TORONTO - Newcomer Jessica Chastain says she knows her upcoming film, "The Tree of Life," will be a daunting endeavour for some people.
The slender redhead, who plays a saintly mother who raises three rambunctious boys in the 1950s, says the Terrence Malick epic asks more questions than it answers but it "opens people up to look at their lives."
"It forces you to explore parts of yourself that maybe you had ignored for a while," Chastain says during a recent stop in Toronto.
"My favourite films are the ones that create discussion and (where) there are people that love it and people that hate them and I like films that change people in some way. I like films that make me have a reaction that aren't just solely for entertainment purposes."
Since winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival last month, "The Tree of Life" has changed Chastain's life dramatically.
The auspicious debut saw her walk the red carpet with A-list co-stars Sean Penn and Brad Pitt, while the film itself ignited divisive critical reaction.
The little-known theatre actress describes her tour of the Croisette as a whirlwind of gorgeous gowns, champagne, elegance and glamour.
"It changed my life artistically, of course, and personally," Chastain says of all that's come with "The Tree of Life."
"Artistically, the opportunity to work with Terrence Malick and Sean Penn and Brad Pitt was so great. I learned so much from them and from Terrence Malick about living in the moment and welcoming the happy accidents and not planning anything and letting go of expectations. That to me was a huge lesson for acting and then I could also take that into my personal life, trying to live a life where I try not to have an expectation and living in the moment, especially in a year like this where there's so much happening."
Described as a hymn to life, Malick's sprawling portrait of humanity centres on a small-town Texas family while also navigating the history, and future, of the universe.
Pitt plays a frustrated businessman and father who brings a firm hand to his three children while Chastain is their more permissive mother. Penn appears as an adult version of the eldest son, who looks back on his idyllic childhood and still grapples with the death of his younger brother, who died years earlier at age 19.
A Bible quote from the Book of Job sets the allegorical tone from the beginning, with a struggle introduced between "the way of Nature" and "the way of Grace."
Nuanced relationships between each character are loosely sketched with silent vignettes rather than dialogue, which Chastain admits was a frightening challenge for her at first.
"There was a huge speech I had to the father during the grief section and we did it many times and (Malick) said, 'That was great Jessica. Now can you do the speech without the words?' And I thought, 'Wow. That's really scary to think, like, first of all I don't know if I can express everything in the speech without the words but the fact that he has faith in me that I can,'" she says.
"There was this leap of faith that he's taking that creates it in me. So then I think, 'OK, perhaps by not allowing the, I guess, crutch of the words, it frees my eyes and my body and my soul.'"
The three boys are played by novice actors Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler and Tye Sheridan, who have been lauded for bringing an easy naturalism to their scenes.
Chastain says it was important to her to develop a bond with the boys before filming started and says she arrived two weeks early to get to know her young co-stars.
"I knew it was very, very important to make those relationships real. That was the way to root the mother, is her relationship with her children, that's what she lives for," she notes.
"And so we spent every day bowling or doing picnics, going on hikes, horseback riding. Anything that kind of created that relationship and to this day we still have it. We're connected forever now."
Embracing all aspects of what life has to offer is a new mantra for Chastain, who conducted a round of media interviews with a black brace on her knee after tearing her ACL in a motocross accident two weeks ago.
"I was pushing myself quite a bit," she says by way of explaining the wipeout.
"I like that. It's funny, I tend to take roles that I have to kind of throw myself into that are a little scary but there's a sense of accomplishment after I've done it and I do that in my personal life, too, clearly."
Chastain says she'd never tried the high-speed sport before accepting an invitation to try it out when she returned from Cannes.
"Honestly my mistake was: I should have stopped when I got tired. But I really kind of loved it and jumped into it and probably went too fast," she sighs.
There are no signs of a slowdown in the near future. Chastain has as many as six films coming out this year.
She says "Wilde Salome" is bound for the Venice International Film Festival this summer. Chastain shot it four years ago with Al Pacino after they appeared in a stage production together of Oscar Wilde's "Salome."
She's also in "Take Shelter" with Michael Shannon, which won the Critics' Week grand prize at Cannes; the bestseller adaptation "The Help"; "Coriolanus" with Ralph Fiennes; "The Fields," with Sam Worthington; and the Holocaust-revenge thriller "The Debt" with Helen Mirren.
Chastain says she didn't plan to explode on the scene in this way.
"To be honest, I would think like, 'OK, it might have been easier if it happened more spread out,' especially since I started making movies four years ago," she says.
"But for some reason this is the way the cards fell and I guess in typical Terrence Malick fashion I have to just be open to that moment and not try to change it because I can't. And I'm sure there's something about it that is a gift."
"The Tree of Life" opens Friday in Toronto and in Vancouver and Montreal on June 17. It expands to other cities June 24.