How the Caterpillar House Set the Stage for Zendaya’s Secret Movie Filmed Under Lockdown

When I think about modern architecture in feature films, I am reminded of the 2003 video essay Los Angeles Plays Itself where filmmaker Thom Andersen argues that modernism signifies villainy. He cites Richard Neutra’s Lovell House in L.A. Confidential, John Lautner’s Chemosphere and others in Lethal Weapon 2, The Big Lebowski and Twilight; and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House in Rush Hour, Black Rain, The Replacement Killers—all inhabited by pimps, gangsters, pornographers, and other miscreants and lowlifes.

Although it was filmed during our current period of mayhem, happily, Malcolm & Marie takes a different tack. Shot during pandemic lockdown in June 2020, it is a Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?–inspired two-hander played by Zendaya and John David Washington that takes place in Feldman Architecture’s Caterpillar House in Carmel, California. (Coincidentally, Jonathan Feldman studied film before switching to architecture.)

Built in 2011, the low-slung, horizontal 2,800-square-foot present-day update of the California ranch houses of Cliff May and William Wurster emphasizes natural light, warm colors, rammed-earth walls, and 270-degree views of the landscape. However, it was used by the filmmakers in seeming counterpoint: it was shot entirely at night, and in 35mm black-and-white film. Production designer Michael Grasley says "We wanted to find a contemporary house and an architectural language that embraced the California open-plan, midcentury mindset, but that at the same time was new, dialed-in, and didn’t look like a house from the 1960s."

The house is a cool, secluded container for the heated arguments, discussions, and confessions of the couple—not unlike the isolation brought on by the pandemic. The textures, abstraction, geometry, and severe contrast with deep blacks and harsh whites take precedence over the warm characteristics this house is noted for. Symmetry—characters often shot dead center flanked equally on both sides—along with reflected images in mirrors form a stage for this conflicted relationship rather than a design for living.