Most audiences would recognize Max Minghella from his stellar turn in Hulu’s “Handmaid’s Tale” or “The Mindy Project” or any number of acting gigs in film and TV. But he’s also a writer/producer/director, and with “Shell,” he not only makes his sophomore directorial feature effort, he also reunites with “Tale” topliner Elisabeth Moss.
Moss stars as Samantha, an actor who was on a hit TV show when she was younger, but now, a little bit older, she loses out on roles she is perfect for to younger, fitter actors despite her talent. She’s vulnerable and her agents tell her to try the Shell clinic, which promises eternal youth and beauty. The treatment works and she is befriended by Shell founder Zoe (Kate Hudson). But weird, gross stuff starts to happen with Sam’s skin, people start disappearing and the authorities and thugs both start chasing Sam.
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“Shell” pays homage to thrillers of the 1980s, and is tinged with sci-fi — it’s set in the near-future with high- tech electric cars and know-it-all wrist devices — but it’s also a black comedy with lots of body horror elements and satire. Pic is produced by Range, Blank Tape, Love & Squalor and Dark Castle Entertainment, while WME Independent and CAA Media Finance are handling U.S. sales with Black Bear repping international.
“I really thought it was such an attractive idea that the film maybe does take place in the future, but not a naturalistic future, and maybe the future that we thought we would be in in 1990s; it’s sort of a retro future, I suppose, if I was to give it a lazy headline,” Minghella says.
Minghella first read the “Shell” script, written by Jack Stanley, in 2018. Minghella was taken by the “imaginative, quite abstract” script “that was filled with things that I didn’t think that I would respond to. It had body horror elements to it. It had quite a sort of bold imagery. It wasn’t in its DNA, something that I normally associate with my taste, and yet, there was something about it that I found deeply memorable, and it really sort of stayed with me,” he says.
He wrote a version, then worked with Stanley on the script, evolving it into his vision of the movies he loved as a kid.
Hudson really leans into her scene-stealing Zoe, donning expensive outfits that eventually make her loooks like she’s wearing armor — or a shell — and sporting manicured nails that make one wonder how she can even function.
“She’s such an amazing character,” Minghella enthuses. “But Kate is the only actor we ever went to for that part, and the only actor I could ever see sort of doing it in the way that it was written and conceived. She has such an innate kind of charisma and self confidence in the world that you cannot teach somebody, you can’t actually even play that.”
As for “Handmaid’s Tale” co-star Moss, Minghella is equally effusive: “I think Lizzie performs sort of like a master class, and that was not surprising to me, but such a delight to watch was her do the big comedy in the movie. She’s really funny in the film, and it’s a role that I’ve never actually seen her do before.”Minghella reflects on the journey to the TIFF screen, noting that “Shell” survived the pandemic and strikes. “Everybody was so loyal and remained excited about the project, which was fantastic.”
He adds, “By the time I get to set, I really do try to give the actors space to do their work. … It allows them to really play. And that’s my that’s my favorite thing to do, especially with a comedy, is to allow people to have fun, and give them the space to do that, and that’smy job.”
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