Anchored by a complex, brave performance by Maria Bello, Downloading Nancy, playing in the Dramatic Competition, is an entrancing psychological drama that pulsates with emotional immediacy. Unhappy in her life and marriage, Nancy meets Louis (Jason Patric) on the Internet and sets off to vehemently escape her mundane reality and embrace a world of dangerous erotic salvation.

In his feature debut, veteran commercial director Johan Renck shows a knack for story development and getting great performances out of his actors. And, according to Renck, it wasn't by accident.

“I couldn't have asked for better people,” Renck said of the two leads. “Not only are they fantastic at what they do; they are also intelligent, experienced, dedicated, and have such deep emotional awareness and understanding, which is bloody necessary for a film of this nature.”

Some of the scenes between Bello and Patric are so emotionally intense you sense that the actors couldn’t have lasted more than a single take. In fact, Renck worked according to his usual shooting methods developed in commercials. Almost all of the scenes are shot as one-takes covered by two cameras and deeply rehearsed the night before. They were partly shot that way out of habit and partly because Renck felt that breaking up scenes would put elongated pressure on the actors.

Despite the fact that the protagonists meet on the Internet, Downloading Nancy isn’t a movie about the online world. “People have always looked, more or less anonymously, for emotion through any means of communication,” Renck explained. “Maybe from an ad in a paper or in chat rooms. The entrance of the Internet hasn't really changed what lies behind this need... The important thing was how your last, self-destructive resort can be to look for refuge well beyond your own realm and how anonymity enables you to not have to answer to certain things.”

The film's tragic mood is enhanced by Renck’s control of light, colors, and textures. Almost no red makes it onto the palette, in an effort to, as Renck put it, “remain three millimeters from reality in the look and feel of the film."

“I wanted this film to be very muted and monochrome: stale and drab,” Renck said. “At the same time I wanted a certain beauty in this drabness as beauty works well with sadness. And I actually wanted the blood to be very dark and tar-like, like the old blood that goes through your veins rather than the freshly oxidized blood that runs through the arteries.

While intense and mature, Downloading Nancy is not a suspense thriller in Renck’s eyes: “To me this film is primarily about comprehending one thing about love... You cannot love completely and profoundly until you understand that you have to take out and get rid of a large chunk of yourself to leave a gap that can be filled by that other person. Only by doing this are you able to, in an almost altruistic way, make decisions on a small and large scale that serve the inmost light of what love really is. I learned this the hard way and I bloody hope I might pass some of this on to the next guy through the film.”