Among the films at Sundance is a documentary in the Premieres section focusing on a Hollywood icon—“Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind.”
It's a personal look at the star’s life, hosted by her daughter Natasha Gregson Wagner.
The major thread in the film is Natasha’s conversation with the man she considers her father—step-dad Robert Wagner, known as “RJ.”
The film looks at Natalie’s life as a wife, mother and friend. It reviews her films, from “Miracle on 34th Street’ to “Bob and Ted and Carol and Alice.”
But the film also doesn’t shy away from her tragic drowning death in November 1981. Wagner talks in detail about what happened that night, and his reaction to the tabloid headlines that have cast suspicion on him.
In a Q and A after the film, director Laurent Bouzereau said he knew in some ways, it was going to be a tough story to tell.
“I said to Natasha and R.J. and everybody I interviewed, “This is gonna be painful. This is gonna be tough. And you have to allow me to go to those places. I don’t want this movie to feel that it had been sanitized and controlled in any way by the family. It was really something that had to feel very honest. And I hope we succeeded. Certainly for me, there was not one interview where I didn’t break down, because this is a story of a family.”
In a lighter vein, Natasha was asked her favorites among her mother’s films. She said that answer changes, but currently it would include “Splendor in the Grass” and ‘Love With The Proper Stranger.”
She was also asked what films are the favorites of her 7-year-old daughter, Clover.
“Right now, she’s into musicals. So she loves “Gypsy” and “West Side Story”. She’s seen ‘Miracle on 34th Street” and “The Green Promise”. My daughter, as all seven-year-olds, think the world revolves around them. She can’t believe how much her grandmother looks like her, when her grandmother was a little girl. Thoughts of that fill her mind daily. “I look so much like my grandma Natalie.”
Natasha Gregson Wagner, for the film “Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind.”