The moment the camera found Vera Farmiga
When ‘When Will I Be Loved’ was released in 2004, the film industry was still trying to figure how to place Vera Farmiga. She had already won the critics in smaller roles, but this was the film that for the first time displayed her rawness, her vulnerability, and her steel. When Will I Be Loved was written and directed by James Toback and filmed in a style that can only be described as a fever dream – part character study, part seduction, and part urban confession.
At the center was Vera. A young woman, named simply Vera, walking through the enticements and chaos of New York City – Vera was equal parts predator and prey. The narrative is not presented in a linear form. Instead, it resembles a series of glances, fragments, and temptations. But beneath that disjointed rhythm is a film tortured by the obsession of truth – not the truth of a script, but the truth that is coaxed from an actor by a camera when the actor finally lets herself be fully seen.
The narrative feels like a dialogue between power and desire.
Vera is the main character of Toback’s film. In a city that monetizes beauty, Toback’s film shows the character Vera, a beautifully intelligent woman to whom both charm and intellect can become a weapon and a shield. Vera meanders through atmospheres, encounters and relationships, exploring the dynamics with her boyfriend Ford (Frederick Weller), indifferent men to whom she as a puzzle and strangers to whom she is a puzzle, ultimately greasing her to a control breaking maneuver that defies all preconceptions of power and exploitation.
To an extent, the plot actively defies summary. It is Vera’s being and all it is revealing that determines the story, the lack, and the desire to be striven but most defiantly as the player of the game. In the men, Vera idealizes, she most captures the fantasy of being the game’s ultimate player controlling the stakes. It is a tense film’s ending; however, a breathless dinner scene with Vera’s control where the stakes being passed are power, money, and desire. It is a conglomerate of desire where she is both the performer and, for Farmiga, the moment is a full circulation of exposure.
How Vera Farmiga Turned Herself Inside Out for the Role
By 2004, Vera Farmiga was known primarily to critics who followed her stage and early independent film work. This changed when Farmiga was cast in the film independent Will I Be Loved,which required her to push her limits in numerous ways—emotionally, physically, and intellectually. Toback gave her a structure and a framework, but for the most part, he gave her very little to work with. A good deal of the film was improvised, and whole monologues were created on the spur of the moment.
Farmiga later reflected on the shoot as “terrifying and liberating.” Toback encouraged her to draw on her unfiltered emotions and personal memories rather than using a scripted character. Farmiga taps in to memories of being underestimated, the pull of rebellious memories, and the exhaustion of trying to remain graceful in a society that demands performance.
This is partly why Vera’s performance in the film is a performance of the eyes. They are tired, and not just pretending to be tired. What Farmiga produced was something critics had not seen in American cinema for a long time. It was a female performance that did not tidy herself up when the scene was done. It was a performance that was sensual but not submissive, cerebral but not cold, and utterly unpredictable.
The thought behind the creative chaos
Toback shot When Will I Be Loved in just 12 days. That in itself is wild for a feature-length film. Most of it was filmed guerrilla-style on the real New York streets without permits, using natural light, and with a small crew. That urgency became the film’s heartbeat. The camera often follows Vera from behind, drifting into scenes like a curious bystander.
The lack of a strict jazz composition behind the camera was also intentional. Toback would sometimes provide only emotional cues like “betrayal” and “hunger,” expecting the actors to improvise entire scenes. Farmiga thrived in that chaos; Weller, who played her slick, manipulative boyfriend, found it disorienting but energizing. Their on-screen tension was partly real — Weller reportedly struggled with how far Farmiga would go in certain moments, while she pushed him to stay spontaneous.
Toback rolled the camera on Vera’s intimate, mirror-side monologue, unprepared and without rehearsal. The only direction was to “talk to yourself like no one’s watching.” The result is striking and haunting. It is far from perfect, but it is unguarded.
Improvisation was pervasive throughout the film, weekly briefings, and loosely scripted. As he aimed for real reactions during climactic scenes, he found and kept the unpredictable element of Allen’s style, helping to form the unique rhythm of the film.
A key compliment to the film’s actors: their improvisation was embraced and encouraged, and scheduling was designed to maximize spontaneity in climactic scenes. Alongside other Toback films, New York shifts from Western impersonality to sweaty intimacy. New York’s luxury apartments and pricy neighborhoods juxtaposed with Vera’s assistant’s unfortunate situation perfectly capture Vera’s own duality. Sophisticated with a hidden, grittier underbelly.
When Will I Be Loved and Indian arthouse cinema of the era, like Shabana Azmi in Arth and Smita Patil in Bhumika, plays with discomfort. There is a discomfort rooted in feeling, culturally, in the control placed on where a woman’s gaze can go. Agency, not morality and not control.
Audience and critic response
Critics competing for and against the title provides for polarizing responses. Some critics praised the title as a modern feminist parable cloaked in erotic drama while for others, the title simply seemed self-indulgent. The one thing almost all critics and audience members seemed to agree upon, however, was that Vera Farmiga was talent to watch.
The title made for a modest box office return in the United States under the expected listing. Within the community of film buffs, however, the title gained a cult following. It was responded to more positively in India and Europe where it was available for late-night festivals and DVD. The audiences for these formats appreciated the film’s frankness as well as emotional intelligence and comprehension of the subject.
While the trailers suggested a more erotic and provocative drama, the actual film was far more contemplative than many of the expected audiences suggested. Many people who claimed to enjoy the film admitted what was most striking was not the eroticism, but Vera’s solitude. The quiet of the film was what resonated most.
What the film offered its creators
For Farmiga, the film represented a starting point. It was where she started gaining recognition as a performer, not just as a respected indie actress, but also as someone in Hollywood to be considered. She starred in The Departed, Up in the Air, and The Conjuring, but she still credits When Will I Be Loved as the role that taught her fearlessness.
For Toback, it was another part in his career-long fixation on the paradoxes of the human experience: sex and money, morality, and the quest for authenticity. No matter the controversies that came to surround him, this film still stands as perhaps some of his most honest and stripped down work.
The relationship between director and actress, while complicated, was symbiotic: he created the context, she provided the truth. Together, they made a film that tells a story, both scandalous and sacred — a film about looking, being looked at, and the reclamation of that gaze.
A film that is still alive
Two decades later, When Will I Be Loved still feels like the dangerous film it is — not for the explicitness, but for the emotional exposure. It is a reminder that a film does not always need polish; it needs guts. Vera Farmiga gave the film her pulse, and, in return, it granted her immortality for those who seek honesty in performance art.
With a world that is addicted to filters and control, Toback’s 12-day experiment still stands as proof that when honesty and performance meet — and when an actor dares to remove both layers — what we get is not just a film, but a fleeting moment that is hard to let go.
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