In the fall festival derby, the Kate Winslet-Saoirse Ronan romance “Ammonite” was poised to follow up “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” as the next must-see Sapphic bodice-ripper.
But the lesbian love story that broke out instead is actress-writer-director Mona Fastvold’s second movie, “The World to Come,” a grim yet achingly beautiful 1850s pioneer drama about two isolated farm wives (Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby) who escape from their domestic drudgery with each other.After struggling to move forward with several projects as her follow-up feature to 2014’s “The Sleepwalker,” Norway-born Fastvold fell in love with someone else’s story instead.
She usually writes movies for herself and her creative and life partner Brady Corbet as well as other filmmakers (“The Mustang” and Antonio Campos’ “Homemade” episode).As Fastvold worried about how to make the story her own, one image kept haunting her: a woman with a rope tied around her waist,
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