“Remember when we used to play in the woods together?”
Since the very first words spoke in the trailer of “Woodshock”, the wood immediately pops up as the protagonist. And not only protagonist but also the accomplice of a deep suffering.
In the memories, everything is wood: the wooden deathbed of her mother, where the protagonist lies down, the trees where she used to play hide and seek when she was a child, the wood is her home and many are the trunks cut down by the nearby sawmill.
The greatest part of the wood she meets is broken, just as she is since she can’t heal from her mother’s death. And so she walks, on a land of branches and ripped trunks, always on a shifting balance. Then she’s constantly falling in the desperation of the thoughts, often intoxicated, of her mind.
But is the broken trunk where she sleeps, in a nightgown, that mostly fascinates us. It’s not clear whether it’s imagination, illusion or truth, but it’s there that the protagonist’s mind escapes the world, going there to rest.
Kirsten Dunst is Theresa, the protagonist, has recently lost her mother and can’t move her mind forward from that frantic loss, until she takes a powerful hallucinogen drug that sends her through a trip made of illusion and suffering. However, maybe, that’s the only way Theresa stands living- or the only way she knows for bearing the burden of her mother’s death. 
Woodshock is a movie never seen before, a psychologic thriller with psychedelic notes that create, in their Symphony, a figurative perfection that’s not new in the work of the two directors and screenwriters of this movie, who have started their career as designers of Rodarte. In the movie, their signature fashion style is clear: perfect images, shaded, enlaced backgrounds, just as happens in their dresses.
In fact, they’ve declared in the past that: “Our relationship with fashion design didn’t come from what our mother used to wear: inspiration came from our shared love for cinema“.
Kate and Laura Mulleavy were born as fashion designers and founders of the luxury brand Rodarte which, this summer, has made its triumphant entrance at the Paris Haute Couture, as we’ve talked about here. The atmosphere that the sisters create, however, always have something dreamlike. A world full of details and, in its ensemble, perfect.
However, their big summer won’t end here. The 27th of July the agenda for the 74 Edition of the Venice Film Festival has been announced. The sisters’ movie “Woodshock” has been selected to take part among the sneak peeks of the “Movie in the Garden”. Doubtlessly, is one of the most awaited movies of this year.
Between the directors and screenwriters and the actress always existed a strong bond, since the beginning. Kirsten was the first actress to wear a Rodarte dress, then she was the testimonial and, now, she’s the face we link to the brand: “Working with someone who gets what you mean without talking it’s the best thing that can happen to you, creatively speaking. Kirsten is family for us, now.”
About the main message of “Woodshock” and its communication, the directors said: “We were really interested in understanding the psychology behind self-destruction. What is humankind capable of? This is the main question. And the answer is that it’s capable of wonderful things, just as it’s capable of violent destruction“.
The trailer of “Woodshock” has already awakened everybody’s curiosity and the final scene it couldn’t lack, in full Mulleavy style, the overlapping of two images: Kirsten’s face and pink flowers.
“What did you do Kate and Laura? What did you do?”
For us, a spectacular piece of film.
Credits Images: A24, New York Magazine, WWD, Vanity Fair.
