First Images From Ryan Gosling's Directorial Debut 'Lost River'

Ryan Gosling spent some of the last year making his first feature as a director. Originally called How to Catch a Monster, the film is now called Lost River, and is set for the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes. That's the place where films that are either the product of newcomers to Cannes, or that are a little more unusual than the typical Competition titles. So that tells us something right there.

This film features Christina Hendricks as Billy, "a single mother of two who is swept into a macabre and dark fantasy underworld while her teenage son discovers a secret road leading to an underwater town." So, yeah. that gives us more to go on, and there's also been a comment about Hendricks finding a "very surreal club," which is presumably what that door leads to. Check out another image below.

The full synopsis that came out a while ago is:Set against the surreal dreamscape of a vanishing city, Billy, a single mother of two, is swept into a macabre and dark fantasy underworld while her teenage son discovers a secret road leading to an underwater town. Both Billy and Bones must dive deep into the mystery, if their family is to survive. 

In addition, Hendricks said last year that,

[My single mother character is] supporting two children and trying to provide a home for them and a place of comfort in a continuously harder place to be... And I find myself working in this very surreal club that gets me into a sort of predicament, and in the meantime, these boys are off on their own adventures and they discover this underground city.

Recently, Iain De Caestecker, who plays Bones, said the following about the film:

All I can really say is that it centers around a family. There's my character, Bones, his mother and his younger brother. There's also a girl next door played by Saoirse Ronan, called Rat. It's about this family living in a town called Lost River, which is perhaps a place that was once full of family and happiness and love, and is now this town that's slowly descending into a place without any hope. This family is holding onto the foundations of their house and everything they think they need to hold onto.

It all sounds like doing two films with Nicolas Winding Refn has really had an influence on Gosling. We'll see, but in the meantime you can puzzle out the image below. Click that and the one above to enlarge.

The film also features with Saoirse Ronan, Eva Mendes and Ben Mendelsohn.