Christina Hendricks gets the bubble-head treatment in this first still from Lost River.

Christina Hendricks gets the bubble-head treatment in this first still from Lost River.

When we first heard about Ryan Gosling’s first directorial effort, it was called How to Catch a Monster. Today, when the 2014 Cannes line-up came out, we found out that the film had acquired a simpler, more palatable title: Lost River. The film will play in the Un Certain Regard section of the festival, which one could interpret as a safe move. Still, his fucking movie is playing at Cannes, so I’m sure Gosling is pleased.

Lost River stars Mad Men‘s Christina Hendricks as Billy, “a single mother of two… swept into a macabre and dark fantasy underworld while Bones (Iain De Caestecker), her eighteen-year-old son, discovers a secret road leading to an underwater town.”

The film also stars Matt Smith, Eva Mendes, Ben Mendohlson, and Barbara Steele. I’ll be watching this one very closely, because it sounds weird enough to warrant my attention. The film will see a US release later this year, courtesy of Warner Bros.

For anyone who’s interested, the Cannes line-up looks good this year, with David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars, Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language, Tommy Lee Jones’ The Homesman, and Atom Egoyan’s Captives all in competition.