The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. Audiences will recognize two familiar handsome faces: Lena’s love Kostos, and Tibby’s longtime boyfriend Brian McBrian. These young men have also progressed in the ensuing three years on their own trajectories toward adulthood, and returning stars Michael Rady and Leonardo Nam convey that deeper maturity in their roles.
Help, as well as heartache, continues to spring from new and unpredictable sources and every encounter has the potential to help define Carmen, Tibby, Bridget and Lena as the women they are becoming.
America Ferrera as Carmen
After a year at Yale, Carmen has kept pace with her classes but finds her personal life less manageable. Still not sure what she wants to do with her future, she returns to Bethesda with high hopes of reuniting with the sisterhood and is crushed to learn they’ve all made other plans for the summer. Her mother, played again by Rachel Ticotin, has recently remarried and is now simultaneously preparing for the birth of a baby and moving to a new house, her happiness adding poignantly to Carmen’s sense of displacement and disconnection.
“Carmen accepts an invitation from Julia, a drama student she knows at Yale, to work backstage at a theater over the summer because she really has nothing else to do,” says America Ferrera. “But she’s surprised at how much she grows there.”
To her amazement, and with some trepidation, Carmen is cast as the lead in Shakespeare’s “A Winter’s Tale” and discovers a dormant passion for acting. At the same time, she shyly captures the attention of her charming leading man, Ian, played by British actor Tom Wisdom.
Ian’s genuine affection encourages Carmen to shine on stage. But it’s the demanding nature of her mercurial director that will test her confidence and conviction like never before and, consequently, lead Carmen to consider whether this accidental turn of events is just a pleasant diversion or possibly a bold new direction for her life.
Interestingly, notes Hamri, “It is not Carmen’s success on stage or Ian’s flattering overtures that empower her as much as it is Julia’s aggressively jealous reaction to these triumphs and the subsequent steps Carmen must make to stand up for herself.”
Rachel Nichols, who plays Julia, points out that the role is not that of a simple villain or merely a foil for Carmen-a testament to the attention given each character by Ann Brashares and translated to the screen by Chandler. “Julia is a real person with her own problems and, though she behaves hideously, she is not completely devoid of good qualities. It’s possible that Julia might even learn something from this experience… although, clearly, it is Carmen’s moment of revelation.”
Amber Tamblyn as Tibby
Meanwhile, Tibby has been honing her talent for documentary filmmaking at NYU, while, in typical Tibby fashion, offering her hilariously razor-sharp movie reviews to bewildered patrons at the East Village video store where she works part-time.
“People are always remarking on Tibby’s sense of humor, which is stellar, but a large part of her sarcasm and humor is just to deflect attention from her feelings,” Amber Tamblyn observes. “It was fine when she was younger but she’s come to a point where it could really hold her back from experiencing life.”
Tibby has also been falling in love-though she’d never admit it-with her formerly platonic friend and fellow videophile Brian McBrian, whom we met in the first film. Now, as Chase says, “It’s the real deal.”
Unfortunately, taking their relationship to the next level results in a crisis that not only mars the emotional delicacy of the moment but could separate them for good, throwing Tibby into a tailspin of panic and self-recrimination.
Leonardo Nam, returning as the straightforward and sensitive Brian, points out, “Just as the girls have matured, left high school and are navigating their way in the world, so Brian has grown up. He’s not the awkward video-game playing geek we first met. Although they’re both freaked out by what’s happening, their reactions are different: Brian is focused on working things out, but Tibby’s impulse is to shut him out.”
That, as her friends would attest, is typical Tibby behavior.
Notes Chase, “Tibby has never been a person who lets others get close, and this is a crucial juncture at which she’ll either come to a deeper understanding of what love and intimacy are all about or she’ll shut door and stay where she is. It’s a journey of maturity for her.”
Alexis Bledel as Lena
Three years ago, budding artist and shy soul Lena had a near-storybook romance with the charismatic Kostos, a young Greek student she met while visiting her grandparents in Santorini. Though their brief connection was heartfelt, it proved difficult to sustain miles away from the Mediterranean.
Says Alexis Bledel, “Lena and Kostos had real feelings for each other, but the distance was too great. It was too much to ask, and Lena finally ended it for both their sakes, though it broke her heart. At this point, she claims to have moved on, but it’s clear that she has not been very successful at putting Kostos out of her thoughts.”
