From the Vaults: Good Golly, Sarah Polley

Take This Waltz, the second film written and directed by Sarah Polley, opens today in Austin, playing exclusively at the Alamo Drafthouse Slaughter Lane. The young actress, renowned in her Canadian homeland, is perhaps best known in the States for her leading roles in The Sweet Hereafter and the successful remake of Dawn of the Dead.

Michelle Williams stars in Take This Waltz, along with Seth Rogen and Sarah Silverman. In her review, Kimberley Jones describes the film as "a fully adult inquiry into commitment and carnal desire, and the hard choices we make when the two don’t align."

Nearly six years have passed since the release of Away From Her, Polley's debut film as a writer/director. The film, which stars the magnificent Julie Christie and veteran Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent, is a beautifully wrought study of love in old age as Alzheimer's detaches the wife from all memory of her marriage and she falls in love anew with a fellow patient in the extended care facility where she now lives.

That Away From Her, which is based on an Alice Munro short story, takes complicated emotions and turns them into compassionate illuminations is no small feat. But that it was accomplished by a first-time filmmaker still in her 20s is an absolute marvel. "What experiential background this veritable child draws on to create these mature portraits of accumulated lifetimes is another of this movie's unknowable mysteries," I wrote in my review. I wasn't alone in this. Away From Her earned Polley an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, in addition to winning a host of Canadian awards. We can't wait to see her third directing project, a documentary called Stories We Tell, which will premiere at next month's Toronto International Film Festival.