Ellen Page tries to make sense of the dreamscape that is Inception
Ellen Page couldn’t look more elfin -- or out of place -- sitting on a swanky sofa in an over-decorated hotel suite in Beverly Hills. Neat, yet casual, in jeans, shirt, jacket and cap, the diminutive and earnest Haligonian leans forward as she dutifully assesses her past and her dislocated presence here.
“It’s definitely a transition,” Page says of being approached by fans in the glamour capital of the world. “I don’t want people to feel like I am anything special, but I do understand I am part of the entertainment industry and the whole circus created around it.”
It wasn’t that long ago that the 23-year-old was just another promising Canadian upstart who seemed to transition from child actor to teen without suffering the hackneyed emotional setbacks along the way.
Her high-profile, Oscar-nominated performance in Juno confirmed what many had predicted for her, and now she finds herself poised to take the next step in a big studio movie.
Opening July 16, Inception is filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s post-Dark Knight sci-fi head trip, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Dom Cobb, the leader of a corporate espionage team that infiltrates and manipulates other people’s dreams for monetary gain.
As the assignments get more dangerous, physically and psychologically, a desperate Cobb decides to do one last treacherous “inception” dream caper so he can return to his neglected family.
To that end, he enlists a brilliant student, Ariadne (Page), to manufacture the premise of a “dreamscape” designed to trick the final target, a wealthy but insecure CEO (Cillian Murphy) of a global corporation.
The more involved Ariadne becomes, the more she realizes the mission is more complicated -- and threatening -- than she anticipated, even as Cobb’s wife (Marion Cotillard) interferes on many levels. Rounding out the cast are Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy and Ken Watanabe, who make up the rest of Cobb’s squad.
If Inception sounds like an unlikely mix of actors and styles, it is purposely so. Nolan, who wrote the treatment 10 years ago, calls the movie a blend of a heist flick and spy movie.
Of course, Inception was created before his Batman movies -- 2005’s Batman Begins and 2008’s The Dark Knight -- and even predates his 2000 film-festival favourite, Memento.
With a few significant adjustments to the narrative and the budget -- suggested now to be well north of US$150-million -- Nolan finally constructed his pet project in an epic way.
Page understands that the invitation to this film is special. “I had really high expectations going into this, and the experience completely exceeded my expectations,” she explains.
“Chris is super-lovely,” Page says. “The obvious thing is that he’s original and an auteur, but he’s got this awesome thing as a filmmaker where he’s completely ego-less.”
Then there was acting opposite DiCaprio. “That was surreal,” she confesses sheepishly. “I’ve been watching him since I was a kid.”
Always determined, the Halifax native started acting at 10 in the Canadian telefilm Pit Pony, which evolved into a series. She kept it local by appearing in the Halifax-based show The Trailer Park Boys, portraying Treena Lahey in Season 2.
By the time she was 15, Page had decided on the acting life. She worked in more TV and film, and proved she had a bright future, with her layered portrayal of the young schemer in Hard Candy, the resilient Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat in X-Men: The Last Stand and, of course, the caustic pregnant titular teen in the Oscar-honoured Juno.
Her role in Inception should continue her momentum, but she seems more concerned about finding a challenge that intrigues her.
“I never became an actor so people would know my name or make me money,” she insists. “I have this job where I get to be creative and get inspired.
“When other people create expectations about you and for you out here,” Page says of the Hollywood mentality, “it can get very dangerous.”
SOURCE