It’s a crisp morning in Nyon and Lucrecia Martel is going off on one. “To arrive at a meaning you need a sentence, so that is the word order,” she begins, her translator gamely keeping pace, “then there is the sound material of the dialogue, which is completely different from the sentence, and it can sometimes oppose the meaning. But it’s the chronological order of the words and the meaning which dominates the process of writing a script, which is odd. Everything which is not in the script is the sound; it’s the most difficult thing to capture in the script. Those are the tools we work with. That’s why it’s so difficult to write dialogue: because you’re capturing only the sense of words and leaving the sound out. We’re not talking about an obsession here; this is something that happens in any conversation in a family.” Growing nervous about our dwindling time together, I decide to interject.

Martel was born in 1966 in Salta in North Argentina. She says that the region’s “evident racism” and stark class divides informed much of her work, a history that she describes as “extremely complex.” The same could be said of Martel’s unique approach to cinema, as it could about the artist’s worldview. In a 2.5- hour masterclass, conducted at the Visions du Réel festival in Switzerland, she spared no time in railing against the homogenizing effect of things like film-studies curriculum and production labs. (“Better to be personal and maybe not connect with anyone,” she argued, “than to be universal and maybe not reach anyone.”) She’s held up as a hero by a new generation of cinephiles––trendy t-shirts and all––yet she rejects being called a feminist filmmaker and has spoken out against cancel culture in the past. As head of the Venice Film Festival in 2019, and after saying that she wouldn’t attend a dinner in his honor, her jury awarded Roman Polanski best director; then hilariously awarded Todd Phillips’ Joker the Golden Lion. (“Identity is a prison,” the director observed to a packed house of mostly university-age attendees, “that obliges you to be who you say you are.”)

We met earlier that day at Nyon’s hotel ambassador. As an interviewee and conversationalist, Martel is generous and delightful, searching and humble, with a kindness in her eyes that can only be concealed for so long by those iconic pink sunglasses. For a short and sweet 20 minutes we talked about her near-obsessive fascination with sound, her brush with the MCU, and how things are going with her upcoming documentary about the murder of the indigenous activist Javier Chocobar.

The Film Stage: You’ve described cinema many times as being like a swimming pool on its side. It’s such an interesting concept. Could you unpack it a bit for us?

Lucrecia Martel: That, for me, is the best way to explain how a film actually works mechanically. Our culture is focused on the image. Our entire culture has faith in vision more than the other senses. The idea of the arrow of time, that we arbitrarily found a representation of time that is very closely connected to vision. The future is always from now, from out, face-forward; no one is thinking of the future as something behind us. In the Mayan culture they are always looking behind. Just imagine what it is to be old in such a culture: the old person is someone who can see furthest and is therefore someone very important.

In our culture it’s youth who has the future in front. Just imagine everything that defines this. So in cinema, the image has had a dominant role to play when you think of this time arrow, with the chronological order of images in this process. If we had based ourselves on sound instead of image we would have wound up in a different place, especially regarding the idea of time. So imagine you’re in a cinema, that’s a volume, and then the images are running over a flat surface, but everything that surrounds you––everything that’s tactile, that touches you––is the sound. And everything which is outside the image is implied by the sound. Of course, if you just have a cutout of an image you can imagine a lot around it, but it’s the sound that makes it material. So to observe this at work is very interesting when you imagine what you’re going to do when you make a film. In terms of physics or spatial characteristics, the volume that you’re sitting in is enormous compared to something that is very small. It’s something you can observe very easily with the concept of a swimming pool.

You obviously think on a very profound level about the sound in cinema. I’m curious if there was a particular film that you saw when you were younger, or that you appreciate now, that triggered this fascination with sound in a cinematic context.

What Happened to Baby Jane?––this film triggered something in me in spite of the fact that it’s a conventional movie. It’s a spectacular movie, a magnificent movie but a classical movie. The leitmotifs were important, the music, there was something there that triggered something in me. Apichatpong feels very close to me in the way he uses sound, but there’s no one of his films in particular; I like all of them.

Can we talk about the documentary you’ve been working on about Javier Chocobar? With Zama you told a story about colonialism in the 17th century. With this next film it sounds as if you will, in a way, talk about that same history in a present-day context. Do you see it as a kind of distant sequel?

Well, I started working on this film in 2010––so if anything Zama, from 2017, is the sequel. I’m still editing Chocobar. I don’t know if the title will be Chocobar at this point, but the film is all about the crime involving this man. It’s been 13 years. I live very far from that community so I can’t spend large periods of time with them. I also feel very uncomfortable when I interrupt the lives of these people. There are people, like people who make documentary films, they have this facility to connect with people very easily and I don’t have that. It’s a huge effort for me. And imagine: I have to use a cane now and these are mountainous areas!

What stage are you at with it?

I have 300 hours of material. I have edited some parts of it with Miguel Schverdfinger, who edited The Headless Woman and Zama. There’s much more material than there is money so I’m trying to concentrate things, to make it shorter, so that the budget will allow me to work further.

In aesthetic terms, will it be a more conventional style of documentary than we might expect from you?

I’m sure it’s going to be much less interesting than many of the documentaries made by filmmakers who make documentaries. But you have to understand this is a topic that is absolutely crucial to my area, to the Salta region.

I’m curious about some things that happened since Zama. You were offered Black Widow by Marvel––did you see it when it came out?

No, no, no––I didn’t see Black Widow. I tried to. They contacted a great number of female directors. I never would have imagined that Marvel could contact and bring together a pool of directors and I would be a part of it; I never thought that would be possible. I would have loved to make a film with them but I would have had to provide something that I would like to see in that world.

It turns out some of the Marvel films are available on planes so I’ve seen a few. I find the sound in them is absolutely in very poor taste, the visual effects and the sound of the effects.

That’s interesting. Could you describe what it is about the sound that you find in poor taste?

It’s the selection of the sounds that they’re connecting to the effects, which is actually very ugly. And the way the music is used is actually horrible.

It was such a funny story. Had you ever been offered something like that before?

Some very interesting things, but I was involved in something else. This documentary I’m working on is extremely difficult. It requires a huge amount of time. Those films that are opportunistic, the third line of the mainstream, they have tiny budgets and don’t have much ambition. This is often what Latin-American filmmakers are offered. Remakes of movies from the ’30s, for example. The big companies have the rights to the scripts. It might be that a director who’s a cheap director––probably from a Latin country––they put them together with some stars and a script they have the rights to. Sometimes it can happen under these circumstances that the film is a success.

The other big story was your time as jury head at Venice in 2019, awarding Joker and Polanski and all that. Has enough time passed that you can talk about it?

Joker is incredible for that particular group of films. But my favorite was the Chinese film, an animated film.

Oh, with the cats and the nipples?

[Laughs] Yes, No.7 Cherry Lane. When the vote was cast it was Joker, but I liked that Chinese film enormously. You could see figures of a man and a woman, but it was clear to me it was two men. It’s a love story. So I was looking at it but I perceived something different. I really loved that movie.

The post Lucrecia Martel on Her Brush with the MCU, Awarding Joker, and Her Upcoming Javier Chocobar Documentary first appeared on The Film Stage.

Picking up the pieces of her life after a terrorist attack in Paris, Mia (Virginie Efira, in a César-winning performance) attempts to reconcile fragmented memories and relationships old and new in Alice Winocour’s powerfully nuanced drama Revoir Paris. Also starring Pacifiction‘s Benoît Magimel and Claire Denis regular Grégoire Colin, the film is another example of Winocour’s mastery of immersing her audience in the headspace of her characters, creating an empathetic portrait of searching for slivers of happiness and meaning in the wake of trauma.

While at Film at Lincoln Center’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema and ahead of the film’s U.S. release this Friday, I spoke with Winocour about her filmmaking process, being inspired by David Cronenberg and Agnès Varda, capturing the emotional intricacies of trauma, casting her ensemble, reactions to the film in Paris, and more.

The Film Stage: In all of your films you do an incredible job putting the audience in the headspace of your characters through really precise sound design and cinematography. Can you talk about that creative process?

Alice Winocour: Yeah. To me, it’s a difficult question to answer as it’s always a subconscious process. I don’t really know how that happens; I think I can only direct things that are related to my intimacy. I think maybe, sometimes, in French cinema there is an autobiographical way of telling stories, but I really couldn’t do this. To me, it really comes from an intimate feeling that I have never talked to anyone about. It’s something that comes from a really deep place. Then there’s the idea that the more intimate it is, the more it has to be in another world––like something really, really far away. For example, in Proxima, my film that is about astronauts, I really wanted to talk about the relationship between a mother and daughter and about my relationship with my own daughter, who was the age of the little girl in the film. And so it has to take place in space very, very far away from me. 

For Revoir Paris, it was strange because it was the same. It came from this tragic night––November 13, 2015––and then about the national trauma. The night was special to me because my brother was caught in the attack and survived. I really built the film of the pieces of my own memories. It was not the story of my night or the story of the night from my brother’s perspective that I want to tell, but more a story of resilience––not a reconstruction of the events. Also, as part of an inquiry, I met with the victims and psychiatrists, and it’s always something that I think is exhilarating, doing films and discovering new worlds, as I did in Disorder. This was discovering the world of the soldiers getting back from Afghanistan. And my first film [Augustine] was a Pandora’s Box of discovering everything about hysterics. So there are always those both sides. I don’t know if it’s a method, but it’s always how it ends, that I become obsessed with an idea of a world and then I live in that parallel world during the time of the shoot.

During that time of development and research for Revoir Paris, what did you learn the most about talking with survivors or how a nation responds to trauma? Was there anything that really surprised you that you wanted to make sure worked its way into the film?

