On Movies: Learning to be two alone in a room

TORONTO - Brie Larson will not be out in the lobby, ready with hugs, when audiences emerge from the theaters showing Room. But she would like to be.

At the premieres at the Telluride and Toronto festivals last month, the actress - who stars opposite the very young, very astonishing Jacob Tremblay in the movie about a mother and child imprisoned in a shed - was standing by, eager to assure the stunned throng that everything was going to be OK.

"It's really bringing out something very cathartic in people," Larson says of Room, based on the best-seller by Emma Donoghue, directed by Lenny Abrahamson and opening Friday at the Ritz Five. "To be there at the screenings and to be able to feel that reaction and at times give people hugs and look them in the eye and let them know that it was only a movie, that Jacob and I are fine - it's been a really special experience. I don't usually get to do that."

To say that Room is intense is an epic understatement. It is also remarkable, likely to garner both Larson and the unknown Tremblay some serious awards-season attention. Going through their days together in the tiny, ill-lighted shed, Larson's Ma and Tremblay's Jack lose themselves in elaborate imaginary games, reading books, addressing the utilitarian objects - Lamp, Sink, Bed, Plant - as though each had a life of its own.

Donoghue, the Irish writer now living and working in London, Ontario, has said her novel was triggered by the 2008 news accounts of the case of Josef Fritzl, an Austrian who locked his daughter, Elisabeth, in a basement for 24 years, raped her repeatedly, and fathered her children - three of whom he held captive with her.

Working with the Irish filmmaker Abrahamson (Frank, What Richard Did), Donoghue adapted her 2010 book, which unfolds from the point of view of the just-turned-5 son. The novel and the film pulse with tension and suspense. But both are powerful celebrations of the bond between mothers and children, too, and the physical and psychic space they share.

"I just was blown away by the book," says Larson, holding forth the day after Room's Toronto festival bow. "I haven't cried like that since I read Where the Red Fern Grows in fourth grade."

When her agent informed her that Donoghue's best-seller looked like it was going to actually be made, Larson set up a meeting with Abrahamson. Competition for the role, she knew, was fierce.

"It was going to be just a quick, 30-minute, get-to-know-you coffee," recalls the actress, who has been working in TV and film since she was in middle school, and whose breakthrough came in 2013, playing the supervisor in a home for troubled teens in the acclaimed indie Short Term 12.

Their meeting turned into "a four-hour-long laughing, crying, showing pictures of our dogs, and showing pictures of his children" affair. "It was a very big turning point for me," she says.

"Brie has this incredible capacity to be fully, dramatically present in the most natural and truthful way," Abrahamson said about his star at the Q&A after the Toronto premiere. "That was what was so important for this character."

Natural and truthful are good words to describe Tremblay's performance, too. He was 8 when Room was shooting last fall in Canada, 9 now.

"We searched high and low," said Abrahamson. "I felt like the prince in Cinderella. . . . We tried this shoe on every boy in North America between the ages of 5 and 7. We looked all over the U.S. and all over Canada, and then out of Vancouver came this amazing boy who I think you'll agree is just quite staggering."

Larson says that, for the film to succeed, for the relationship between Ma and Jack to feel real, it was imperative that she get to know Tremblay, and vice versa.

"I met him in Toronto about three weeks before we started shooting," she says. "It's a sensitive thing. We didn't want to put any pressure on him to feel like he had to please us, or be something, or that we all had our eyes on him. So the initial meeting was with some of the producers, with Lenny and myself, and we just went and got a pizza. . . .

"And that was the beginning. . . . I noticed that he had these Lego Star Wars figures, and so I started asking him questions about Star Wars, and once he realized that I knew Star Wars, we were rolling.

"And after that pizza meeting, he asked me to come over and play Lego, which felt like a huge win for me."

Tremblay invited her back the next night, and the next.

"We got into a routine," she says. "The right-before-bed ritual. I'd come over, we'd play some Lego, and then he'd go to bed.

"And the next day we would see each other at work, and we would build toys. All the toys that you see in Room we built. And then we would just spend time in Room."

Larson immersed herself in research, too. The first half of the film takes place almost entirely within the confines of the titular space; the second out in the world that Ma had almost forgotten, that Jack has never known. Joan Allen, William H. Macy, and Tom McCamus play key roles in Room's latter half.

"I needed to spend as much time as possible to know who Ma was," Larson says, "so that by the time we were in Room, I could forget all about it and just be. Lenny and I sat down with a trauma counselor, a trauma specialist, and he was able to discuss with us how the brain works, how the brain shuts off certain awarenesses when things are too much for the body to handle, because the body wants to continue to live. It shuts down certain fearful things in order to protect itself.

"So, at least while in Room, Ma wouldn't be going through as much trauma as she would be when she's out. When she's in a safe place, then the brain can say, 'Hey, remember this? Want to deal with this now? Maybe later? I guess not. OK.' "

There were physical aspects to consider. Ma and Jack are deprived of sunlight. Their diet is processed food, sugar, fat. There were the periodic and horrible visits from Ma's captor.

"I spoke with a doctor. What happens when you're deprived of sunlight? What about poor nutrition? And the sexual abuse? And then on top of it, having a pregnancy, dealing with a pregnancy on her own, what does that do to a person?

"There were tons of these puzzle pieces that had to be put together," she adds. "That became the structure, and then once I felt like I had that . . . then Jacob came into it, and we just played in Room. Go in Room every day and just hang out. . . .

"We were able to create a really fun space. We had a really awesome time together. Jacob's my very good friend."

See, everything did turn out OK.

srea@phillynews.com

215-854-5629@Steven_Rea