NY TIMES: It’s impossible to watch “The Light Between Oceans” — Derek Cianfrance’s tale of a childless Australian couple who discover a baby in a rowboat and keep it — and not assume that you’re witnessing its stars, Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender, falling in love.
After all, speculation ran rampant last year when photographs suggested that the incandescent actors were an item — a suggestion that neither would confirm. Rumor seemed to become fact when Ms. Vikander kissed Mr. Fassbender after she won the best-supporting actress Oscar for “The Danish Girl” in February, and the world’s collective knees went weak.
Seated on a sofa — but not too close — at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park this summer, Ms. Vikander and Mr. Fassbender completed each other’s sentences as they discussed their film, an adaptation (opening Friday, Sept. 2) of M. L. Stedman’s novel about Tom, a World War I veteran turned lighthouse keeper on a rocky, storm-swept island, and his wife, Isabel, whose maternal longing he wants nothing more than to satisfy.
Asked about their discretion, Ms. Vikander, wearing geometric-print palazzo pants and radiantly barefaced, said that “we’ve done this film and we’re talking about it,” but added: “Then you keep certain things private and between us, which I think is the right thing.”
Ms. Fassbender, his blue T-shirt complementing her outfit and his eyes, chimed in, “Our work is something that we’re very committed to, but also our private lives.”
continue reading