Yeah, two things. First of all, what was surprising to me about this community of survivors was how they work together to reconstruct their memories. It was really moving to see that everyone was looking for each other. Even if they had just seen someone for two minutes, they were asking if this person had survived, if they had been together. There was this idea of belonging to something that is greater than us, that is our common humanity. It’s something that is really fascinating and moving––is that in this case of trauma, there is the idea that it crushes the barriers between people. We’re all stuck in our worlds and it’s very few occasions where we get rid of this. One thing that surprised me is how strong this community was, helping each other.

The other thing was that––not to say everything was beautiful, as we see in the film, there was this woman in the film accusing her. It’s not an easy process to get back to life after that kind of trauma. What I thought was very strong was the passion for life that most of the victims had. I really wanted to express this vital energy that people have. I think they’re more obsessed with life. Of course, you are living with ghosts, especially for Mia, the character––she is in limbo so she can really see the ghosts. But the film is really a quest for happiness. What is happiness? And you ask more questions about your life. This question of happiness and life was more important than the question of death.

Alice Winocour and Virginie Efira at Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2023. Photo by Arin Sang-urai.

You’ve mentioned two surprising influences for the film I wouldn’t have guessed: Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7 and David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone, which is really underrated. I love that movie.

Yes, as you see, it’s two references that aren’t really in the same family of cinema. I always have multiple influences that maybe also comes from my childhood when we had the VCR, my mother was recording movies and then sometimes on the same tape because she was falling asleep. Sometimes the beginning was another film. She was like, “Oh, I have to record this.” So sometimes there are very different kinds of stuff that I mixed in my memories because it was something I was watching.

Cronenberg definitely has a very strong influence on my work and with this character from Virginie, it was very difficult to perform and it was a tough part. She had to have post-traumatic stress disorder. You are not in your body anymore. It’s like having a new body, learning to live with it. And it’s kind of a naked soul. The film is really about her getting back to life. At the same time, she’s a ghost. She’s a kind of angel meeting people. It’s also a film of encounters. So she had to be present and absent. She’s a kind of spectator of her own memory. 

There are many films about these horrible attacks that tend to over-politicize or talk more about the attackers. By being so in step with her character here, you’re actually making a stronger political statement. Through sharing a more personal, emotional throughline, one is actually living through what someone might be enduring and finding real empathy. Can you talk about the approach?

Because it’s not a film about attacks. It’s more a film about the traces that left trauma in the body and the mind and how you get back to life after this. Of course I wanted this inquiry to go through all the layers of French society. It’s amazing to me, with this kind of trauma, that people meet and they wouldn’t have met at all if this event wouldn’t have happened. That was in the scriptwriting as I was thinking, “Okay, I have to have very different kinds of people.” There is this seller of Eiffel Tower [merchandise]. There is this banker played by Benoît Magimel. There is an Australian guy. There are Spanish girls in the beginning.

Paris is a cosmopolitan city. I wanted to show different sides of the city, not only the tourist places. Because we see it through the eyes of Mia after this black hole of the attack; we had to cinematically express that she sees it differently. It’s not Paris, really––the real Paris. The soundtrack was also very important for me in this way, with the sacred music of Anna Von Hausswolff, the Swedish composer, with this organ, which makes things a little gothic and weird. At the same time, there are the [bird’s-eye view shots] of the city. At first there is this shot of the incandescent boulevard. There are also other shots in the film from the top, as if she was not in her body. The whole film had to be fragments. It’s simple storytelling, but we had to get this feeling of an exploding mirror and memories. It’s a kind of a puzzle in a sense and she tries to put the pieces together.

Yeah, I love the quick flashbacks where you just see a few seconds of the birthday cake.

It’s a way to recreate, cinematically, what a psychiatrist calls involuntary recurrent memory, which is not flashbacks. It’s more like a revival of the scene, what happens to PTSD victims, a kind of post-traumatic memory. It’s really like it happened. Sometimes it’s just for one second you have an image or a sound and you are suddenly there. The trauma scene is still alive in your head.

That comes across really effectively. Could you speak about the process of casting the ensemble? Virginie is great, but it’s quite an impressive group of actors including Benoît Magimel and Grégoire Colin, as well as Amadou Mbow, who I was introduced to in Atlantics.

It was important to me that it would be a Senegalese actor from Senegal, not just from France. But also different actors from different countries. It’s also something I did in Proxima, to have different actors coming from German cinema or Russian cinema or American cinema, like Matt Dillon. I always like to mix actors from different schools, people coming from theater. It also creates something really cool to find a common language, the language of the film and the world of the film. I really loved working with Amadou Mbow. Concerning Virginie, what I like is that at the beginning she’s this translator and she’s really grounded. You can really connect to her. I tried to not make her seem elite. It’s people living in Paris that you can relate to, connect to.

Benoît is someone who is so famous in France but also because he was an actor when he was a child; we have this feeling that we have grown with him. I felt really lucky to have a couple of actors like this. I think they raise empathy and it’s really what I wanted to express in the film: to be with them and to film with them what they have experienced. It’s also why the attacks are at the beginning, to feel emotionally what it is to be in a restaurant and then in a second to feel like you are in a war zone. It was a tough experience, the shooting. I wanted her to have no makeup, to be naked––to have a naked soul, to really see her face. My producers were really happy about this––she has just one outfit the whole movie. [Laughs] This leather jacket, as if she’s not really there. She’s a kind of angel. What I liked in the love story is they have common bonds. That’s how they connect. The love scene was really beautiful to shoot. To find this connection that was really fragile.

Speaking to the reaction to the film, have you spoken to any survivors who have seen it? What was their response? And in Paris in general? It’s a city symphony of a movie, in a way.

There were really strong reactions and from the beginning in Cannes. It was also the first time my brother was seeing the film and some victims as well. So it was really moving. The box office was really great in France, so we had really moving screenings with people staying in the cinema talking about the film, but also where they were at the time and starting discussions. It was a warm feeling of this community, of people together in the cinemas. At the same time, I had also very strong reactions from people that were not victims of the attacks, but other traumas, like Ukranian refugees in France who connect. As I said, it’s about the traces of the trauma and how you get back to life and traumas of being confronted by death or the death of someone close.

Many people told me very, very moving stories, including other situations, like some who had lived through sexual traumas or being in a fire, many stories that were really so emotional. The film is really a path of resiliency and goes towards the light. Everything that the terrorists wanted to destroy––the link between people’s lives and the happiness––I wanted the film to exhale all of those feelings. It was really rewarding to see the feeling in the screening rooms.

Closing out, it’s been a year since the film premiered and I was wondering what you’re working on next.

I’m finishing the writing of a horror movie. I had been writing it during lockdown. It’s a new direction, but I feel really at home with a horror movie, from Psycho, which was my childhood film as I was watching it several times a day with my brother––the one was at the attack, by the way, who is a cinema teacher now. And Cronenberg as well and Dario Argento films, I had seen so many during lockdown, rewatching the films that I had seen as a teenager and when I was studying cinema. For my first film, I was also really inspired by all this dark romanticism. Gothic atmosphere is something I really appreciate in literature and cinema, so I feel really at home in this world of horror. It will be an English-language film and it will be shot in Switzerland with an international cast. So I really look forward to it. I hope to shoot in January, but you never know what will happen with the production.

That’s exciting. Did you see Crimes of the Future? I was curious how it was received in France, because in America it was under-appreciated

I know. It’s not a film that was appreciated, but I really love it. I saw it alone in the cinema in Paris in the morning at 10 a.m. and it was a huge cinema. But I keep thinking about this film. As a great admirer of Cronenberg, I think it’s a very, very strong film and particularly love the kissing scene with Kristen Stewart. “The old sex.” I really love the scene. The experience itself, being alone in the screening room, was so scary and it was cool for the film.

Revoir Paris opens in limited release on Friday, June 23 and will expand.

The post Living with Ghosts: Alice Winocour on Revoir Paris, David Cronenberg, and Reconstructing Memories first appeared on The Film Stage.

As both his first western and first time with sci-fi, there’s never been an entry into either genre that looks quite like what Wes Anderson conjured with Asteroid City. With its dreamlike, milky textures captured under the blazing sun of Spain (standing in for a fictional desert town of 1950s Americana) and extraterrestrial sequences that have a uniquely otherworldly touch, I was eager to speak with cinematographer Robert Yeoman about his process. For having first collaborate with Anderson on his debut Bottle Rocket and subsequently worked on all of his live-action features since, he’s been with the director every step of his evolution, honing the craft with a beautifully persnickety preciseness simply otherwise absent in American filmmaking.

Ahead of Asteroid City‘s NY/LA release this Friday, followed by a wide expansion next week, I spoke with Yeoman about the exacting details of his workflow with Anderson, how he’s pushed out of his comfort zone on every movie, embracing the harshness of the sun, influences for the film, what he thinks of the AI replications of Anderson’s work, and his next two collaborations with the filmmaker.

The Film Stage: Did the more limited set of Asteroid City require or invite more inventiveness with the camera? I love the 360-degree shot near the beginning establishing the entire desert set.

Robert Yeoman: Basically, we start out with a concept of what the town should be, and then Wes makes an animatic, which is a little cartoon. It shows where all the camera moves happen. And so before they actually build the set, we go out there with a finder and a lens on it and [establish] “Okay, this is the diner here. Then we need the hotel this much distance from the diner.” We can plan it out in the real space, and then Adam Stockhausen, our production designer, will start building the sets and we then we leave the track and actually do the moves before the actors come in. If there’s any alterations, sometimes we even have to move structures or things because the moves are designed to a piece of music or a piece of dialogue, so there’s a finite link to how long those shots can be and oftentimes the sets are too far apart. So we have to condense that distance so that we can make those moves with it.

