Based on the 2009 best-selling novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, Focus Features’ new film “Admission,” starring Tina Fey (“Date Night”; TV’s “30 Rock”) and Paul Rudd (“Knocked Up”) follows the surprising detours people encounter on the road to happiness.
The comedy-drama revolves around straight-laced Princeton University admissions officer Portia Nathan (Fey) who lives by the book, both at work and at home. But Portia is caught off-guard when she makes a recruiting visit to an alternative high school overseen by her former college classmate, the free-wheeling John Pressman (Rudd). The latter has surmised that Jeremiah, his gifted yet very unconventional student, might well be the son that Portia secretly gave up for adoption many years ago. Soon, Portia finds herself bending the rules for Jeremiah, putting at risk the life she thought she always wanted—but in the process finding her way to a surprising and exhilarating life and romance she never dreamed of having.
What draws storytellers to explore a unique and specific high-stakes world? In the case of “Admission,” the pull of Ivy League academia, according to producer Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, provides “the perfect setting for blending deftly nuanced comedy with drama.”
Novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz thought so, too, writing her novel “Admission” as a multi-layered exploration—not only of the intensely competitive world of the college admissions process but also of the attendant emotions at the center of the experience.
Korelitz reveals: “I’m married to a Princeton University professor, and had myself worked for a couple of years as an outside reader in the university’s Office of Admissions. There were about 10 of us each year, and although we did not make the acceptance decisions, we commented on the applications after reading them. I was fascinated by the intense emotion surrounding the applications, and very curious about what it must feel like to have to make these decisions.
Incorporating the dramatic and comedic elements of the story, the movie’s Portia became a woman with a genuine desire to launch kids into their lives, yet she herself stays imprisoned in her own well-ordered life.
Kohansky-Roberts comments: “It’s only after receiving a jolt from the past does Portia begin to reset herself and strike out on a new path, with a new outlook and a budding maternal desire that supersedes her previous way of thinking. There transpires a series of events by which she acts like a parent, something that she had openly disdained.”
“Admission” will be shown exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas starting March 22, the same opening day as the US. Moviegoers can catch the film at Glorietta 4, Greenbelt 3, TriNoma, Alabang Town Center and Market! Market!