The circumstances that put a filmmaker from Fort Lauderdale, descendant of a royal family of entertainment in Argentina, on the set of his first big-screen feature with three famous actors from your ’80s and ’90s movie-watching heyday, were beyond coincidence.
Three-time Academy Award nominee Diane Ladd would not rule out the influence of a divine hand. This is a film that needed to be made, with a theme, about family and forgiveness, that may be especially important in this cultural moment, Ladd says.
“Talk to the people you love while you have the opportunity. Do it in this lifetime. Reach out,” Ladd says. “You don’t have to agree. Don’t not speak to somebody because their opinion is different from yours. How cowardly that is.”
“Isle of Hope,” which debuts in theaters across Florida on Feb. 23, is a film for mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. As it illuminates the difficult compromises of parenthood and the long-simmering resentments left in their wake, it is a story about saying what needs to be said before it’s too late.
A drama flecked with wisecracking humor, “Isle of Hope” is a remarkable late-career star turn for Ladd, a luminous presence as former Hollywood movie star Carmen, who appears near death, a conflicted daughter at her hospital bedside, when the story begins.
Now 88, Ladd has a resumé equal to any actor working today, with performances in films directed by Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski, David Lynch, Martha Coolidge, Roger Corman and Rob Reiner. Ladd received Oscar nominations for roles in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” (1974), “Wild at Heart” (1990) and “Rambling Rose” (1991).
Veteran actor Mary Stuart Masterson is a study in emotional precision as Carmen’s estranged daughter, Victoria, still embittered by her mother’s years-old rejection of her playwriting dreams, even as death looms. Also a writer and director for film and television, Masterson is memorable to most film fans for “Some Kind of Wonderful,” “Fried Green Tomatoes” and “Benny & Joon.”
In a supporting role, as Victoria’s ex-husband, is writer, director and actor Andrew McCarthy, still most associated with Brat Pack-era favorites “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “Pretty in Pink,” along with “Weekend at Bernie’s.” Sam Robards (son of Jason) plays Victoria’s psychiatrist brother.
Fathers and sons
“Isle of Hope” was directed by Damian Romay, who adapted the script from the one-woman stage play “Dias Contados” by acclaimed Argentinian actor-writer Oscar Martinez. In its most popular performances, the pivotal role of Victoria was played by Cecilia Roth, best known for films by Pedro Almodóvar.
A native of Buenos Aires and father of three, Romay studied film at the University of Southern California and is a cofounder of Sunshine Films, a production firm with offices in Fort Lauderdale and Miami. The company is a prolific creator of “straight-to-platform” movies, most filmed in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, which are streamed by Hallmark, Lifetime, Netflix and Amazon Prime.
The idea to turn playwright Martinez’s story of midlife parent-child alienation into a feature film was presented to Romay by his father, Omar. An influential TV executive and producer in Argentina who was a pioneer in the globalization of telenovelas — among his best-known titles are “La Extraña Dama” and “Más Allá del Horizonte” — Omar Romay is the founder of Miami-based Aventura Entertainment, which produced “Isle of Hope.”
After seeing the play online, Omar asked his son to write a screenplay. The original play ends with Carmen, recovered from a stroke-induced coma, and Victoria achieving an ambiguous truce. Romay wanted more, and made the decision to add a third act, in which parent and child let their guard down to speak candidly about their damaged relationship, in search of reconciliation.
“It was something that touched him a lot,” says Romay, 46, of his father. “It was very emotional for him because of his relationship with his father.”
Omar’s father, Alejandro Romay, was a legendary figure in the television industry and popular culture in Argentina as an on-air personality, producer and owner of Buenos Aires-based Canal 9. Romay describes his grandfather, who died in 2015, as “a mix of Ted Turner and, maybe, a Walt Disney.”
The conflicts and questions asked in “Isle of Hope” are evergreen themes that run through “King Lear,” “The Lion King” and most families, Romay says. To follow in a parent’s footsteps or find your own way?
“My grandfather didn’t necessarily want the same life for him that he had,” Romay says. “But my dad really wanted to be like his dad, and I think that weighed heavily on him. Maybe there were conversations that they never had that he wished they would have had.”
The irony of filming this story with his own father sitting next to him on the set is not lost on Romay.
“It’s his movie. He’s the producer. But at the same time, I had a responsibility of doing it the best way that I thought it should be done. It wasn’t easy. I mean, at some points he would say, ‘Do you want me to go talk to the actors?’ I was like, ‘No, Dad, please don’t talk to the actors. Let me handle this,’” Romay says, laughing.
A star is reborn
Doctors had given Diane Ladd six months to live — her lungs were severely damaged by pesticides sprayed on nearby citrus orchards, she was told — when she and her daughter, Oscar winner Laura Dern, began a series of daily therapeutic walks.
These 2018 meetings on the beach in Southern California soon evolved into emotional mother-daughter confessionals, which Dern recorded.
“She was trying to save my life,” Ladd says by phone from her home in Ojai, California. “If you think you’re dying, you’re going to say everything.”
They revisited old regrets, rehashed old arguments and talked about the things they don’t talk about, including Ladd’s loss of her first child, a toddler daughter, in a swimming pool accident more than 60 years ago.
“What do we not know about that person we love next to us?” Ladd says. “What’s my mother’s favorite color? What’s my daughter’s favorite color? When’s the last time I heard her laugh? And about what? When was the last time I soothed her because she was crying? So many people say, ‘I wish I had asked my mother that before she died.’”
After Ladd recovered, she and Dern turned those recordings into a book, “Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding),” published last year to wide critical praise.
Serendipitously, it was during the gestation of the book that a New York casting director sent Ladd the screenplay for “Isle of Hope,” which seemed drawn from the same well of humanity.
“I could feel all of that in Damian’s beautiful script,” Ladd says.
She signed on to do the movie, which encouraged Masterson, McCarthy and Robards to join the cast, Romay says. Filming took place in Savannah, Georgia, in March and April of 2022.
Ladd calls the tearful reconciliation in Romay’s third act the “soul” of the story. At the first script reading with the cast, Romay realized he had reached his toughest audience, his father.
“He’s not someone who gives a lot of praise. But I could see he was very emotional about it. I could see him tear up as we were doing the scene,” Romay says. “When we ended, he said, ‘If the movie is even close to this, it’s gonna be great.’”
Along with his father, Romay had no shortage of input during the shoot. Most of the scenes in the film include Masterson, also a director and producer, and Ladd, who has worked with legends.
“They are both super insightful, super smart women. They had a lot to say, and I had a lot to listen to,” Romay says, laughing.
Ladd was effusive in her praise of the “family” that made “Isle of Hope,” and of Romay in particular.
“Not only did he not get in my way to dim my light, but he opened the door to let my light shine. That’s what a director does,” Ladd says.
On her way to 90, Ladd is not slowing down. She and Romay just finished a screenplay, and she is more than 100 pages into a memoir. Meanwhile, she’s still appreciating the response to “Honey, Baby, Mine.”
“Yesterday, I got a thank-you note from a lady, her mother is in a rehab center and dying. She gave her mother our book to read, and her mother said, ‘It’s inspired me. Come sit down. I am dying and we have to talk about it,’” Ladd says, her voice wobbly with emotion. “She said, ‘Ms. Ladd, your book brought us closer together than we’ve ever been. I now have peace knowing that my mother is going to the other side, thanks to you and your daughter.’ My god, I cried.”
Staff writer Ben Crandell can be reached at bcrandell@sunsentinel.com. Follow on Instagram @BenCrandell and Twitter @BenCrandell.