At the beginning of [Asteroid City], when we introduce the town, it was Wes’ idea to shoot the town sequence without any movie lights at all. And I knew that, because of the desert sun in the summer in Spain, it was going to be very hot outside. If people were inside you have to balance that somehow. So I asked if we could put skylights in those buildings, and that’s what we did. It was kind of going back to the early days of filmmaking, where Thomas Edison on the east coast, they put silks over their set and used the sun to light the actors. So that was the concept.

Then when we did the television studio we shot black-and-white film, obviously, and we wanted to shoot that with much more theatrical lighting so that it had a very distinct, different look. I think the movie is set in 1956 and we were trying to give it that look of the hard light that would see in television shows of 1956. That was kind of the concept. The moves and everything are kind of predetermined in many ways and we build the sets to accommodate the moves. [Laughs]

Speaking about the specific color and visual tone of the Western scenes, it’s almost a creamy, dreamlike color. I’ve seen a lot of Westerns, but I haven’t really seen one that utilizes exactly this color. What references did you use to find that exact color-timing, or was it determined on set?

A lot of it Wes and Adam worked out before I got there. Adam usually shows up a month or two before I do and they start that discussion with Milena [Canonero], our costume designer. And then when I get there, we start shooting literally the day I get there. [Laughs] But there’s tests at first and Milena might have a piece of cloth that would be a costume of minor or major characters, and Adam would maybe paint a flat the color of what he was thinking. And then I try to duplicate the lighting as best I can, how we’re going to shoot it in the movie. And then we can see how that color of that costume will play against that building, and we’ll bring options of that color and options in those flats. Because film doesn’t always replicate exactly the color that your eyes are going to see, you know?

And so we do a tremendous amount of testing and we test all those camera moves that we just talked about, and it’s all kind of worked out so that when the actors show up there’s no guesswork. It’s all pretty much: we figured it all out. It’s just a matter of laying the track down. And Milena knows the color of the costumes, obviously. And Adam has painted the walls. But a lot of it came up initially with Wes and Adam; the two of them worked it out. So by the time I got there, the main ingredients were there and it was just choosing this or that kind of a thing rather than more of the conceptual stage. They send references. I live in Los Angeles and Wes is in Paris, so he’s always sending visual references to me in prep and we do a Zoom once a week to go over everything. So I have a pretty good idea of the direction that they’re going by the time I get there, too.

There’s a great Museum of the Moving Image series here in New York City, inspired by Jake Perlin’s new book that has influences on Asteroid City––everything from Close Encounters to Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore to Bad Day at Black Rock. Can you talk about looking at those films beforehand?

Oh, yeah. Well, Bad Day at Black Rock was a big one. Paris, Texas. One of my biggest worries was: we’re going to be out in Spain in the summer where it was super hot and the sun was really intense. On another movie I might have put up giant silks for the actors because it was windy and that’s dangerous. And also with some of the moves, you just saw everything. There’s nowhere to put them. I think Wes was eager to use the sun as a character in the film. As a cinematographer I would always back-light people or side-light them. I would never front-light people during the middle part of the day. We would try other things, silks or whatever. But we never used any of that gear on this. We just embraced the harshness of the sun, and particularly Bad Day at Black Rock was a good example. It gave you a feeling of this place.

At first I was a little nervous about this, but then as we went along I came to embrace it––as was often hoped I would. And in the DI [digital intermediate], because there’s so much information on a film negative, we were able to make it a little more low-contrast than what, initially, our dailies looked like. There was a little more harsher light in the dailies, but then in the DI, by making it a little more pastel and making it a little more low-contrast, it smoothed the whole thing out a little bit better. For me it was a different way of working. And then the stuff on the TV studios: we brought in a lighting designer from England, and he does theater, and they have a different way of working than film, obviously. We hung a giant grid up and he had a whole bunch of these theater lights up there, so I would work with him on somehow melding what he does and what I do together in one role––so that it would be film-friendly, but still maintain that theatrical look. So that was a challenge of mine.

Photo by Roger Do Minh

Jason Schwartzman’s character is a photographer who creates a makeshift lab processing photos. As the cinematographer, were you involved in that process at all?

The photos, a little bit. Actually Truman Hanks, Tom Hanks’ son, was on our camera crew. I had been in the darkroom, but not for 20 years, but he knew a lot about darkroom stuff. So he was showing Jason a lot of things. With the cameras, Jason would ask, “How do you work this thing?” We would all pitch in. He’s an actor who very much lives in that character. So he wanted to know everything––he would often ask me different photographic kinds of questions. [Laughs] He’d say, “What should I shoot this at?” His brother John is a cinematographer as well. He’s one of those actors that totally immerses himself in his characters and he wanted to know as much about it as he possibly could. 

You’ve probably seen these in the last few months, but there have been viral AI replications of Wes Anderson’s work. It’s funny actually watching Asteroid City and realizing none of what Wes Anderson and his crew are doing could ever actually be created by AI––it’s such a distinct, personal version. As the cinematographer, do you get a kick of those videos or are you more hesitant in embracing them?

Well, I have mixed feelings. I think they’re meant as kind of an homage in a way, and I don’t think there’s anything bad about the intention of them. I think people love his movies, but to be honest with you, I watched two or three of them and I went “Okay…” I just stopped watching them because I get it; I get it. I mean, again: people do it because they love Wes. And so I don’t want to rain on their parade. But for me it’s like “Okay, another one. Haven’t we seen enough of these?” That’s kind of my attitude. But I don’t know what Wes thinks of them. He might like them. I don’t know.

Yes, I was curious. I had to ask, as the man behind the look of his films. One of the joys of this movie is seeing Wes Anderson dabble in sci-fi for the first time. What was it like bringing that to life with the lighting? The sequences are so striking and different from the rest of the film.

Yeah, we decided that the spaceship should emit green light and the light has to change on the actors as it comes down. So we hung sky panels up in the ceiling of the stage. And with the sky panels, you could control them, so you could go from tungsten to very green and the intensity can change. It was actually a lot of fun to do it that way. Green is something you typically don’t put on actors’ faces because it is not the most flattering. You want warm light on them, or a cool light. But I kind of enjoyed it, actually, just playing with the light panels. It’s LED lights, which are becoming more and more used in the film industry. It gives you much more control. So if I had had older movie lights there I don’t think I could have achieved that type of look by using those. I know Wes was really happy with them too. It was like “Okay, now it’s normally lit, now the spaceship’s coming down, it’s greener, greener, greener, brighter, brighter, brighter,” and I just love that kind of stuff where you’re playing with the lights in the middle of a shot.

Wes and I are big fans of One from the Heart, where there are a lot of lighting changes within shots and things. I know it’s kind of a theatrical way of doing things, but I love it when we do that kind of stuff, change lights in the middle of the shot. I didn’t know what the spaceship was going to look like and Jeff Goldblum plays the alien in real life. But the animated alien: it’s always a little bit different than how I anticipated it. I saw pictures of what they were going to do, but just how the alien moved and things, it was a little different than how I imagined it was. It was great. I love what they did. I wasn’t involved in any of that stuff. Just the lighting I enjoyed the most.

You’ve worked with Wes Anderson for a while now, and as a viewer we’ve really been able to see him hone the precision of his vision. With each new film, and especially The French Dispatch, there is a huge breakthrough in being able to do more and more with the visual language of the film and playing with structure. From a cinematographer’s perspective, do you enjoy being able to push the boundaries further in terms of what you’re doing?

Yeah. It can be nerve-wracking at times. Wes really pushes everybody to work outside of the box and find new ways of doing things. I don’t know if it’s human nature, but you kind of lapse into ways that you’ve done before and you know that that’s going to work, but that’s not how we do things with Wes. [Laughs] It’s always that we have to find new ways of doing things with Wes. So like equipment or whatever––we can’t use the tools that we normally would do. We’re always being pushed to find new ways of doing it, so it gets you out of your comfort zone. But I think in the process of doing that you kind of discover something new and it becomes a much more creative way.

The other thing that has happened is that when we first started shooting movies, everything was in-camera––everything. And now I think because [Wes] did those animated films, we’re shooting more elements that will be combined with something later. We never used to do that before. So it’s things like “Oh, we’re going to put this in the background.” Or forced perspective with a miniature or things that we never would do before. I learn a lot on it because a lot of these things I’ve never even done before. So it’s a learning experience, but in the end I think you come up with something that’s a little more special than if you just kind of did the tried-and-true way of doing things.

I know you probably don’t talk much about it, but with The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar coming up, it was some reports he’s even started casting for a new film. Do you have any idea when it may start production?

I mean, it’s later this year, so I’m out of the loop on that one. But he works; he’s a workaholic. I’ll give him that. We jumped right from Asteroid City into the Henry Sugar thing. We were in Spain and then we went to England. He works harder than anybody; he’s just always got something going on. I’m a little more like: take some time off and enjoy my life. [Laughs]

Asteroid City opens in NY and LA on June 16 and expands wide on June 23.

The post Robert Yeoman on Asteroid City, Embracing the Sun, and AI-Generated Wes Anderson Parodies first appeared on The Film Stage.

Having been responsible for some of the most iconic photographs since he picked up a camera nearly five decades ago, Anton Corbijn seamless transition to music videos then narrative features and now, with Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis), he’s helmed his first documentary. Charting the entertaining tale of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell’s album-art design studio Hipgnosis, the film features quite a roster of interviewees: Roger Waters, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd; Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin; Paul McCartney; Peter Gabriel; Graham Gouldman of 10cc; Noel Gallagher; and more.

