Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz Are on a Collision Course in Ferrari

Adam Driver.

Ferrari’s vroom-vrooming into theaters. SAG-AFTRA has given Neon’s Michael Mann movie the all clear for actors to promote at Venice Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and any other events where talent is needed. Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz star in the biopic about Enzo Ferrari’s marital problems and the pivotal race that could save his bankrupt car company. In the final trailer below, gray-haired Adam Driver oversees a high-speed test drive of the now-classic cherry-red Ferrari convertible. The Girls actor has a steely edge about him, but behind his sunglasses lurks warm memories tainted by loss. There’s an Impressionist montage of his happy family before the death of their son, Dino — a shot in a meadow teaching the boy to ride a bike; one where he’s acting goofy, dancing around a sunlight-filled bedroom, to the delight of Penélope Cruz. The present is colder. A fiery car race on the horizon preoccupies him, as does his affair with Shailene Woodley and the ire of his wife. “Two objects cannot occupy the same point in space at the same time,” Driver says in a stunted Italian accent.

Why can the cast promote during the strike?

The film received an interim publicity agreement from SAG because its distributor, Neon, is a non-AMPTP company, allowing actors to participate in everything from castings to production to promotion during the strike. A24 and other companies struck agreements with SAG last month, approving actors to work on 39 independent projects, including A24’s Mother Mary, a melodrama starring Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel, and Death of a Unicorn, a film about Paul Rudd and his onscreen daughter Jenna Ortega running down the mythical creature with their car.

Who else stars in the film?

Driver plays Enzo Ferrari, the Italian race-car driver and founder of the eponymous car company. Cruz is his wife, Laura. Shailene Woodley has a role as Lina Lardi, Ferrari’s mistress and the mother of his son Piero. Sarah Gordon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell, and Patrick Dempsey also star. Shockingly, Charli XCX is not involved.

What’s driving the plot?

It’s the summer of 1957, and Enzo Ferrari’s life is a mess. His car company is going broke. He’s reeling from the loss of his child, Dino, a year prior. To complicate matters, his affair with Lina Lardi results in a son, whom he struggles to acknowledge. And that drama is just the backdrop for a 1,000-mile race across Italy, the Mille Miglia, where he can finally prove himself.