Michael Rady, who made his feature film debut as Kostos in “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” in 2005, believes that anyone who has attempted a long-distance relationship will relate. “It’s not easy being an ocean apart from your love. To make things worse, following Lena’s decision, Kostos had a romantic tryst with someone from the village and did the honorable thing-as befits his character-by marrying her. It’s a tragic blow to Lena when she finds out.”
Lena pretends everything is fine and immerses herself in her studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. Beginning the summer with a figure-drawing class, she gets the chance to prove that she has, in fact, moved on when she makes an impression on her striking model and fellow art student, Leo, a free spirit unlike anyone she has ever met.
Their meeting is one of Hamri’s favorite scenes. “It’s so unexpected when Lena finds out that Leo is the model. It’s one of the funniest moments in the movie and so aptly illustrates how different they are. Her reactions are priceless, so natural; she’s completely embarrassed, and his nonchalance is equally priceless because, to Leo, this is nothing unusual. It’s who he is.”
Jesse Williams makes his feature film debut in “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2” as Leo, whom he describes as “confident without arrogance, happy, a guy who is fully at ease in his own skin. Unlike Lena, his uninhibited approach to life also makes him comfortable flowing in and out of relationships in a way that is foreign to her.”
Lena’s interest in Leo and her curiosity about his lifestyle marks a significant turning point, notes Hamri. “Will she adapt herself to his easygoing nature and see where it takes her, or will she remain true to herself even if it means missing an enticing opportunity for romance?”
As Lena struggles to sort out her feelings and values, Bridget learns how her mother’s history affects her own future, Tibby faces the risks and rewards of love, and Carmen gains focus through new challenges, the Sisterhood strives to keep in touch.
The pants-their old messenger imbued with so much of the optimism and magic of their young lives-continue to make the four-point circuit although, now, there is often no time for an accompanying note.
“The pants have a more subtle presence this time around,” notes Hamri, who cites one scene that indicates how the girls’ perspective on their former touchstone and good luck charm has changed. “Carmen is going through a particularly stressful period at the theater camp. When her roommate Julia notices the pants that she has earlier tossed into a corner, Carmen dismisses them with an impatient, ‘Oh, they’re just an old pair of jeans.'”
Still, the director adds, “Whether they know it or not, these young women are not finished with this pair of pants. The pants still have one very important message to deliver.”
Blake Lively as Bridget
Bridget also has difficulty getting close, although in her case the situation is complicated because the person she yearns most to know is the mother she lost years ago and whose memory is rarely acknowledged by her taciturn father-a role played, for the second time, by Blake Lively’s own father, Ernie Lively.
Says the actress, “In the first film, Bridget is just running away from her problems. By the end, and with the help of her friends, she is able to recognize this enough to begin talking about it, which is a phenomenal breakthrough but still far from a solution. In this film, we see her really start to face things head-on. It takes a lot of strength.”
The new story finds Bridget poised between her first year at Brown University and an excursion to Turkey as a student volunteer on an archeological dig. As usual, Bridget is on the move; her physicality conveniently shifting focus and energy away from introspection.
In the brief time she spends at home, she makes the stunning discovery of a box of decade-old letters addressed to her from her maternal grandmother, Greta-letters Bridget never received or even dreamt existed. After a heated confrontation, Bridget’s father explains that by diverting these messages he had hoped to spare his young daughter the pain of being reminded of her loss. But Bridget does not see it the same way and leaves for Turkey in a tumult of emotion.
Once on site, excavating the bones and relics of a domestic Hellenic household, Bridget realizes her avid interest in uncovering the past goes deeper than the academic. “While reconstructing the daily lives of an unknown, centuries-old family, she is finally able to understand that what she needs to dig up and examine are the details of her own past,” states Kira Davis.
A candid encounter with the insightful professor leading the dig, played by Shohreh Aghdashloo, helps Bridget realize what she must do and returns her to the U.S. to track down the grandmother she barely remembers.
Blythe Danner, who stars as the patient and loving Greta, believes, “Both women are drawn to one another by their heartbreak and by the same need to talk about Bridget’s mother: one to ask the questions and the other to provide the answers.”
A Broad Canvas
“The movie covers a lot of ground,” says Di Novi, referring not only to emotional growth but, quite literally, to miles. Concurrent storylines scatter the four friends to Alabama, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Maryland and Turkey before delivering them, all together, to the spectacularly beautiful Greek island of Santorini. “It’s a broad canvas; rich and exciting in many ways.”
