  Reese Witherspoon relaxes prior to the Gala world premiere of the film Rendition last night. (Alex Uresevic/Sun Media)
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Actress Reese Witherspoon thinks Toronto is the perfect place to launch Rendition, a lacerating political thriller about the disappearance and torture of a man who is victimized by the CIA.
"It's pretty exciting," Witherspoon told Sun Media yesterday before Rendition -- a possible Oscar contender this year -- made its world premiere as a Gala at the 32nd Toronto International Film Festival.
"I think the Toronto film festival is always great for films that are filmmaker-driven and have a real idea behind them," she said. "There are so many great tastemakers here, people who really enjoy film, people who really appreciate what we are trying to get out."
In 2005, Toronto also launched Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopic that generated a best actress Oscar for her.
Now a seasoned veteran of Hollywood at 31, Witherspoon also knows how to keep on topic and maintain her privacy. She deftly demonstrated that yesterday when one question bumped into persistent rumours that she and co-star Jake Gyllenhaal became romantically involved on the film (she is now a single mom who is divorcing husband Ryan Phillippe).
Witherspooon went stone silent. "We're not going to talk about it," her publicist said. An awkward pause followed. Yet Witherspoon was quick to respond to the next question, a query on how excessive "celebrity journalism" can obscure serious messages, including those in director Gavin Hood's film.
"I don't think there is anything you can do about the current fixation on celebrity whereabouts and what's going on," Witherspoon said. "You can't pay attention to a lot of it. It's silly."
As for the potential effect on Rendition, she said: "I think the people who are really seeking content are going to see the film. I think that's what it's about."
Kelley Sane's screenplay for Rendition was influenced by several real-life cases, including that of Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar. "I think there was a lot of that studied when the film was written," Witherspoon said.
In the film, she plays a pregnant American woman whose Egyptian-born, American husband is secretly seized by the CIA when returning home from a visit to South Africa. Under orders from a high-ranking government official played by Meryl Streep, he is sent to Egypt for interrogation and torture with no legal recourse and no notification to his family.
Witherspoon said the film is meant to be political. It exposes abuses to the democratic process due to national security paranoia.
"Meryl Streep's character is making huge decisions about public policy without any sort of counsel or caucus. The fallout on a human level is so severe and it reverberates throughout so many communities and aspects of life. We're all just a hair's breath away from something really tragic."
Witherspoon believes it is important to have serious dramatic films to make sense of real-life news.
"You see so much stuff on the news and you just don't connect to it anymore," she said. A film such as Rendition "humanizes" the news by making it more personal and by illuminating issues.
Director Hood, a South African famed for his Oscar-winning apartheid drama Tsotsi, was instrumental in making Rendition work so well, Witherspoon said.
"He had very personal experiences in his own country regarding friends who had disappeared. He was in a very similar place to where my character was. So his direction was invaluable. He really helped me understand."
The past is always present
Reese Witherspoon grew up on the silver screen.
Now she finds the public record of her life a little scary.
"Certain parts of it are horrifying!" she told Sun Media yesterday.
"I started when I was 14 -- puberty on film," she said with a rueful chuckle.
Witherspoon played a tomboy in her first movie, Robert Mulligan's 1991 drama The Man in the Moon.
When the Screen Actors Guild screened a tribute to child actors one year, a clip from her debut was included.
"They showed a scene where I learned how to kiss -- in front of all my peers! And it was so funny. I was sitting next to Ethan Hawke (who also suffered through a clip from one of his early films) and we both said: 'This is horrible. How did this happen?'
"You are suspended in time. The stages you were going through and the ideas that you had about life, they're all captured and suspended. It's interesting."
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