As the film begins playing at NYC’s Film Forum today, ahead of an LA opening on June 16 and nationwide screenings on June 20, I spoke with Corbijn about embarking on his first documentary, his favorite album covers, his involvement in the marketing process of his films, reflecting on The American, and his forthcoming Patricia Highsmith adaptation starring Helen Mirren.

The Film Stage: With this being your first feature documentary, could you talk about the process of wanting to tell this story?

Anton Corbijn: Yeah. Ever since Control I’ve been very wary of doing film stuff that relates to music subjects because you get so pigeonholed if you do that. But I was persuaded by Po, really, who came to Amsterdam and he’s a good salesman, as they say. [Laughs] He’s very enthusiastic about the story of Hipgnosis, telling so many anecdotes and stories that are quite rich. And because I made some album sleeves and do photography, I felt I was quite close, to a degree. And when I was younger I looked at Hipgnosis sleeves and I could never figure out how to do things. My favorite sleeves were actually the more simple ones, like the Peter Gabriel ones, which felt more photographic to me. That’s why I thought, “Maybe I can do this.”  It was a possibility to do a film because I had no feature film waiting for me. And I’m happy I got on board, I have to say. It was a really fun project to work on. I’m not sure I’m a natural documentarymaker––I don’t think I am––but I enjoyed this.

There are certainly stylistic touches that I feel like only you could provide, especially the way you should in this beautiful black-and-white that gives it a very timeless feel. What was your approach to finding beauty in the talking-head interviews?

I mean, it’s unfortunate you have to do these talking-heads interviews in a way, because it was also during COVID and people were reluctant to go anywhere. But what I wanted to do was make the film black-and-white. Because we had so much archival footage that when every direction aesthetically, and I wanted to keep it more together to make everything black-and-white. Then the record sleeves were the great color thing in your life, and I guess that was a bit like that when you got a record at the time. So that’s how this was set up. And I knew the structure I wanted to have, in terms of the beginning and the end. It just came together quite nicely.

The documentary is also a testament to this lost art of album covers and even, by extension, movie posters nowadays. One thing I was always struck by with your films, especially Control and The American, were the posters. How involved are you in that marketing process when you’re making your feature films?

It’s the hard part. It’s not your money. The people who supply money always want to have a say, but that’s just the rule of law. And my first movie, Control, I put up the money for almost the whole film, so I had a lot more freedom. And I think that’s why, probably for me, it’s the strongest poster. But I always try to get my way with the posters, but I haven’t been able to with the other films. On this I got the square and the circle,  the writing, and the idea of the square and the circle and all the points of the eye and how it comes together. That’s all my idea. But the poster itself was more for the film company and Po––basically it’s a still from the film where he sits with the poster at the beginning.

Speaking of the title, I have to admit I didn’t realize where it came from until you reveal it in the film. When did you decide on it?

Well, I don’t know who mentioned it at some point, but then I was the great defender of the title and not a lot of other people were actually. But I think it’s grown on people. To call the movie The Story of Hipgnosis––I didn’t like that because that means fuck all to people these days, unless you’re already a convert. Squaring the circle means doing the impossible in English and it’s just a nice visual. 

I really loved the story about Pink Floyd’s Animals cover.  Did you know that story going in? Were you surprised by any other stories you heard?

Yeah, I think that some of these stories are already out there because there are a couple of books on Hipgnosis, but it comes alive when you hear other people telling the story, and all the archival footage. Yeah, it’s amazing. And then in the end it’s still a mock-up––the pig is put there in position because they couldn’t get right. I think it’s fantastic, these stories, and it’s very much of its time. People wouldn’t go through that effort anymore. Now nobody would put up the money for it. It’s great to hear and see how these records came to be and it’s an art form that’s kind of lost. Although people buy vinyl again, it doesn’t have the same importance.

You don’t shy away from capturing Storm’s tough personality, which was part of his genius. How important was it for you to capture the full character of your subjects?

I never met Storm. He passed away by the time I came on board and I would have loved to have known him in real life. He’s a really interesting man, and somebody to like and dislike probably at the same time. But I like him, but of course I never had any difficult dealings with him. I just want to make sure that he got enough credit in the film for his ideas, because he was the idea man, really. And I think we managed to do that. I like Nick Mason’s characterization of Storm a lot: “He was a man who wouldn’t take yes for an answer,” and that’s fantastic.

There’s so many talented musicians in the movie. Was it a tough process to get everyone on board, or once you got someone, then another person came on, etc.?

Yeah, it was not easy to get three guys from Pink Floyd in the film and to get Paul McCartney. In the end, they all said yes, and I think their love for the work that Hipgnosis did for them overrode any reluctance that they might have had. I really wanted Peter Saville in there. And for Noel [Gallagher], we were looking for the voice of somebody who didn’t have any dealings with Hipgnosis––a slightly more modern, modern voice. And Noel was very good and had a great sense of perspective.

When was first introduction to their work, and what was your music taste at the time?

Well, I love Peter Gabriel and saw him for the first time during The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, when he played in Holland; then when the first solo album came out, I went to England to see him play. I also like [Pink Floyd’s] Atom Heart Mother very much––with the cow. It’s one of my all-time favorite covers, the audacity to do that and have no title or anything on it. And again, it’s simple. It’s a real photograph. I had quite a few Pink Floyd’s. I didn’t have Dark Side, but I had Wish You Were Here and Ummagumma.

Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother

Going a bit further back, I really love The American and think it’s one of George Clooney’s greatest performances. There’s a real kind of Jean-Pierre Melville quality to it that you just do not see nowadays. Do you have any special memories of making that film?

I’m really happy with the film. There are maybe a few things I would have liked to change. Yeah, Melville. Absolutely. I don’t think you can make this film anymore these days. There are quite a few people that said, “This is the kind of films George Clooney should be making,” but George has his own strategy. I think the difficulty for him in my film was that he couldn’t be the funny guy, George Clooney. That’s an element that was missing, of course, but I’m so happy he did it. And it was such a wonderful time to be in Abruzzo, in Italy, for a film––because unlike photography, which is my other experience, is that you spend a lot of time in one place and you fall in love with the place. And when you think of the film, you think of this two months or three months that you were in this one place. When I think back to The American, I always think of that great Abruzzo with these empty villages. I really enjoyed that about filmmaking.

Lastly, I know you are working on the Patricia Highsmith movie Switzerland with Helen Mirren. What is your prep process for it? Are you reading a lot of her books or is it all focused on this script?

Focused on the script and the casting but I’ve been so hectic because I also have Depeche Mode on tour that I designed. So I have to start properly in July for that. But Helen Mirren is playing the lead; that’s wonderful.

I know you probably can’t say much, but the tone you are going for, is it very much like Highsmith’s novels?

Yeah, there are elements of that flowing through the film. It’s a thriller-of-sorts.

Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) is now playing at NYC’s Film Forum and opens June 16 at LA’s Laemmle Royal, followed by one-night-only nationwide screenings on June 20.

The post Anton Corbijn on Capturing the Art Behind the Greatest Album Covers of All-Time first appeared on The Film Stage.

As filmmaking gets further relegated to smaller screens, it’s a breath of fresh air to have a director like Pietro Marcello crafting cinema that is best experienced on a vast canvas. While the release of his stunning 2019 drama Martin Eden was unfortunately dampened by the pandemic, he’s now returned with the gorgeous fable Scarlet (aka L’Envol). Premiering just about a year ago at Cannes, the tale of a woman’s family and romantic journey in post-WWI France will now arrive in U.S. theaters starting this Friday. Starring Juliette Jouan, Raphaël Thierry, Louis Garrel, Noémie Lvovsky, Ernst Umhauer, François Négret, and Yolande Moreau.

While he stopped by NYC for last fall’s New York Film Festival premiere, I had the opportunity to speak with Marcello about his experience working in France, the silent film connections to Scarlet, how his latest work marked a transitional point for his career, and more. A special thanks to Michael Moore for interpreting.

The Film Stage: This is a film where you cast French actors and you’re working in France. What was the appeal of that, and what were the challenges of that kind of production?

Pietro Marcello: I found myself in France for family matters. I was there for two years. Because I was in France, I had the opportunity to make a film in France. Up until that point, all of the films that I had made were shot in Italy. After making Martin Eden, I have to confess that I was feeling very tired. I had sort of self-produced all of my films.

Reading [Scarlet Sails] by Alexander Green, it sort of gave me the possibility… you could really say that this film sort of rose from COVID––because I was in France, because of COVID. So it was sort of by chance that I happened to make it, and I had this privilege to be able to shoot a film in France. This is the first time that I had done something like that. So I seized this opportunity and it was very unlike any other film that I had made because of this historic moment in which we are living… this moment of COVID, which struck us.

There’s almost a silent-film quality to Scarlet with this more subtle emotion that you’re seeing on screen, and the dialogue is a little more trimmed down than in Martin Eden. There’s a lot about the natural world, the environment, and these characters who are somewhat archetypical yet present a real soulful nature. Can you talk about if were you inspired by the language of silent films? 

But unlike Martin Eden?

Well, I feel like Martin Eden is a more dense experience, which I loved. And Scarlet is told on a more emotional landscape.

This film and Martin Eden are completely different. Martin Eden is a film that I worked on for several years and it operates on multiple levels, whereas Scarlet is much more of a linear story and it’s sort of closer to the soul. Scarlet is born from the need to tell a smaller story. In Martin Eden I was working with a novel, and with Scarlet I’m working in the form of a short story… I wanted to treat it like a short story using the instruments of classical cinema––almost improvising, in a sense. 

