Coming off playing another embattled heroine in last year's indie hit Still Alice, Julianne Moore pairs up with Juno star Ellen Page to depict a lesbian couple's battle for equal rights. In Freeheld 's romantic first act, Moore's Laurel Hester, a veteran police lieutenant on the Ocean County, NJ force, meets Page's Stacie Andree, a saucy local garage mechanic. Laurel and Stacie set up house in a tidy three-bedroom cottage and prepare for a long, happy run, until Laurel is diagnosed with end-stage lung cancer.
Wishing that her Stacie be allowed to go on living in their little castle after her death, Laurel attempts to deed her lover the substantial pension she's earned after 23 years of rough-and-tumble life in a squad car. The women are shocked when the county board of Freeholders rejects their application �" partly because New Jersey didn't then recognize same-sex marriage, but also, as the film makes clear, because of the Tea Party-style prejudices of several board members, playing to their far-right constituents.
Thus the battle lines are drawn, and the women spend the rest of the film fighting bigoted pols with the assistance of a loud and proud in-your-face gay Jewish lawyer (Steve Carell), Stacie's formerly grumpy police partner Dane Wells (Michael Shannon), and eventually a convert from the Freeholders (The Good Wife's Josh Charles).
An indication of how you will take to Freeheld comes in this early "meet cute" scene, where Laurel encounters Stacie at an athletic event. As their chat proceeds, we notice some interesting changes in their body language.
"You came all the way out here to play volleyball, and you don't even like it?"
"Every once in a while I think one should go out and try and meet someone."
"They don't have girls in Jersey?"
"It's not that. People know me back home, it's hard to go out and have privacy. I should go."
"OK. Can I have your number?"
"I'll give you my cell. If anybody asks where you got it, please don't mention it."
Despite the uncertainty of knowing whether their project would open in movie theaters or be shuffled over to cable TV's Lifetime channel, Freeheld director Peter Sollett (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) and screenwriter Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia) manage to tell a moving adult story on a bare-bones budget. With the time-honored goals of traditional hetero couples �" house, yard, dog �" Laurel and Stacie's story jumps out as an awards-season frontrunner.
Ellen Page discussed her joy at being in the film after the usual long taffy-pull of fundraising: "Producers Michael Shamberg and Susie Sher sent me the documentary [also called Freeheld ] when I was about 21 [in 2008] and asked me if I would want to attach myself to it. I was so moved, I was weeping, and said yes immediately. And Julianne said yes."
Julianne Moore: I came on after it had already been scripted and had a director. I read it and loved it.
David Lamble: How did you prepare yourself to be a female cop who's been on the force for 23 years?
I talked to a lot of cops! I talked with Laurel's police officer partner �" they were very close. I also had an advisor on the set, Maggie Cummings, who was a gay police officer, who was able to fill me in on the finer points of being a police officer in those places: how you behave, how you wear your badge and gun. To be honest with you, it was much harder for me to figure out the cop stuff than the relationship stuff. Being a cop is a stretch for me.
The term partner comes up in both ways: you're partners with a male police officer, and you're partners with Ellen's Stacie at the same time.
The semantics of that word! But I do think that when you're not able to say "wife," "husband," you're reduced to saying "my partner," that does feel like a reduction. That's why marriage equality is important, because when you say somebody is a partner, it denotes a different kind of relationship.
Otherwise it becomes lethally ambiguous.
Absolutely, which is not fair!
One of these partners dies, and her substantial police pension is denied your character [Ellen's Stacie]. How did the Freeholders justify doing that? It seems so outrageous.
Ellen Page: There was a loophole that basically allowed county Freeholders to decide which county employees got it and which didn't, so these Freeholders, these five men, said no to them. You look back now, and frankly, it just seems cruel to me.
Julianne Moore: What's astonishing to me is that it really felt like they would get away with it. And finally, after every single county in New Jersey had closed that loophole as a result of this trial, Gov. Jon Corzine came in and said he had to do something about this.
Page: 61% of Young Republicans are totally in favor of same-sex marriage. Things are changing.
What was the relationship part of the film like?
Page: We loved that part. We could snuggle up!
Moore: I love a romance, that is my favorite part of the movie. So to get to do that, to get to do the meeting part, the falling-in-love part, filming the montage, building the house, that was all so incredibly pleasurable.
Page: Then we're sitting there eating takeout.
That's the part of the film that I love the most, too, because there's such a genuine feeling between the two of you. You can't have enough films that show that side of things.
Moore: I agree. I think we want to see ourselves when we go to the movies, to see our lives reflected. It's always most touching to me when somebody comes up to me and says, "That was me, that was my story." Anytime you're able to tell a love story, you're telling a lot of love stories.
Lest we forget, this has happened a relatively short time ago, 2006. It's not ancient history. How are the people doing now?
Moore: Stacie still lives in the same house in Ocean County, and she still works at the same garage. Dane Wells still lives in New Jersey. He's no longer a police officer. They were so supportive of this film, and gave us so much access to their lives, anything they could help us with.
What was the most memorable scene for you guys?
Page: [Looking at Moore] The dancing.
Moore: Yeah, we loved it! It was such an evolution between the time we rehearsed it �" we barely knew each other, learning how to do the two-step, and "Hey, see you later," til we actually shot it towards the end of the movie. By then we had got to be very close friends. We felt like we knew the relationship inside and out, and it was absolutely delightful to do those romantic dances.