Here’s an interesting little film that’s popped up on the radar with Sundance coming up, piecing together several individually pleasing components into what we might hope will be a luscious stew of awesome.

1. Rainn Wilson playing a devastated widower, hooked on pills, with a thirteen-year-old in tow.

2. Natalie Portman playing that girl Natalie Portman plays in small indie films.

3. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, putting that G.I. Joe paycheck to good karmic use by playing a tattooed anarchist.

4. A first time feature-length director (Spencer Susser) whose previous work was a short film called I Love Sarah Jane that debuted at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and featured zombies.

The film follows the son of Wilson’s character as he deals with the death of his mother, falls futilely in love with Natalie Portman’s character, and is alternately tormented and mentored by JGL’s character. Not much more information is available, but we have some intriguing bits and pieces by way of Slashfilm:

The poster:

And some production stills, starting with JGL channeling Smokey the Bear:

Between shoots at the Calvin Klein offices:

Wet hair is always more dramatic:

Ooh, I think he has the Shining:

Here’s a bit of a talk by the director Spencer Susser, with a few clips running in the background here and there:

And because every post is better with zombies, here is the complete short film of Susser’s called I Love Sarah Jane to show what he’s capable of:

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Steven Lloyd Wilson is the sci-fi and history editor. You can email him here or follow him on Twitter.