By “improvising” I mean that this was shot in a very particular moment during the pandemic. I was forced into a much more limited production. I was forced to use much more simple means to tell this simple story of a love between a father and a daughter, which also makes it a modern film and a film that really brings out the role of the father within a family context, and within the context of an enlarged family.

I really love the textures of Scarlet, just like your last film. Because you are more focused on a simpler story, you draw focus to smaller details, like when he’s carving the wood or trying to tune the piano. You get to see and feel the labor of the time, what these characters needed to focus on every day.  Can you talk about focusing on the elements of texture and everyday life?

You know, the cinematic aspect of a film is, for me, the easiest thing. I know how to shoot a film; I know how to place the camera. That’s the least of my worries. The questions that I’m concerned about regard storytelling itself. In this case, the father I sort of conceived as a kind of a Geppetto figure, like the Geppetto of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio. With a close focus on his gestures, on his actions, on his work, on his everyday life. The way that this character is built upon through the act of creation and the way that he performs his activities is a kind of Geppetto.

I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about casting. Raphaël Thierry reminded me of Michel Simon and some of his great films. And then Louis Garrel is so perfectly cast, along with Juliette Jouan and Noémie Lvovsk. Can you talk about the process of getting all of them onboard? Was there a lot of preparation, or do you just kind of discover things on set?

Yeah, I was very lucky with the extraordinary actors that I had. I say “lucky” because this was the first time I was making a film in France, so I was invited to do so by the producer, Charles Gillibert, to look at the actors that I worked with. Raphaël Thierry, as you said, is certainly reminiscent of Michel Simon, and many others have observed the same thing. Also Noémie Lvovsky and Louis Garrel.

For the character of Juliette, we did a real kind of crazy open casting call for which more than a thousand actresses applied. We just put out an open call on the Internet and we found Juliette Jouan, and this is her first time making a film, but I’m sure she’s going to be making many others, as this is clearly a vocation for her. So, we were very lucky to find her through open casting, this sort of wild casting, rather than working through the casting agencies.

I wanted to ask a little bit about the sound design as well. Not just the score, but also the diegetic sounds you have throughout Scarlet, such as in the scene where they first kiss. You’re not just hearing them kiss––you’re hearing water flowing in the background, almost as if nature is as powerful as kind of the love they’re conjuring. There’s also a storybook, fairytale nature of the score as it swells in certain scenes.

The French, I have to say, are much better at sound-editing than the Italians. We Italians get by on dubbing, whereas the French have always had the privilege of being able to do a direct recording. So I had a great sound engineer, Erwan Kerzanet, who followed me all the way through. He’s a great sound engineer. Also, for the very first time, I had composer: Gabriel Yared, who again followed the production of the film from the very beginning. So it’s a great privilege to be working with these people. Everybody knows Gabriel Yared is a great composer, but it was the first time for me.

There’s a sense that you were discovering things on the set of Scarlet in a more freeing process, compared to when you were making Martin Eden. As you look towards your next project, is that a quality that you want to keep exploring?

You know, I’m a believer in human evolution. Scarlet was an important transitional film for me after having made Martin Eden. It’s a film that is very much marked by the pandemic and the conditions that it created, in the sense that it’s a film filled with sentiment and filled with love. It’s focused on the love of a daughter and the relationship between a father and a daughter. And as I said, I believe in the future there will be an evolution. And I will continue to make archival films, I’ll make documentaries, I will collaborate in collective films, and I’ll be engaged in new projects.

Scarlet opens in theaters on June 9.

The post Pietro Marcello on Scarlet, Being Inspired by Classical Cinema, and Making a Film with Love first appeared on The Film Stage.

One of the year’s most accomplished directorial debuts, Georgia Oakley’s deeply felt, grounded drama Blue Jean is set in 1988 England amidst Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government passing a law stigmatizing gays and lesbians. But rather than take a macro view of the inflicted society at the time, the Venice winner and BAFTA nominee tells the intimate story of Jean (Rosy McEwen), a gym teacher who is forced to live a double life and further complications ensue when one of her students sees the hidden side of her identity.

Ahead of the film’s U.S. release beginning this Friday, I spoke with Oakley about the grounded tone of her drama, the 16mm cinematography, being influenced by Kelly Reichardt, everyday personal attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, recreating 1980s Britain, and more.

The Film Stage: I appreciate how there’s nothing that plays didactic or message-driven in the film. It all feels very grounded in the psychological feeling of every character, especially your lead. In the initial screenwriting process and forming the idea of the film, can you talk about ensuring the whole film carried this specific tone and approach throughout?

Georgia Oakley: Yeah, that’s an interesting question, and I guess it’s connected to my sensibility as a person and as a filmmaker. I was, at times, sort of tempted to bring in some of the bigger kind of political moments that provide the backdrop for this story. So some of the things that I’d read during the research phase would have dramatized it a little bit more and taken it away from being more of a portrait drama. But as I developed the script over the course of three or four years, I was always chipping away at those things and honing more and more in on this one character and attempting to interrogate her experiences, and that kind of came from my initial research where we spoke to lesbian teachers who had worked at that time.

I remembered one particular conversation with a PE teacher named Catherine who told us about how she had run into a student in a bar, just as we had already outlined in the film. And she said that she had immediately left the bar and gone back home. And the next day the student came and found her and she behaved in a way to that the next day the student came to find her and told her that she thought she might be gay. And Catherine acknowledges that she silenced that student and that she said things to her that she regretted 30, 35 years later. And the emotion that was in her voice when she told us that… it was very, very early on in the development process. And that was kind of it, really. It was like: okay, what kinds of things can co-conspire? How can public opinion and the political moment and everything else conspire to force somebody who is a really good person and good at their job to behave in a way that they regret, and that 30 years later they still feel guilt and shame around? I wanted just to be true to that experience, really, of speaking to her and the kind of subtlety and the nuance of what it meant to be battling that kind of internalized homophobia.

I also wanted to ask about the approach to cinematography with Victor Seguin shooting on 16mm. How early did you decide that, and were there any references you used to guide your process? 

Yeah, it was always going to be shot on 16mm. I had shot my previous short film on 16mm. I love the texture of 16mm and the grain structure. And I was always drawn to 16mm over 35mm for this film. But more than that it was a decision motivated by what it does to the experience of being on set when you shoot on film. I love the fact that it really intensifies the stakes of what you’re doing. My background, initially, was in theater and I feel like, shooting a film, there’s some sort of crossover with that because you tell the actors that you’re shooting a film and often they slightly freak out because it makes them think that they’ve got a limited time to get it right. But actually that ends up being the thing that means that the first take is usually the best take, when you’re working on film. So I pushed to work on film for those reasons, but Victor was very much on board with the decision to shoot on 16mm. 

We had loads of references. We didn’t focus on specific films as much. I remember looking at Birth by Jonathan Glazer and Safe by Todd Haynes. I remember looking at those with him, but we would speak about references with regard to framing and then we would speak about references with regard to lighting. We had this crazy document that was every single part of the film split up and references for each of them, so to really give you a sense of what the references were would be quite complicated. But Victor is incredibly systems-driven, very meticulous and completely the opposite of me. I’m chaotic and don’t remember anything and sort of go on impulse with most things. And he has documents with spider diagrams and links to things and light diagrams and everybody’s on it. I don’t even understand how it works.

But it was a really great marriage of two completely different types of people, I felt. I really enjoyed working with him, and what I think he really added to the initial kind of conversations around the visual aspect was the lighting. He used to be a gaffer. I think he made a lot of things feel like we just shot with natural light but we didn’t. There was a lot of planning with that stuff. And I think he really elevated the mood of the film with lighting.

You have mentioned Kelly Reichardt and Chantal Akerman were influences for having protagonists that don’t necessarily feel glamorized, and you’re able to see someone with all their shades. When did you first see their films?

Kelly Reichardt I always come back to because of the simplicity of her stories. I mean, they’re very complex but simple at the same time. And I always feel that I overcomplicate things when I’m writing. And I always remember watching Wendy and Lucy for the first time and just feeling like it was genius that you could write a story that was so condensed. And just coming from growing up in the countryside in the UK, seeing films that were so embedded in the landscape. And I know that Kelly Reichardt is not actually from where she sets her films, but I find that really fascinating too: that she’s seen something that’s so kind of “other” for her. And in the same sense, that’s probably why I’m drawn to her films. There’s these huge landscapes and this otherworldliness to those stories that I felt, at least, when I first discovered them––so alien and different from my own experience.

There’s something about specificity there as well––same with Chantal Akerman and also Lucrecia Martel’s films, which I love, where you feel like you’re just getting a window into a world that you would just never have been able to access without that film, and that it’s more of an experience. You come away from it with a kind of immersion in an experience more than necessarily remembering exactly what happened in the plot. You allow it to wash over you and you feel forever changed after watching it. And I don’t think you can say that for so many films.

With the political- and religious-backed attack on LGBTQ+ rights, especially here in the U.S., it often feels like people who have this hatred, there’s no entry point into even understanding another person’s perspective. Certain movies like this, where it’s really about getting to the heart of a character, feel like they could be an entry point into creating empathy. As you’ve screened the film, have you heard have you been surprised by any reactions of people realizing history shouldn’t be repeated?

