First-time director is picture of maturity

PARK CITY, Utah -- At the conclusion of an early - morning screening of "Away From Her" at the Sundance Film Festival, teary-eyed moviegoers gazed in disbelief at the petite film director who thanked them politely for showing up at 8 a.m. to see her adaptation of the Alice Munro short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain."

It was soft-spoken actress Sarah Polley, who was at Sundance for the first time as a feature film director. She had just turned 28, making her about 40 years younger than the stars of her film, Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent. Audience members left the theater buzzing about how someone so young could make such a mature film about Alzheimer's disease and the complexities of relationships between married people in their 60s and 70s.

But for Polley, it was the maturity of these characters that inspired her to make this movie, which opened Friday in Boston.

"It was the concept of a love story that was about the end of love as opposed to the beginning of love, which is what we always explore and is, perhaps, the least interesting part," Polley said in an interview with the Globe.

Polley is best known as an indie actress from Canada who's bypassed big-budget flicks such as "Almost Famous" (she was supposed to be Penny Lane, a role filled by Kate Hudson) to appear in arthouse pictures like "The Sweet Hereafter," in which she played a young woman who survives a tragic accident in a small town.

Her more commercial films include "Go," a techno-fueled story about 20-somethings and drug deals that co starred Katie Holmes ; and the 2004 remake of "Dawn of the Dead" directed by Zack Snyder, who would go on to make the epic "300."

Polley's parents -- actor Michael Polley and actor/casting director Diane Polley -- helped start her on screen career when she was about 6 with small television roles. By the time she turned 9, she had portrayed Ramona Quimby in the television adaptation of the Beverly Cleary children's books and had starred in Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," in which she played Munchausen's young companion, Sally Salt. At 11, just as she lost her mother to cancer, Polley took on the role of Sara Stanley in the Canadian television series "Road to Avonlea," which earned her several nominations for a Gemini Award, the Canadian Emmy.

She spent her late teens and early 20s balancing her under-the-radar acting career with political activism in Canada, supporting the New Democratic Party and advocating for welfare reform.

Polley has made short films, but "Away From Her" is her first feature. She adapted the script, which tells the story of Fiona (Christie), a woman afflicted by early-stage Alzheimer's who asks her husband, Grant (Pinsent), to place her in a nursing home when memory loss sets in. At the home, Fiona develops a bond with a male resident, Aubrey (Michael Murphy), whose salty wife Marian is played by Olympia Dukakis.

Polley read the story as she was filming "No Such Thing," the Hal Hartley reinterpretation of "Beauty and the Beast," and began to envision her co star, Christie, as Fiona.

"I couldn't stop seeing her face in this part," Polley said. "I just wanted to see her play it."

Polley was also hooked by Munro's atypical love story, a narrative that focused on a relationship that had already survived disappointments and betrayals. Polley had just started dating film editor David Wharnsby, whom she would eventually marry, and said the narrative made her contemplate why people stay together at all.

"I think the story impacted the way I saw love and the kind of love I was actually looking for," she said. "I thought I should be looking for something obsessive and melodramatic and fraught. And then at some point, in the process of meeting David and with this story, I realized it might be more interesting to be with someone you could be with after 44 years, after you really knew who the other person was, and really let each other down and failed each other."

It was a dream cast for a first-time director, one that not only featured legends, but her friends and former colleagues. She had worked with Christie twice, in "No Such Thing" and in the 2006 film "The Secret Life of Words." Pinsent had known Polley's parents and had appeared in an episode of "Road to Avonlea."

"I was working with actors who I've always considered icons and who I respect enormously," she said. "And yet, I was really surrounded by so much nurturing and support. It was really an [ideal] way to make a film."

Pinsent said by phone that he was the only actor who considered Polley's inexperience when filming commenced. His first instinct was to feel like a parent, but that ended quickly.

"I'm sorry now that I ever did refer to her in that way," he said. "There isn't a moment of life she hasn't scratched. She has gone out of her way to pick up on all aspects of the human comedy."

Polley based the set of the film on her own grandmother's experience in a nursing home. She added personal touches to Munro's short tale, including some comic relief in the form of a retired sports commentator suffering from dementia who gives a play-by-play of his daily routine. Polley modeled the character after her own uncle, who was once the voice of the Buffalo Sabres.

She committed to portraying the characters as sexual beings without making an issue of their age. There are no explosions about age and intimacy like the ones Diane Keaton gave in "Something's Gotta Give."

"It's amazing how we've decided in film that as soon as someone hits 55 or 60 that all sexuality is stripped away from them, which is not my experience with women in their 60s and 70s," she said. "I think I've learned more about sex from Olympia Dukakis and Julie Christie than anybody else."

The result of Polley's efforts is the kind of film she'd choose to star in as an actress: thoughtful, independent.

Geoffrey Gilmore, director of Sundance, said his festival takes pride in its close relationship with Polley, who was loved by audiences for her performance in "The Sweet Hereafter" and served as a festival juror in January. Gilmore said he has seen many actors with directorial aspirations get behind the camera for forgettable results. Some can't make a picture without putting themselves in front of the camera, he said. "I must tell you, the opposite was true with her."

At Sundance, audiences gave "Away From Her" standing ovations, but Polley's age combined with her choice of subject matter was a constant topic of discussion, Gilmore said.

"That's what you have to immediately say to yourself," he said. "How could she have such a sophisticated vision of relationships? It's remarkable."

Polley said she plans to do more directing and she's already adapting another story for the screen. But if anything, she said, the experience has inspired her to act.

"This is really overwhelmingly fascinating to me right now , and I'm loving it," she said. "But it also makes me appreciate what it means to be an actor even more in terms of seeing the kind of commitment Julie and Olympia brought to their parts. It really made me want to up the ante a bit on my own commitment."

Meredith Goldstein can be reached at mgoldstein@globe.com.