The Cold Case: What Does Vera Farmiga Have to Do to Get a Hit Around Here?

Exhausted the classic canon? Fed up with the current cinema of remakes, reboots and reimaginings? This week The Cold Case talks to Vera Farmiga, exhuming a recent, underappreciated gem by one of America's most overlooked acting talents.

Having Orphan in multiplexes is a treat for fans of the brilliant Vera Farmiga, who usually have to track her work down on the festival circuit or await its DVD release. The most notable exception, of course, was 2006's The Departed, in which she seemingly appeared out of nowhere to hold the screen with Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio. But even after that Best Picture Oscar winner, Farmiga's films, from her 2004 breakthrough Down To The Bone onwards, remain remarkably underseen.

In 2007-08 alone there were the Orphan-like horror thriller Joshua, the immigrant romance Never Forever and Russian POW drama In Tranzit, all barely released, as well as the acclaimed box-office non-starters The Boy In Striped Pyjamas and Nothing But The Truth. Case in point: When Farmiga gave a scene-stealing performance as a Russian prostitute for Anthony Minghella, she managed to do it in 2006's Breaking And Entering, the late director's only flop.

Shining brightest amid this back catalogue of Cold Cases is 2008's Quid Pro Quo, the debut feature for writer-director Carlos Brooks. Yes, the story -- Nick Stahl is Isaac, a wheelchair-bound reporter investigating the Body Integrity Identity Disorder that causes people to seek paralysis or amputation - threatens indie quirk and Crash-style exploitation. But what surprises is that, amid the basement subculture and leg-brace seduction scenes, this also delivers old-fashioned tenderness and mystery, much of it embodied in Farmiga's warm but dangerous "wannabe" paraplegic Fiona.

"Quid Pro Quo is essentially a detective story after my favorites in that genre - Chinatown, The Maltese Falcon - wherein the detective ultimately realizes he's been investigating himself," Brooks told me this week. "Only in my story, I wanted a different MacGuffin than the classic murder mystery. I wanted something more specifically dangerous to the hero, especially on a psychological level."

Brooks knew he wanted Stahl for Isaac, but Farmiga wasn't on his radar until she sent one of her famous audition tapes that she passes along to all prospective directors. "It was full of flaws and vulnerabilities and I knew I needed someone to breathe life into a part that -- on the page -- was overly theatrical," he said. "That's part of the pathology of that character and you discover why as the story unfolds."

"You know, it reminded me of Luis Buñuel and Hitchcock, this kinda strange perspective," Farmiga told me late last year of why she signed onto Quid Pro Quo and stuck with the project for 11 long months while Brooks tried to get her across the line with reluctant money men. "I love quirky detective stories, and this was that."

After Scorsese's Departed benediction soothed nervous financiers, Farmiga was cast and set about delving as deeply as was feasible into BIID. "The first thing you want to do is sit with a wannabe, but there's so much pain and guilt and disgrace and embarrassment," she said. "You can't find a rehab for wannabes. So I spent a lot of time reading testimonies. The most important thing was to get in touch with the mental torment, the anguish, of wanting something so bad, in this case being paralysed. Understanding why Fiona is the way she is is just impossible but knowing which is the greater pain - compulsion being the greater agony - gave me a direction on the way to go."

But Quid Pro Quo isn't nearly as heavy as it sounds. "This was one of the most fun ones to do," Farmiga laughed when asked if it was her "toughest" role. "Fiona is just so riddled with contradictions and that was the great thing about playing her. She's someone who will cry for herself just as easy as she laughs at herself. She's as amusing as she is terrifying."

The film couldn't capitalize on what Brooks called its "gangbusters" Sundance reception but the writer-director is grateful it's still finding new fans of DVD, native domain of the Cold Case. "I know that on any given night someone is watching our movie," he said. "And what I read and hear from fans of the film tells me that what happened at Sundance was genuine. I know how very lucky I am to have reached any audience at all."

Farmiga had a similar take. When we spoke, Quid Pro Quo had already finished its mid-2008, four-screen theatrical release. "Oh, it's incredibly frustrating," she said, adding that her movies seldom played the cinema in her home town in upstate New York. "I'm so grateful for Netflix and DVD because that's where my work mostly ends up being seen."

That won't long be the case for Farmiga. Her next film, Niki Caro's The Vintner's Luck, ought to win over the arthouse crowd, while Up In The Air -- Jason Reitman's first film as director since Juno -- puts her in a romantic role opposite megaplex dreamboat George Clooney. Brooks' silver screen prospects are looking good, too. His artful control of character, visuals and suspense in Quid Pro Quo stokes the appetite for his upcoming thriller Burning Bright which pits a plucky woman not against her own demons but... against a Bengal tiger.