I grew up in a very conservative, rural part of the UK, and even long after I had come out, when I started developing this film, people close to me said throwaway comments like “Oh, but you know, it is problematic having gay teachers, isn’t it?” These kinds of things would just be thrown around without any realization of what they were saying. With that being my experience, my background, without really being conscious of it, I’m sure that part of my motivation to make the film was to show people who have those views, as gently as I could, what it feels like on the other side of the coin to attempt to change their minds. It’s not something that I was thinking about at the time, but obviously if I was to psychoanalyze myself, that would be quite obvious. So I was definitely drawn to telling the story for those reasons.

And I was aware, even when we started working on the film, that there were parallels with things that were going on. Not just politically. I think the most obvious comparisons are, like, the Don’t Say Gay Bill and things like that. But I would say––on a kind of smaller, more personal level––every single day, particularly since I’ve become the parent, you see this widespread feeling of like “Oh, you do whatever you want, but keep it away from my children.” I see that now all the time, even in the most liberal kind of circles. People don’t realize the things that they’re saying. And it happens all the time. And so it’s all the problem. And yes: we were aware of the parallels at the time, and we definitely spoke about those when we were trying to get funding for the film because we felt that it was an important moment to attempt to tell this story and to show that our rights are precarious at best, and that we will just never get complacent because just around the corner there could be something.

And also the fact that people had really just forgotten about Section 28 in the UK and a lot of people didn’t know about it. These things, not only can they come in unexpectedly, but then they can linger around for 15 years and then people will just forget about it. So all of that was very much on our minds, but I definitely did not predict how much things would unravel in the past five years, from 2018 to now, in terms of every day. You look at the news and there is a new headline around something that is so much a mirror of the issues that we touch on in the film. And obviously that was not something that we were hoping for. And obviously that’s incredibly depressing. And obviously it’s good that the film is going out into the world now at this moment, but I fear that this is only the beginning, and I wish more could be done already to try to stop everybody from descending into moral panic all over the globe.

The production design feels very lived-in here, from the billboards to the TV program and beyond. What was the biggest challenge?

The huge challenge was that we had so many locations, although it wasn’t impossible to find locations that were relatively untouched since the ’80s. For instance, Jean’s house from the outside and the inside––the kitchen and everything––had not been touched since that time. However, it was an empty shell of a house that was on the market at the time. And so we had to go in and populate that space with everything that you see inside the house. And I remember a particular moment when the family who owned the house, it had belonged to their grandmother and she had died and they were selling the house and they said they walked in and they got sort of the shivers because they said that what we had done to the flat, it felt suddenly like my grandmother’s house again, even though we hadn’t spoken to them––we had no idea what it had looked like before.

So it was a huge challenge to populate all of those spaces. The lesbian housing co-op is probably the biggest one. It was a challenge to find a space like that in the center of town because I always had this feeling that Jean would live out sort of near the coast in a more suburban area. And that she would put these physical barriers of the river and everything between her and the school that she works at, and there would be a marked difference between her world and then the world of the bar and the co-op, which are quite close to each other geographically. Finding a space for that was really difficult. And then populating that space––it doesn’t look anything like that in real life. Our design team put in a lot of work to make that space. And Jean’s big bedroom is part of that. The production design team didn’t have a day off in three months and worked incredibly hard, and I’m really proud of the work they did.

There’s this thread of the importance of community throughout the film––how it’s a very personal journey––but at the same time it shows that before you publicly accept who you are, you have to have the feeling of acceptance within a certain community. As you’ve screened the film, has anyone opened up about wanting to find a community for themselves?

I was really surprised by the number of young people who seemed to connect with the film when we first premiered it in Venice. And then the first few screenings after that. There was always a sort of small cluster of people in their early 20s. And sometimes I would speak to those people, or maybe I wouldn’t even speak to them and they would send me a message online afterward saying, “I was too emotional. I couldn’t come and ask you a question, but I wanted to say…” And I could tell that through speaking to them that something had unlocked, and that they were potentially realizing things about themselves that they hadn’t necessarily properly probed yet. And that was a result of watching the film.

Sometimes when we would do screenings in the north of England, there would be a huge queer contingent in the audience at film festivals, and I have memories––particularly of women who had perhaps lived lives that were more in line with Viv, Jean’s girlfriend, in the story. Who were kind of out butch dykes at the time and who had gone on all the marches and remembered that time as that. And they would put their hands up and say, “I have all these memories. I was there, but I never stopped to think about what it must have been like for someone like Jean. In fact, I would only have thought negatively about somebody who behaved like that. But now, having seen the film, I have a newfound understanding for what other members of the queer community were going through.” And that was really also surprising. And those responses are really cherished because it’s not just about opening people’s eyes who have nothing to do with this world. But if you can touch people who sort of think they had a fully formed view of something, but that they actually were missing this piece, that’s really great.

Blue Jean opens in theaters on June 9.

The post Blue Jean Director Georgia Oakley on Kelly Reichardt’s Simplicity and the Everyday Erosion of LGBTQ+ Acceptance first appeared on The Film Stage.

Past Lives is a human story. The debut from playwright-turned-director Celine Song, the drama encompasses 24 years of a relationship between Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), as the former emigrates from Seoul, and settles in New York City. Hae Sung, meanwhile, stays in Seoul, thinking about his childhood crush, waiting to reconnect. Split into three sections, the film never forces this relationship onto its audience. It unfurls into, in Song’s own words, earned moments of deep intimacy. 

Lee and Yoo give over all of themselves for these performances. Lee inhabits the character of Nora, infusing her with all of her necessary complexities. Across from her is Yoo, often inscrutable, often difficult to read. They’re adults harkening back to their mutual teenage affection, decades of unsaid feelings sitting between them. Song’s camera, with Small Axe cinematographer Shabier Kirchner behind the frame, finds and focuses on these distances in an instant. The distances between two people standing in a park, between two people countries apart, between three people sitting at a bar; all of it becomes essential in Song’s film. 

Past Lives rewards patience, offering its audience an emotional weight only given if they’re willing to commit to this story. The relationship at the center of Song’s script breathes. Seldom static in composition, these people are moving through New York City, which Song makes sure to highlight, with a rare level of emotional connection. But Nora is happily married to Arthur (an understated, warm John Magaro), and their relationship is given its fair due in Past Lives, especially with a bedroom scene that depicts relational anxiety with clear-eyedness that astounded me. Calling it personally reminiscent would be an understatement. 

When they meet, Nora tells him about the concept of In-Yun, a Korean idea about the connectedness between two people. It becomes a common strand within the film, and one of the sticking points long after the credits, also proportionately distanced, have rolled, even if Nora initially jokes about In-Yun as a classic Korean pick-up line. It only serves as another reminder of Song’s ability to recognize and comment on human nature. Her debut is illustrious––more than just another standout debut feature––as a film on the contradictory nature of relationships, love, heartbreak, and time. 

The audience watches these three characters circle one another, the camera sometimes at its own distance. Their worlds are their own, figures silhouetted by gorgeous dusks and scattered skylines. Panes of glass separate the viewers from these people, mysterious until Song allows us to sit in the same room as them. I felt an innate need to understand Nora, Hae Sung, and Arthur, to empathize with them, to share in their mutual complexities. Still, the distance was too far. Until it wasn’t. 

Past Lives is a film that has been nestled deep within me since the first time I got the chance to see it. It has that capability, something few movies will ever do. It brings up the past, not necessarily with reverence, but with understanding, gently nudging its audience to do the same. I chatted with Song about the thematic threads of her film, the opposing truths within our lives, and the leaving the audience longing for closeness. 

The Film Stage: The film focuses on the impact and slowness of time, and how it affects relationships. What’re your thoughts on the idea that, over time, feelings don’t change but people do?

Celine Song: I think it’s the most powerful force in our lives, time, and it’s pretty contradictory. Because 12 years is nothing but 12 years is also forever. Two minutes they spend waiting for the Uber can feel like eternity, but it can also feel like a blink of an eye. I think that’s sort of the way that time has to be thought about. There’s still connections and relationships that endure through time. And I think those are really special things in our lives that are ineffable, and hard to describe why, but they’re just people in our lives who endure through all of that. 

And in this case of an enormous distance––the space to see each other––both time and space really keep them apart. But nothing could really keep them apart because they still have this feeling for each other. They have such a friendship, a deep love between them that I think really endures through all of it, regardless of how the time feels. Because 24 years, you can say it’s forever. But of course, when you think about yourself––back when you’re 12––it also feels like it happened yesterday. That’s the amazing contradiction of time. And I think that’s something that felt important to capture in the movie. More than anything. 

You talk about time as a contradictory thing, and it feels as though the film is full of opposing truths. These paradoxes within the relationships of Nora and Hae Sung, as well as Nora and Arthur. How did you attempt to write these opposing truths into the script?

Sometimes it would be as simple as quite, very literally writing the contradiction in the action lines. For example: I would say, “When he smiles, he looks like a kid.” But I’m also describing somebody who was meant to be in their late 30s. So I think it is always this thing where I knew that those markers need to be there, so that we know that we’re trying to capture a kind of impossibility. It also is in the casting of. What really was important to me about Greta Lee and Teo Yoo, and the casting of them is that they both needed to have this contradiction in them, where at one moment they feel like grown-ups, mature adults, but on the other hand, in the next moment, they could both look like kids. When he smiles, I’m suddenly like, “Are you five years old?” There’s something amazing about the way that they move their faces and then the way that they exist. I think it really captures that contradiction and I think that really is at the heart of what this movie had to be. The contradiction of time. 

