Lindstrom, Kara

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Lindstrom, Kara

PERSONAL:

Education: Attended American Film Institute.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Paris, France; Los Angeles, CA.

CAREER:

Screenwriter; worked previously as set decorator, production designer, and art director for films.

WRITINGS:

A Time for Dancing (screenplay), 2000.

Killing Me Softly (screenplay), 2002.

Sparkle Life (novel), Other Press (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Kara Lindstrom has filled various roles in the film industry, from set designer to screenwriter. Her screenplay A Time for Dancing was released theatrically outside the United States and broadcast on the Showtime television network. The story concerns a dancer whose career is brought to an abrupt halt by cancer. The main character, Jules, has been singleminded about her art, even at some cost to her personal relationships. When she discovers that she has cancer, she must turn her energies toward fighting for her life. Reviewing the movie for the Hollywood Reporter, Ray Richmond called it somewhat "predictable," but still considered the film worth watching.

Lindstrom's script Killing Me Softly is an erotic thriller, involving a woman who slowly begins to realize that her husband may be extremely dangerous. Alice Loudon, the main character, is in a settled but dull relationship with her boyfriend, when she is lured away by a magnetic stranger. Her new friend, Adam, convinces Alice to submit herself to him completely. Alice is at first thrilled by Adam's forceful personality, but as she begins to look into his past, she finds much that is disturbing. Mark Adams, a reviewer for the Hollywood Reporter, found the film "melodramatic," but added that the conclusion has "what passes for high romantic style."

Sparkle Life, Lindstrom's first novel, drew on her background in the movie industry. The episodic book tells the stories of four women, who are loosely connected by way of the men in their lives. The story is propelled by family tensions and dramas that play out at lavish parties, and the book is essentially a character study of its main characters, who are all young, hip, urban people longing for powerful emotional experiences that will destroy their sense of jaded detachment. According to a Kirkus Reviews writer, the author "creates wonderfully rich personalities and quite distinct and distinctive patterns of speech and thought." Reviewing Sparkle Life for Library Journal, Jenn B. Stidham called it "wonderfully entertaining and tender."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Entertainment Weekly, May 18, 2006, Anat Rosenberg, review of Sparkle Life.

Hollywood Reporter, June 11, 2002, Mark Adams, review of Killing Me Softly, p. 24; January 16, 2004, Ray Richmond, review of A Time for Dancing, p. 18.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2006, review of Sparkle Life, p. 372.

Library Journal, February 1, 2006, Jenn B. Stidham, review of Sparkle Life, p. 72.

Publishers Weekly, January 2, 2006, review of Sparkle Life, p. 31.

Variety, March 25, 2002, David Rooney, review of Killing Me Softly, p. 38.