Neeson’s dangerous affair with Third Person

MANILA, Philippines - From Paul Haggis, director of Oscar-winning film Crash, comes Third Person, starring a powerhouse cast led by Liam Neeson, Olivia Wilde, Kim Basinger, Adrien Brody, Mila Kunis, James Franco and Moran Atias, that tells three stories of love, passion, trust and betrayal.  

The idea for Third Person started within days of finishing shooting The Next Three Days, Haggis’ last film. It began with a series of conversations between Paul and Moran, who suggested Paul should write a multi-plotline film about love and relationships. Shared stories and painful and joyous anecdotes about love and relationships turned into fiction over the next months as the characters took form and the stories slowly found shape. Paul found this the most challenging of his screenplays “because I wrote it all wrong, from the inside out. I let the characters tell me where the story was going, and often they just wouldn’t speak to me — or worse, they lied to me,” he said with a wry smile.

Haggis enjoys exploring complex characters,  “While we don’t often see it in movies, I believe people often take actions that are completely contrary to their needs, and make little to no sense to those around them. How often have you seen a friend and asked ‘Why is she with that horrible man?’, or vice versa. Sometimes they are too close to see what is so blindingly clear to us.  And other times what is clear to us is simply a mirage. We think it’s the awful woman using the lovely man, when in truth the lovely man is just much better at hiding his crueler intentions”.

Reminiscent of Haggis’ Crash, the tales play out in New York, Paris and Rome — three couples who appear to have nothing in common and only tangential connections. But there is always a third person in any relationship — perhaps not romantically, perhaps you aren’t even aware of their existence, but they are there. 

Third Person opens June 18 in cinemas nationwide from Axinite Digicinema.