There’s also the kind of unnatural contradiction that is at the heart of it, with the image of the three of them. It’s so funny, because if you crop out either one of the guys you’re suddenly fully believing that Nora has great chemistry and great connection to the guy that she’s with. There’s some really special chemistry that is happening between Nora and Hae Sung, of course, but there’s also a very different but also intense chemistry that Nora has with Arthur as a married couple. The story itself is about the contradiction of that. And so who is Nora? Well, Nora is somebody who makes sense in both ways, right? She is both of those things: both the kid and grown woman. 

You mentioned the physical space between them, which is so noticeable the first time they meet 24 years later. The camera sits between them, shifting back and forth, which feels reminiscent of the opening credit sequences and the title itself. Can you tell me about setting up that similarity?

I love you asking me about that, because I feel like the way that the title is laid––the typography of it––is meant to represent the distance and the time and space and all of that. And then the contradiction of it, too. It’s meant to be so intentional. Even the title, because it’s part of the image, had to feel as fundamental as the rest of the movie. So I think that it is absolutely true, the way that we’re swinging back and forth from one word to the other, or one face to the other––or one couple to the other––I think is at the heart of where the movie is. 

Something that happens is that there is a little bit of longing in the distance. So even between the Past and the Lives, there is a bit of a longing that you can sense, just because they have this little bit of an extra gap in between. And I think similarly, when Nora and Hae Sung see each other for the first time in Madison Square Park, we were doing this swinging camera where we’re swinging from one of them to the other. The experience that I know I was after with Shabier Kirchner, my DP, is that when you’re with Hae Sung, you wonder what’s going on with Nora. What kind of face is she making? You miss her, right? But then you’re grateful to be with Hae Sung. 

And then the camera drifts over and then we look at Nora and we’re so grateful and happy to see Nora. So we’re looking at Nora; we were so excited. And we’re like “Oh, my God, this is the face Nora is making. This is Nora. We missed Nora.” And then of course, as we are staying on Nora, we’re again starting to miss Hae Sung. So there is a natural way that this movement of the camera can really present a bit of longing in the audience, because it just makes you long for these characters. When you see them you’re just so excited to see them, which is the heart of the scene. The heart of the scene as these two people who are longing for each other, see each other for the first time in person in 24 years. You have to be able to feel the depth and that has to be reflected in the way that the movie is getting made, the movement of the camera.

You shoot these characters through mirrors, windows, doorways, and these other smaller portals. And I wanted to know about the inspiration for that choice, since we often aren’t in the exact same space as them, such as looking at Hae Sung through his hotel room window. 

While the movie is about distances, the movie is also about the way in which that distance reflects upon itself, too. So to me, the way that those decisions were being made is often through really thinking about what the philosophy of the movie is, where the philosophy of the movie is that time is not something that is clear. Time is something that bends; time is something that we can fold with language sometimes. Right? And I think that’s how some of those decisions had to get made. Because I think mirrors and reflections and things like that, they’re a way to open up a world outside the world that we live in. It’s kind of a simple, visual way. That was always something that my DP and I were pursuing. We were pursuing opportunities to really tell the story in a way where it’s not just the beautiful shot. 

Is there a similar thought process when shooting them as silhouettes, which happens throughout the film? It felt like I was constantly reaching towards them as an audience member. 

I think the audience should be able to feel that, and I think that is the thing we wanted to do, because so much of it has to be about the mystery. It’s not true that we can know these characters in a way where it is so intimate, unless you’re welcome to. Of course, there are moments that are really intimate and very deep, which does happen throughout the film. But those moments have to be earned, too. So I didn’t want to overexpose the intimacy that you might have with these characters, because it is not true that these characters are fully available to even each other. 

For example, when I’m shooting the silhouette of them, when they’re waiting in line to go to the Statue of Liberty, that scene is a scene about the opaqueness of who they are to each other in that moment. Hae Sung doesn’t know what conversation Arthur and Nora had last night. And Nora doesn’t know how Hae Sung feels about all this either. They don’t actually understand, or they haven’t fully communicated, what this day is going to be. In that way, it always felt right. 

And I think so much of the conversation about how it should be made is the question of: does it feel right? Because of course I have coverage of them closer up. But I think that the silhouette of them seems to represent where they are emotionally, which is that they are mysteries to each other. So they should be mysteries to us. We should be wanting to know more about how this is going to go. They’re also in a transitional space––they’re trying to get on the boat. So the line is moving. So much of it is about the uncertainty of that scene. I found it strange in the edit whenever I tried to do a close-up of them in that scene, because then it seemed to reveal a little bit too much about them. When in fact, later that night in the bar is when they’re truly revealed.

There’s a part in that late-night conversation between Arthur and Nora in which he says, “You make my life so much bigger. I’m just wondering if I do the same.” I was fascinated by that dialogue. What was the origin of that line?

It’s a very American thought, right? Because Arthur’s American, so he’s thinking about it in a very American way where it’s like, “Well, I get to live my life partly in Korean culture and get to meet somebody and live with somebody who is from another culture. How amazing I get to sort of have my world expand that way. And I wonder if I do the same for you.” To him, he’s just, which is a very American thought, a boring white American guy. But I think that to me, the response is what it’s so much about. She says, “I’m just a girl from Korea.” So the thing is, for Nora, that’s a way to turn the thing around. I feel like it is so easy to think about, like: wow, Korean American, what an expansive idea of what it means to be an American, but actually, for a Korean girl who left Korea to emigrate twice to be in New York City, I think that living in New York City with this white, Jewish-American writer guy can feel as much of an expansion of her world. Right. So I think this American-centric question is turned around when Nora says she’s just a little girl from Korea, just the country bumpkin in that way.

I did this myself––I really came to New York to pursue my dream. We’ve seen her life expand over and over again. She drives into New York City and we see New York City gleaming, and it’s she’s choosing to expand her world the way that Arthur is very grateful to be able to do by being with Nora. It is a reversal to a new perspective. 

New York and Seoul both feature prominently throughout the film, especially within these conversations between characters. The camera looks at the cities as such a large part of the story. It makes me think about what makes a home. How do you think a city becomes a home for these characters and for yourself? 

The movie is about locations. Its locations are a fundamental part of the storytelling. How different Seoul is to how New York is, I think, is actually a part of the important plotline. That’s part of the reason for showcasing the cities themselves. And really treating the cities as another character, I think is an important part of storytelling in this movie, because it is about the different places that the two lead characters live. 

But what makes a city a home to me, it’s always a kind of a thing where I just know. Because I’m an immigrant I don’t really have a really strong sense of “Wow, I really belong to this place in such a fundamental way.” It’s always a choice. You’ll always choose where you belong. And I think that it is as important a decision as choosing what to do for a living, where you live. Of course you may not always choose, but I think that, being an immigrant, it always felt like a choice. When I think about my home, I’ve always felt like it’s where my family is. To me, the home is where my family is, so maybe they’re in a completely different planet. Then I’d be like “Well, that’s my home, because that’s where my parents live. That’s where my sister is. This is where I live with my husband.” Wherever my family is, I would consider home. 

Past Lives is now in limited release and expands wide on June 23.

The post Past Lives Director Celine Song on Choosing Your Home and the Contradictions of Time first appeared on The Film Stage.

Even having interviewed Abel Ferrara a decade ago on the occasion of Ms. 45‘s re-release, an opportunity to speak with the legend still felt exciting, and borderline nerve-wracking. 

As something of a fanboy, I didn’t bring up trailing him around a TIFF party hosted by my former place of work years ago, but it was still an enlivening chat. Done in accordance with the release of his new film Padre Pio, which has brought much controversy for casting Shia LaBeouf (who’s made public the spiritual film and role as an act of redemption), I saw it fit to ask a number of questions, be it moral or political, that arise from the film, which cross-cuts the saint’s spiritual battle with a fascist uprising in Italy. The opinionated, lively Ferrara naturally had much to say during our brief Zoom chat. 

The Film Stage: Nicholas St. John, your former writing partner, was very much a spiritual man. In this early working relationship, was Padre Pio a frequent topic of conversation?

Abel Ferrara: Not really. I mean, we knew who he was because he was living in South Italy and I would visit him during the actual period right after he had died. But I don’t remember any major conversations.

Can you talk about your own spiritual journey––how you started as a Catholic and ended up a Buddhist?

I was a Catholic. But you know, when you’re not leading the righteous life, it doesn’t really matter what you are. I was just in a bad place, you know? I was in a non-spiritual place. And it just got worse and worse and worse. I was getting further. We might have made movies about it, shot it, but the idea of living a life of compassion and empathy and embracing what spirituality really is was not my lifestyle. I was living the opposite lifestyle.

So around 2005 I met a girl who was a Buddhist, and I started reading and doing that, ya dig? I studied it, and I found that I connected to it. Same time, I was meditating and doing all that––but you know, you can’t meditate high. You can’t be doing drugs and thinking you’re doing a “boost meditation.” It’s impossible. So that wasn’t happening, but I was getting the literature of it. Then I went to make a film called Mary, which was in Jerusalem. And it was about Mary Magdalene. We actually went, theoretically, to the place he was crucified. Have you ever been to Jerusalem?

No.

Well, it’s an outrageous place, and I had some kind of revelation about Jesus as a man, his political struggle. The Bible is a political tract. It was a whole [thing]. But I was still drinking and drugging. So 2012, I got sober. And then when I got sober, it all kind of came together for me very quickly. You know: the meditation, my teaching, my life experience. And the practice of Buddhism, but… my Buddhist teachers, they would say, call me “Christian.” What does it matter? You know, it’s other than the concept of the creation. The things that practically get me through life, which is thinking about someone other than myself, expressing compassion, not doing any harm, doing the right thing: that’s all the same for any religion.

