Gadon's character Elise Shifrin is a shy poet and the daughter of an immensely wealthy family. Her marriage to Eric seems to be one of convenience, and their interactions in the film amount to surreal short films as they encounter each other at various points during the day and Eric presses her for sex.
"What I loved so much about her was that she deflects everything that her male romantic lead projects on to her," Gadon says. "[Eric] said, 'I want you to be sexy, I want you to think this, I want to have sex with you, I want to this, I want to that.' And all she does is deflect, deflect, deflect. And it's more freeing, I think, than people realize, as a woman, playing someone who just says 'No! I will not allow you to dictate how I feel in this emotion or sit in this scene! I'm just going to, y'know, listen, or I'm just going to, y'know, deflect.' And that's what I think is really kind of interesting about that final scene is when he says, 'Well, I'm not going to be the man that you want me to be,' and she says, 'Okay, well, I'm out then!' There's something that I find really interesting about that."
Gadon and Pattinson did not rehearse, the idea being that their unfamiliarity would work to their advantage given the unfamiliarity of their characters. That said, I ask what she thinks Pattinson is really good at.
"Um, what is Rob really good at?" She chuckles. "He's good at a lot of things! I think he was really great as Eric Packer. And I think that was one thing that kind of surprised me, because I didn't really know him very well. And in real life he's very kind of... I mean, you heard him in the press conference: he's British and he's self-deprecating and he's much more self-conscious [than his character].
"And then all of a sudden he put on his suit, and this American accent would come out, and he would be so sure of himself and so powerful! And direct! And it was amazing to me to see that transformation of going from himself into Eric Packer. And I think that there's few, few guys right now in the industry who can pull off that kind of powerful masculinity at such a young age."
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