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 Williams, 62, most familiar to audiences as a sharp-witted,
fast-talking comedian, shows his darker, more intense side in
"Boulevard," which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival that
runs through April 27.
The four-time Academy Award nominee, who took home the best
supporting actor prize in 1998 for "Good Will Hunting," plays a
60-year-old, meek loan officer comfortably attuned to his life
and marriage until he meets a young man who reawakens his inner
conflict.
"He is an older man, long married, who essentially comes out of
the closet at an age when most couples have settled into the
tedium of a kind of combative relationship," said Geoffrey
Gilmore, Tribeca Film Festival's chief creative officer.
Williams' character, Nolan Mack, must choose between hiding the
secret he has suppressed for decades and continuing his life
with a woman he loves and respects, or dealing with it and
upending the only life he has ever known.
HOLDING ON OR LETTING GO
Although the film focuses on a gay man, director Dito Montiel,
who picked up awards at the Sundance and Venice Film Festival in
2006 for his coming-of-age drama, "A Guide to Recognizing Your
Saints," said it is a story about a life and a relationship.
"For me it was about letting go and holding on, the weird push
and pulls of life, when it comes to anything from a job to a
relationship — the thin line," the New York director explained.
"It didn't matter all that much that he was gay."
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Montiel thought Williams was perfect to play the repressed Nolan
because the actor had no way to release his natural energy in
the character he portrayed.
"No matter what Robin Williams wants to do, he is forced to be
trapped," Montiel said. "With Robin, his silence is deafening. I
thought how fun would it be to see him when he can't do any of that
stuff."
Film, stage and television actress Kathy Baker, a Golden Globe
winner in 1994 for her role in the TV series "Picket Fences," is
Nolan's devoted wife, Joy. Despite everything she suspects and
discovers about her husband, she wants to keep her marriage and life
with him intact.
Roberto Aguire ("Struck by Lightning") plays Leo, a young prostitute
who triggers the changes in Nolan's life and the realization that he
can no longer deny his sexuality.
Emmy-winning writer and actor Bob Odenkirk ("Nebraska") is his
friend Winston, who is confused by Nolan's actions and struggles to
understand what is happening.
"It was a study on a relationship and life," Montiel said about his
fifth feature film that he shot in Nashville.
"Everyone can relate in some way, whether it is a job that you
wished you got out of, or a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a wife or a
husband or a parent that you can't let go of," he added.
(Editing by Eric Kelsey and Marguerita Choy)
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