SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The film "Hallow Road" opens in the middle of the night with shots of what looks like a hastily abandoned dinner table, shards of a broken glass below and family photos that show a daughter and two parents smiling. A phone trills. We hear it's their 18-year-old daughter, Alice, calling with shocking news from a road deep in a forest. She ran over somebody and may have killed them.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "HALLOW ROAD")
ROSAMUND PIKE: (As Maddie) When? When did this happen? Just now?
MATTHEW RHYS: (As Frank) What's going on?
PIKE: (As Maddie) Alice, are you hurt?
RHYS: (As Frank) Whoa. Whoa. What? What?
PIKE: (As Maddie) What about the other person? Are they hurt?
RHYS: (As Frank) Maddie. Maddie, what's happened?
PIKE: (As Maddie) Is there anyone around who could help? Is there a house? Is there a car? Anybody around who can help?
RHYS: (As Frank) Put her on - Mads (ph), put her on speakerphone.
PIKE: (As Maddie) Why not? Where are you?
RHYS: (As Frank) I need to hear her.
SIMON: Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys are the parents in the film directed by Babak Anvari. And Matthew Rhys - so recognizable from "The Americans," "Perry Mason" and so much else. Joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us.
RHYS: Thank you enormously for having me. It's always a great pleasure to be here.
SIMON: Well, our pleasure. What are some of the jumbled emotions that these parents, Frank and Maddie, feel?
RHYS: Oh, good grief. I mean, this is the true parental roller coaster that this 90-minute hell ride takes you on, especially those who have children will well understand. But the conceit of it was remarkable in that it's the greatest quandary as to how far you will go to protect your child. And that, in itself, as a question, can elicit many extremities. In this film, they certainly come to the front.
SIMON: Yeah. Do the parents feel - without giving too much away - that they did something wrong, that they're somehow responsible?
RHYS: Well, that is the other element to this beautiful piece of writing, whereby in both parents, you have both sides of the quandary, where one is saying, but this is what we need to do to secure our child's safety. And the other partner is saying, but that is immoral and illegal, and we cannot do that. And therein lies who, you know, can you then begin to kind of quantify or qualify your love for the same child that you share and the depths of those kind of conversations as they take place solely inside the interior of a car over this time is - makes for an intense time.
SIMON: Those are very intense scenes, and as you indicate, they're all inside a car. And of course, I assume the set was a lot bigger than that, but what's it like to film scenes that intense in such confines?
RHYS: A number of things. Exhilarating for a start that you have - and Babak was - the director was incredible, or some might say, sadistic in that in - on the first morning of filming, the first morning...
SIMON: (Laughter) Well, he's a director, you know?
RHYS: Well, yes, of course, of course, the last of, you know, the true dictators. But, he said, listen, on the first morning, I think, as a nice little warm-up or to introduce it all to the crew - a memory card on our film cameras is about 60 minutes. So I would like to do a 60-minute take of the first 60 minutes of the film. And I said, I don't understand what you mean. Do you mean to say we will basically run the first 60 minutes of the film like a one-act play? He went, yes, exactly that.
So on the first morning in front of the crew, they put the cards in, and off we went. And he had the good grace and foresight to say, we will rehearse that for a week prior to that moment like a play. But the beauty is, it's the two of you sat in a car with nowhere to go. And obviously, because of the nature of driving - me driving - you can't really look - you can't look at your partner. And therefore, you have this incredible moment where you're both just listening to each other next to each other and how you navigate that, especially under the exercise of having to convince the other person.
SIMON: Parents disagree about their daughter's explanation of events, kind of, don't they?
RHYS: Yes. And what you see is Rosamund's character being in a medical field, and then my character, possibly being a little more high-spirited or passionate in his kind of paternal instincts. You then have clashing against that kind of more passionate approach to parenting.
SIMON: And Maddie, being a nurse, also feels she's obliged to help the person that her daughter has run over.
RHYS: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, the Hippocratic oath that they take is to save life at all costs. But if it comes at the cost of your own offspring, that is possibly the highest price to pay.
SIMON: Is this a film - it's about so much. Is it also about the parental relationship and spouses, husbands, wives, partners in life?
RHYS: Absolutely. It's like all great writing, really - and pardon the pun - it is truly a vehicle that shines a light or magnifies what really is going on. It intensifies those moments and magnifies it and puts the relationship quite violently under a microscope.
SIMON: Yeah. And not - without giving anything away, but to be seasonal, there's a deeper mystery in other voices that begin to kind of take over the journey, don't they?
RHYS: There is. And that was the other element to the film that really took me by surprise. And it's a turn in the film that I truly wasn't expecting. But also, you know, ponders the question of our own psyches and our own imaginations and how much they can affect us.
SIMON: Is it frightening to make a frightening film?
RHYS: The truly frightening element to me was it - this wasn't something fantastic or, you know, fantasmic. It was the true, great horror of what do you do for your child in these extreme situations and what happens when your child is placed in an incredibly harrowing situation that you are privy to but absolutely immobilized in what you can do to help. And that, to me, was the ultimate horror story is that you have to list - if you were to have to listen to your child going through this thing, and in no way, shape or form be able to help, that is, to me, a true horror story.
SIMON: Matthew Rhys stars alongside Rosamund Pike in Babak Anvari's new film "Hallow Road." Thank you so much for being with us.
RHYS: Thank you, as always. Always a true pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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