Vera Farmiga is a wonderfully talented actress, but with her self-effacing laugh, easy disposition and comfortable slouch, she has a lot of work to do before she perfects the character of a swaggering director. She swears life behind the camera wasn’t a burning professional goal of hers, but Farmiga spent several years work-shopping a screenplay based on Carolyn Briggs’ The Dark World with Briggs and fellow writer Tim Metcalfe. The result is her wonderfully subtle directorial debut, Higher Ground, and it’s as full-bodied, honest and moving a portrait of a young, fundamentally religious family, and all the struggles they experience, as has ever been put to screen — perhaps no small coincidence given that Farmiga cites another labor of love, Robert Duvall’s The Apostle, as a case study for her work. At a recent press day at a Beverly Hills hotel, I had the opportunity to take part in a roundtable interview session with the Oscar-nominated multi-hyphenate, who also stars opposite Joshua Leonard in the movie. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.
