Serena by Ron Rash

Serena by Ron Rash

There’s a strong sense of foreboding that pervades Ron Rash’s Depression-era tale of a passionate marriage undone by jealousy and betrayal. It’s set in the mountains of North Carolina, which helps. So is Susanne Bier’s adaptation, and you could say she’s achieved a kind of Rashian foreboding as well, but for quite a different reason: Despite being shot back in 2012, with no less an It Girl than Jennifer Lawrence (opposite kinda-It Guy Bradley Cooper), it only just recently found an American distributor—which makes its fate seem kinda bleak, not unlike a night in the North Carolina wilderness.