With its theatrical release appropriately on Father’s Day weekend, Irene in Time examines the fundamental and sometimes charged relationship between fathers and daughters.
Irene, played by the charismatic Frederick is obsessed with self-help books that promise everlasting love. As a young woman she tries desperately to recreate the intimacy and sense of importance that she felt with her late father. She later discovers, however, that her father was not entirely the same man idealized and lingering in the young girl’s imagination and heart.
Frederick says that playing the character “was a stretch” acknowledging that in many ways she is very different than Irene.
“I have an amazing relationship with my father,” she said in an interview just after the show’s Los Angeles premiere.
Like most of Jaglom’s films, which keenly observe the emotional life of women and the intricate nature of human relationships, Irene in Time weaves together a fictional narrative with characters who speak candidly about their own real life experiences, lending itself to cinema with elements of raw and moving voyeurism.
To research Irene, Jaglom suggested that she read the dating self help books.
“When I started to read the books, I started to get neurotic,” joked Frederick, “If you don’t have an issue before you read those books, you will after!”
Frederick also prepared for the part by listening to women talk about their fathers. “I felt a responsibility to these women’s stories,” Frederick says as she searches for the words to describe her desire to honor these stories through acting and film, conveying that complex female feelings are quite common. As Frederick speaks, she relays a particularly poignant anecdote and becomes suddenly aware of how her experience may have influenced the production.
The legendary film and stage star, Anthony Franciosa (A Hatful of Rain) was to play Irene’s father and he also was the inspiration for the character. In the film he plays an erratic gambler with a whimsical, passionate nature who lavishes gifts on Irene.
Frederick explained how she had admired Franciosa her whole life and was very excited was when she met him a few years prior, describing him as “open, warm, and supportive.”
“I loved this man,” explained Frederick, “and had prepared him in my mind as my father.”
Unfortunately, Franciosa died in January, 2006 shortly before the shoot began, leaving a void on the movie set where Frederick and the crew were “feeling that [absence] of a powerful individual.”
Irene In Time is dedicated to Jaglom’s 17 year old daughter, Sabrina, who also appears in the film, as does his son Simon. The choice to cast his family members adds to Jaglom’s filming style, which is always a deeply personal and intimate account that compassionately and humorously exposes the conundrum of contemporary human life.
So what’s next for Jaglom and Fredrick? Now in the editing room is Queen of the Lot, Jaglom’s sequel to Hollywood Dreams, also staring Frederick, who is now in rehearsal for a play in Santa Monica, California.