In the first film, the pants began their summer journey in Santorini, the most distant of the locales visited. Likewise, production on “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2” began in the Greek Islands, revisiting some of those original sets and vistas, such as the home of Lena’s grandparents and the place where, three years ago, she met Kostos.
Production designer Gae Buckley, who also made the return trip for the “Sisterhood” sequel, says “The family’s cliff-side home and café were the same sites used in the first film. We reproduced the exterior construction and dressing and then created a brand new bedroom in a nearby location for the girls to sleep in.”
Picturesque Amoudi Bay, in Oia, is the place where passenger boats disembark and where the four young women hire burros to navigate the steep trail up to the house. The production team artfully rearranged existing boats in the harbor, replaced modern signage with more subdued graphics, and dressed the entire area in lush greens with an overall focus, says Buckley, “on making it appear less touristy and more like a traditional small fishing village.”
From there, they selected another Greek locale with contrasting topography to stand in for the archeological dig Bridget attends in Turkey. The excavation set was built from scratch in four weeks, modeled on existing dig sites from the Hellenic period in both Greece and Turkey, and proved convincing enough to warrant approval from local archeologists.
Production then moved to the U.S., where various spots in Connecticut served as a range of East Coast cities. Carmen’s Vermont theater world was created from portions of Connecticut, including the KenMont Camp for Boys, the University Theater at Yale in New Haven and the Westport Country Theatre. Bridget’s Bethesda home was shot in Bridgeport and her grandmother’s suburban Alabama property in Stamford. Exteriors of Lena at the Rhode Island School of Design campus were captured at Western Connecticut State University. Tibby’s world was filmed in New York City, from the Weinstein Building at NYU and Washington Square Park to familiar East Village restaurants Two Boots and Yaffa’s Café.
By far, the scenes the four stars shared in Santorini were their favorites. And among these, a highlight was the burro ride-not only for the breathtaking perspective of the Santorini harbor it offers and the playful humor it catches on screen, but for the fact that it reunited them in a place that stirred such wonderful memories of their first “Sisterhood” experience.
Says Bledel, “It’s very natural when the four of us get together. It’s a jumble of noise and nonsense so we don’t really have to work very hard on getting that element across in the story’s lighter scenes where we’re all laughing and having a great time.”
Adds Lively, “It’s chaos. We get along way too well and sometimes things just happen.”
Illustrating this point perfectly is another cast favorite, the cliff-diving scene in Santorini, a purely spontaneous moment away from the cameras that was then incorporated into the story at their suggestion-and with Hamri’s enthusiastic support. While enjoying some downtime on a stroll around the village one day prior to filming, the actresses spotted three boys taking turns leaping into the ocean from a rocky perch. The boys were fans. After talking awhile about the movie, they invited guests to give the dizzying high-dive a try.
Recalls Ferrera, “I was the first to say ‘no way! I’m not jumping!’ But they talked us into it and it really was exhilarating.”
“We did it five times in a row,” says Tamblyn, who cannot resist teasing Ferrera by adding, “When we were recreating it for the film, America and I were supposed to jump together but she was being a wuss and didn’t go,” she laughs. “I didn’t realize it until I was underwater and looking around for her. She scared me half to death. I was afraid she hit a rock.”
“To me,” Hamri concludes, “Carmen, Tibby, Bridget and Lena leaping from that cliff is about them feeling free-with life, and with each other. It’s very symbolic. They’ve all faced their various difficulties and we know there will be more to come because that’s life. But for that moment they can just have fun and be girls again, laugh and scream and let it all go. They take the plunge one at a time and in their own way. But, at the same time, they are all together.”
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008)
Directed by: Sanaa Hamri
Starring: Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera, Blake Lively, Amber Tamblyn, Jesse Williams, Rachel Nichols, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Rachel Ticotin, Blythe Danner, Leonardo Nam, Lucy Hale, Adrienne Houghton
Screenplay by: Elizabeth Chandler
Production Design by: Gae S. Buckley
Cinematography by: Jim Denault
Film Editing by: Melissa Kent
Costume Design by: Dona Granata
Set Decoration by: George DeTitta Jr.
Music by: Rachel Portman
Art Direction by: Andrew Max Cahn
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature material and sensuality.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: August 8, 2008
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