It is surprising to see Julianne Moore (North Carolina, 1960) submerge herself in a lake at night in search of an inert body. Even more surprising is to observe how a small-time camel from some remote place in the state of Pennsylvania shakes her, drags her on the ground, and even hits her. And perhaps most surprising, among the general surprise, is to see her living on a farm, wearing a lumberjack plaid shirt, work boots, cleaning stables, among horses in the depths of the United States.
"The real Julianne, me, would never live on a farm. I love animals, I loved working with those horses, and it was a beautiful place, but that work is very tough," the actress explains with a tone that is difficult to interpret between the utmost irony, comic reality, and the eccentricity of the character that surrounds her. And she continues: "I have thought about the reality of living that kind of life, of getting up very early, of the exhausting task of cleaning the stables, feeding the horses, bathing them, exercising them, being in the sun all day, and dealing with all that as a single person. How incredibly difficult it would be. And yet, here you have this woman living that life."
Because Echo Valley, the latest project that Michael Pearce has launched with Apple TV+, is a thriller in the most addictive and irregular sense of the term. It is a dissection of personal and family relationships through a mother - Julianne Moore - and her daughter - Sydney Sweeney - with addiction problems and the limits that this mother is willing to cross for her daughter. And, why not, it is also the opportunity to see the veteran actress, who in the promotion of La habitación de al lado by Almodóvar insisted tirelessly that El Corte Inglés on Goya Street in Madrid was her great Spanish discovery, living on a farm, surrendering to violence, trying diving... out of herself. "I was very afraid of the water, and all those outdoor scenes were shot in a real lake, I could only think about what the water temperature would be when we had to shoot," she explains in an online meeting with international media where Sydney Sweeney should have also been present, but her absence was notified minutes before the start due to "scheduling issues." "I had never dived in my life, it was the first time I did something like that. I had a day of training, and it was really overwhelming, but also exciting."
Because that's what the movie thrives on, sometimes with better luck than others: on emotion, suspense, and again on surprise. "My life is not at all a thriller, I have not had these kinds of experiences, but I understand the desire to want to live in one," points out Julianne Moore, mother of two children aged 27 - Caleb Freundlich - and another aged 23 - Liv Freundlich. "I understand the concern for children and the desire for them to always be well and happy. When your children live at home with you, and you control their lives, what they do, you feel like you can handle it. But as they grow up, go out into the world, and their life is theirs, you wonder how you can help them and give them what they need."
At this point, Julianne Moore delves into a reflection on the traumas and obsessions that parents can imprint on their children through the education they have given them. "My children say I made them paranoid by forcing them to use sunscreen so much, they never go out without it. When one of them gets sunburned, they don't want to tell me because they are afraid I will get mad," the actress points out. And she adds: "I think my mother did that to me because everyone in my family has very fair skin, there are many blondes and redheads. And I think that with that, I have made my children a little paranoid."
Now, the daughter that Julianne Moore has found, at least on screen, is Sydney Sweeney, of a similar age to her real-life children and with a career that has skyrocketed in recent years since she appeared in Euphoria. In just three years, she has starred in almost a dozen projects. "I loved working with her, she has incredible talent, work ethic, and is emotionally very accessible. One of the most wonderful things about being in this profession for so many years, being young and being older, is the incredible relationships you have with people of all ages." Moore entered the acting world at 24, did not transition to film until she was 30, and in the last three decades has built a career that navigates between cult projects and mainstream. "When I started, I worked with people much older than me. That made me nervous, and I thought nothing would work. Until you realize that you must give it your all, rise to the occasion, and that your partner is with you. In this profession, you cannot work from hierarchy because you will never be able to pull off a scene. It was very exciting to understand that as a young person and now that I am older, to apply it with these young actors."
And what was the relationship between the two, stars in two generations? "We were lucky that I am the mother of an adult daughter and Sydney is an adult daughter of a mother. Both of us have experienced mother-daughter relationships. We are familiar with the intensity of that bond and its elasticity. The mother-daughter relationship is so fundamental that it can withstand many ups and downs," says the actress, who also emphasizes the importance of knowing those around us. Or at least, believing that we know them. "We don't always know what those around us are capable of, we don't always know them. We can make assumptions about them, but the idea of truly knowing someone, being inside them, and knowing what they are capable of is not always real. It is interesting to realize that perhaps we know less than we think about those around us."