Sundance first look: Chris Pine and Jenny Slate in the delicate romantic drama 'Carousel'

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PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Chris Pine gets a lot of scripts sent his way, but when Rachel Lambert’s “Carousel” landed on his proverbial desk it was like he’d stumbled on something from a different filmmaking era. In Lambert’s lyrical prose was a story that, to him, felt very Robert Redford, very “Ordinary People.”

“My favorite word for this film is quotidian,” Pine said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “It’s a film in which nothing happens and yet everything happens.”

It’s fitting then that “Carousel” is having its world premiere Thursday at the Sundance Film Festival, where it is seeking distribution. The film is a story about love in all its messy incarnations, centered on a single father in Cleveland, Ohio, whose small medical practice is struggling, whose divorce is complicated and whose teenage daughter (Abby Ryder Fortson) is slipping into depression when his high school girlfriend ( Jenny Slate ) comes back to town and they start up again.

Pine felt himself leaning into the script, wanting to know more about the characters and the filmmaker behind it. After watching Lambert’s previous film, “Sometimes I Think About Dying,” he saw a filmmaker whose cinematic vision was so unique, so distinctly her own that he joined “Carousel” not just as the star but a producer as well.

Lambert had admired Pine from afar for years, for his intelligence and sensitivity on screen, and saw potential for him in the part of Noah.

“There’s a rareness to him that I don’t see very often in performers,” Lambert said. “He reminds me of Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant, these sort of towers of performers.”

The actual experience of it turned out to be more special than she could have dreamed. Yes, he showed up as an actor, generous and receptive, but he also became a protector of sorts as well. Knowing how much Lambert wanted to shoot both in America and on film, two relatively expensive dreams for an indie, he made his own participation contingent on celluloid.

“It’s an enormous act that I think about a lot,” Lambert said. “There are very few films shot in America and there are very few films shot on film … it lends a kind of extra emotional layer to the viewing experience.”

For Lambert, shooting on film was an act of preservation. This was a story that she dreamed up during COVID lockdowns at her childhood home, a location she also used in “Carousel.” The homespun feeling of it added a texture and intimacy to the environment, whether it was using her mom’s frozen fruit as a prop or literally chopping down a tree in the backyard, as Slate’s character Rebecca does at one point.

“You just plunk right into whatever that closeness or intimacy is,” Slate said.

Chemistry is always a gamble, especially in indies where there’s never enough time or money, but Lambert was blown away by just how well Pine and Slate worked out as these two characters attempting to start up again after many years apart.

“We just had an immediate affinity for one another,” Pine said. “Jenny is so smart, and I’m sort of a lover of smart people, so immediately she had me. And she likes to laugh and she makes me giggle. So we just had a really, really easy time getting to know one another.”

While actors can wax poetic about how much they like and respect one another, ultimately it's what’s on screen that counts. Lambert remembered getting chills (the good kind) when shooting Rebecca and Noah’s second first kiss.

“Isn’t it so good to have kissing on screen,” Slate said. “Shooting that scene felt to me like it was in slow motion. It felt like such a beautiful thing to enact, really. But I mean, also that’s something that you get with another actor who’s really, really focused on landing it just right.”

Of course, love is never as simple as it is in the movies, and Lambert wanted to reflect that in “Carousel.” At its heart there is a central romantic love story, but there are other love stories refracted throughout, through their families and professions. None are obstacles that need to be overcome exactly, but they’re part of the fabric of a life.

“There’s this mantra I have already: 'Have you ever wanted something so much in life you do all you could not to get it? That’s what Noah is going through,” Lambert said. “He wants so much to love this person, Rebecca, to feel love, to feel renewed. But there’s all these other repairs he must attend to and all these fears he must attend to. I wanted to take that seriously.”

Lambert is hesitant to prescribe what an audience might feel when watching her film. For her actors, though, it meant one of the richer creative experiences of their careers, getting to hone their craft in a way that might really resonate with audiences and speak to the human experience.

“There’s an earnest, heartfelt, non-jaded, non-cool investigation of the deepest fundamentals of what we humans do on the planet, which is, you know, how do we love?” Pine said. “There’s no gimmick here. There’s no hold up, no spaceship, no great effects. The metronome to this film is very paced and deliberate and it requires a patience to allow yourself to be drawn into the spectacle of human beings.”

For Lambert, Sundance is a homecoming and the only place she’d have wanted it. “Carousel” is a proudly independent American film made on location, and Sundance is, whether in Colorado or Utah, the quintessential independent American film festival.

“What better platform does America provide for cinematic artists?” Lambert said. “This film is American and, quietly, has a lot to say about America right now, and where we’re going.”

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