyone to relate to – except her history teacher.

What’s ironic about her super-hip image onscreen – pop-culture savvy, totally contemporary – is that she’s not exactly of this world. Charlie Bartlett’s about a high schooler who sells pharmaceuticals to kids in his school, and in Daydream Nation, her character sleeps with her teacher.

When I mention to her that high school just ain’t what it used to be, she quickly sets me straight.

“I wouldn’t know,” she laughs in that signature scratchy voice, on the phone from L.A. “I was home-schooled. My parents were disenchanted with the school system, and I became a freak actor. I was a sweet, funny little kid who lived completely in my imagination and wasn’t really interested in school. I wanted to be at home playing.”

When she got her first big break at 14, as a bratty bat mitzvah girl in an episode of Sex And The City, she didn’t even know anything about the TV touchstone.

“We didn’t have TV,” she allows. “I mean, we had a TV, but it only played films, and I didn’t know what Sex And The City was.

“On set, it was like being in a bizarro world. It was all glamour and beautiful women and big actresses and lots of clothes. I’d never even had my hair straightened before, and that was such a big deal. Sarah Jessica Parker was in Hocus Pocus, my favourite movie ever, so I was overwhelmed. She’s so sweet, teeny-weeny, itsy- bitsy, like a beautiful little fairy.”

After a few more television appearances, Dennings started to get roles in movies that made her a rising star. From the moment she hit the big screen, it was obvious that this wasn’t just another pretty face. She’s definitely got staying power.

“When she was cast, I had a victory party,” says writer/director Michael Goldbach. “I listened to so many actresses audition and I didn’t buy it. But with Kat, it doesn’t feel like empty cleverness. She’s just an old soul.

“You never know what you’re going to get from her. She’s incredibly fearless, and she had to dare to be unlikeable.”

Reece Thompson tries to get Kat Dennings’s attention in Daydream Nation.

Just check out Woody Harrelson’s hooker girlfriend, also called Kat, in Defendor. Dennings gives her an uncommon ferocity and a complexity that’s unusual for an untrained actor.

“If I’m a decent actor, it’s because I take advantage of the people I’m working with,” she says. “I don’t let a moment go by without observing their process or what they’re doing or asking them questions or just listening. Listening is the key. I just watch and ask questions, and you can’t help but learn from that.”

That’s why, whenever she’s on set, she keeps asking all her colleagues – Branagh, Downey, Harrelson, with whom she’s maintained a friendship – to tell her stories, anything that she can feed off for a role.

She also does her homework. Since she had no experience with crack, doesn’t do any drugs – “I’m comically straitlaced,” she says – and has no experience selling sex, Defendor director Peter Stebbings made sure she connected with sex workers so she could bring her character to life.

“You go into something like this with one thought. You think prostitutes are one thing, that they’re looking for a way out, they’re pitying themselves. And they’re not. They’re strong-willed people with limited options. They specifically said to me, ‘Don’t make Kat pity herself.’ They’re very proud.”

Dennings claims she also has little in common with Daydream Nation’s Caroline, but she says she’s always felt outside her own generation and never thought of herself as fitting into the teen thing. Which makes her perfect for the role of someone who has the nerve to seduce her teacher.

She knows some viewers will have a problem with that particular theme.

“People will be divided, for obvious reasons,” she admits. “But it’s handled in a way that Caroline is the captain of the ship. She is very calculating in the things she’s doing. She’s thinking everything through almost too much – and not enough. She’s experimenting in order to snap herself into feeling things. It’s less about him being her teacher than about him being right in front of her and interesting.”

She doesn’t like to think of Daydream Nation as a teen movie.

“This film doesn’t pander. It’s an adult film, actually. Caroline’s an adult girl and young girl at the same time. She just happens to be a high school student. She’s an interesting egg. She’s like an alien. She’s been plopped in this town, into this environment, and she completely doesn’t belong there.”

Dennings has become something of an indie darling, but she’s ready to do an action pic (she doesn’t get to do the blow-up stuff in Thor) or maybe even a period piece, something that I suggest would be a challenge for an actor with her kind of ultra-contemporary vibe.

“Yeah, I’m a modern lady, but I still want to be laced in a corset and pass out when I sneeze. That’s what I’m looking for.”

Given her career trajectory, chances are she’ll get just about anything she wants, sooner rather than later. That should cause the acting teacher who told her she didn’t have a chance to think again before he discourages another aspiring actor.

“I’ll never forget it,” she says, almost shouting. “I signed with a manager when I was 10, and part of the sign-up process was to go to her husband’s acting class. By the second session, he told me I’d never be an actor and to stop immediately – I was terrible.”

Not that his comment made a damn bit of difference to the young girl who always felt that acting was her calling.

“Instead of running out and crying, I said, ‘Fuck it, this is ridiculous. How could you tell me that?’

“And so here we are.”

Source (w/ audio clips).