US-produced psychological thriller This Tempting Madness, which premieres at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), became an unintentional showcase for two of the brightest on-screen stars of the Indian diaspora – Simone Ashley and Suraj Sharma.
Directed and co-written by Jennfer E. Montgomery, the film has a plot that follows a woman who awakens from a coma after a near-fatal fall. She finds that her husband is missing and that her memory is an unreliable work-in-progress. While trying to understand an invisible threat, she leans on her brother to help reconstruct her life.
Born in the UK to Indian-origin parents, Ashley is a rising star with credits including Bridgerton, The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Sex Education. India-born, but now US-based, Sharma enjoyed a 2012 breakout with the title role in The Life Of Pi and followed that with Disney’s Million Dollar Arm in 2014. But he had taken few leading roles in major productions until 2023’s India-produced family drama Gulmohar.
The film’s cast also includes Austin Stowell of US series NCIS: Origins and Zenobia Shroff from superhero feature The Marvels.
“It was never necessarily intended to be cast as an Indian woman,” Montgomery tells Screen. “But, when we met Simone, there was just this magnetism that made her so ideal for the role that we knew that we wanted her.
“From then, it spun out. It’s ultimately a story that centres around a family. So, once we cast Simone, it was important to cast her family to also be South Asian. That is how we got the pleasure of getting Suraj. And it was one of the best things that could have happened.”
Montgomery got the idea for the film from a close friend who had suffered a serious accident.
“I would call my friend every morning and speak to her for an hour and then again in the evening and speak to her for an hour,” Montgomery recalls. “[Initially] she could not form short-term memories and we’d repeat the conversation. Eventually, her mind got stronger and she grew to be able to remember what had happened for the entirety of our hour-long phone call.
“I’d also try to get her to write a journal. At the end, once she was finally able to fully regain her memory and she looked back at the writing, she was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is crazy. Are you going to make it a movie?’”
Sharma says he was attracted to the project by a “page-turner” screenplay, by “extremely creative” Montgomery and Ashley as a “fantastic” co-star.
“My character is the echo of [the injured woman]’s past,” says Sharma. “As her brother, he remembers what she was, what she can’t – she doesn’t even recognize her own brother – it gives a certain heart to the film. There’s a pain that comes with an anger that you’ve got to protect her from and yourself from. It was an interesting emotion to navigate.”
Sharma explains the last decade’s thin resume by saying that he has been “picky” with roles, moved between New York and Los Angeles, and experienced multiple sides of life.
“I’m glad it played out the way it did because, as an old man once told me, if I want to be a storyteller I have to have stories to tell,” says Sharma.
This Tempting Madness is produced by Smoke Jumper Films. International sales are handled by Myriad Pictures, which is negotiating a release in India following meetings at the Waves Film Bazaar in Goa.
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