I wonder about the political climate in your home of Italy. You made a documentary a few years ago, Piazza Vittorio, which kind of provided a snapshot of this. But in the time since, how have things changed? There’s a new Prime Minister that was elected last year, Meloni, who certainly has amassed a lot of publicity in North America for being another far-right populist. I’m curious: what do you think were the conditions that led to her election?

I think the same conditions that led to the elections in the United States, whatever they are. Here, it’s a little bit more: they try one side, and then if that ain’t working, they go the other way and they try that. I don’t know. Rome has been here for 3,000 years. It’s the same thing with our country. I mean, my political focus is on my country. It’s just I don’t know the language well enough. I’m a guest in this country; I’m not, politically, that man. I think it’s the whole feeling around the globe. I mean, what’s happening? I think it’s getting much more in our country where there is no democratic process; you’re either on one side or another and you’re gonna defend that position for whatever reason. So, you know, the rise of nationalism always is not good.

I remember talking to you ten years ago and asking you about the state of New York City. You were very down on it. You referred to it as the millionaires’ playground. I know you’ve returned to the city a few times since for retrospectives and such. Has your opinion of New York City changed, or do you feel even worse about it now? At least based on what you’ve seen?

Now I’m not really there long enough to get the vibe. I know COVID turned that city upside-down. And New York is constantly changing. But once real-estate value goes up and then goes down, and once real-estate value goes through the roof then it’s like throwing a rock into the water and everybody’s drowning. Because everybody’s working around the clock just to pay fucking rent. And to me, that’s not a fucking… I don’t know about that. So what is New York offering everybody there? I don’t know, man. I’m not there.

But I remember living in the apartments now that are going for $10—$12,000 dollars a month in rent. I was squatting in them. They raised our rent from $400 to $500 for 1,800 square feet on Fifth Avenue and we almost burned the building down, okay? The guys living out of apartments paying $12,000, that’s not inflation––it’s a whole reinvention of the economy. And when that happens, that’s when you have an international financial, rich paradise called New York. Or at least Manhattan, once you get out to East New York or… but even that, I’ve read the rents in Newark are the highest rents. So it is what it is.

In general, do you kind of feel despair or optimism about the state of the world? Your film from a few years ago, Zeros and Ones, has those bookends with Ethan Hawke where he talks about that dichotomy of living with equal amounts of despair and optimism about the state of the world. How do you feel at the current moment?

You know, we were just in Ukraine––we shot in Kiev––so I see what’s going on there and you got these guys talking nuclear weapons and I’m seeing a war right before my eyes. I could see the shit blowing up in a minute, you know? You don’t make weapons not to use them, okay? So they might have been backing off on those fucking things for the last 75 years, but they’re still there. And you’ve got mad men around, and the potential of that. Am I living in fear of it? I try not to. I’m a positive person; I’m living a positive world, you know? 95% of the people I meet are positive. So I don’t know why there’s so much negative shit going on. I accept my people are creating some fucked-up shit. [Laughs]

There’s this famous anecdote from you on the commentary track for King of New York where you’re watching the film and saying you could never do this kind of film today, that it’s fascist filmmaking. Could you elaborate on what “fascist filmmaking” is to you, and how you feel you’ve distanced yourself from it with your recent work?

I mean that’s a little bit over… it was just this, kind of. I mean, to tell you the truth, I don’t even know what I was talking about. There’s, like, a kind of a hardcore of “what is right” and “what’s not right.” It’s very: the rules are the rules and the streets are red and we only used black and blue and every shot has to be this and everything is that, and the script is this and this is that. You know, to make a film like King of New York, we made that for five, six million bucks in 1990. That’d be like a $30,000,000 movie, okay? We had hundreds of people working on that film. We’re doing the same thing, Zeros and Ones, where, like, the entire camera, lighting, and electrical department was one person as opposed to 50.

The downside is: King of New York put 50 kids through college. How much in health insurance was bought? You know what I mean? But I don’t know. It’s like I’ve moved away from that kind of filmmaking––like very elaborate, organized. You know, you bring on a hundred people you’re not just gonna decide in the middle of the night, “Oh, let’s shoot in Brooklyn instead of Queens.” You gotta get a hundred fucking people, 50 trucks. You know what I mean? It’s like you’re moving an army around. It’s a different thing. I’m glad I did it; I enjoyed it at the time. King of New York is a very special movie for me, but I don’t see myself repeating it.

So do you think of yourself as kind of a freer filmmaker now?

Sure. I mean, the equipment allows it. It’s just the shit we got. I mean some of these films we’re shooting on the telephones, bro.

I’m curious in the years since you’ve made Padre Pio, have you kept in touch with its star Shia LaBeouf? He’s been going on a very kind of public journey of redemption. Is he doing well?

Yeah, yeah. He’s doing real good, man. He’s doing real good. He went off and he did a Coppola movie. I mean Padre Pio was 15 days or 20 days and he was in for four so he wasn’t there a long time. [Laughs] But anyway, it was good and he’s working. And we’re working on a film together––he’s writing something about Auschwitz that we’re thinking about doing.

On that tip, are there any narrative films you’re working on at the moment? I know you’ve got the documentary about Ukraine.

Yeah, I got the documentary about Ukraine and I’m working on something about Patti Smith, but I don’t wanna jinx it.

And I kinda just wanted to ask this as a last question: do you get a kick out of 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy being remastered and put out on Blu-ray? Did you ever think something like that would happen?

You know I got an eight-year-old daughter, so I don’t know what kind of kick I get outta it. But it’s crazy, right? I did so many other films I have. But I don’t know––that’s another situation. We did it; the memory of it is sacred to me. I can talk a lot about it. It is what it is, you know? It’s one of the things we did, and it worked. So great.

Padre Pio arrives in limited theaters and on VOD on Friday, June 2.

The post You Can’t Meditate High: Abel Ferrara on Spiritual Transformation, the State of Humanity, and Padre Pio first appeared on The Film Stage.

“The Wizard of Oz is a film with very great power… And it’s to be expected that it has stayed with us for the past several years and that we find its echoes in our films for such a long time after. The Wizard of Oz is like a dream and it has immense emotional power,” David Lynch once said. “There’s a certain amount of fear in that picture, as well as things to dream about. So it seems truthful in some way.”

Indeed, from the overt references (Wild at Heart) to the more subtextual (see: every other David Lynch movie), Victor Fleming’s 1939 landmark has been a constant wellspring of influence for the legendary director. Yet even with such source of inspiration, Lynch’s films play as singular creations, every frame infused with a thrillingly unique voice. With his new essay documentary, Alexandre O. Philippe entertainingly explores the vast range of connections between Lynch and Oz through the perspectives of Karyn Kusama, John Waters, David Lowery, Rodney Ascher, Amy Nicholson, and Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead.

Ahead of the film’s release beginning this Friday at the IFC Center, I spoke with Philippe about the process of crafting each section, how it’s a futile effort to unpack the mysteries of Lynch’s enigmatic work, exploring Twin Peaks: The Return, expanding the scope of the documentary, and rewatching the director’s work.

The Film Stage: I’m curious about the authorship each participant had over their section. What was the process for recording their audio? Did they have any say in the video clips that would appear?

Alexandre O. Philippe: Yeah, it was actually a multi-step process, to be honest. This is a film that originated in the very early days of the pandemic, basically March 2020. The first step was to find people who were really willing to go down this particular rabbit hole with me. Essentially the first step was what I call a “jazz interview.” I got them on the phone and recorded very low-quality, just recording on my iPhone. And I picked their brain for about 90 minutes to about three-and-a-half hours––depending on who you’re talking to, what you’re talking about. And it’s really fishing for sort of a thesis from them. So we went in all kinds of directions, and when I felt that I had enough material there for their chapter, then we hung up. I transcribed the interviews, built a voiceover script, and sent out to them for approval revisions. We usually went back and forth a few times. They deleted stuff, they did stuff, I deleted stuff, I did stuff. And then when we were completely comfortable with that process, I sent them to a recording studio to rerecord their voiceover. And that’s what you have in the film. 

As far as the visual world: all the clips and everything that’s involved in the film, they had no control over that. That’s David Lawrence, who edited the film. We worked very hard on every single moment. And that’s the process of building the script. You also really very much have to think in terms of: how am I going to tell the story visually? So the clip process really starts at the scripting stage.

Unlike some of the other films and directors you’ve explored, I feel like David Lynch is the rare kind of director where you want to keep things almost mysterious, as he certainly does. He is not over-explaining things. On your end, was there any kind of restraint to try not over-analyzing certain elements of his filmography? Did you cut back on anything you’d rather keep as a mystery?

Well, for me, this is certainly not a film that is designed to explain anything. I think the moment you set out to say, “I’m going to explain David Lynch or crack the code of David Lynch,” you’re going to fail. There’s nothing to crack. There’s nothing to resolve, and I think that’s true of the creative process in general. This is a film about the mysteries of the creative process. And I think, if anything, it’s a different lens to look at Lynch’s films through, and to look at The Wizard of Oz through. For me, the goal of this film is to delve into the mystery, the mysteries of influence and inspiration, and to open more doors, more windows into those mysteries and hopefully have people go through that as well. I think certainly the film makes the case that there’s a lot of strong connections, undeniable connections. Some of them are conscious and others are not. And I think that’s kind of the beauty of it. But, beyond that, I think the cinema of David Lynch is always going to be mysterious, and that’s part of the joy of it.

Definitely. One of the things that I was really struck by watching this, it’s among the first high-level visual analyses of Twin Peaks season 3. It was such a monumental viewing experience and there’s been a lot written about it, but not so much diving into certain elements that you do here from a visual standpoint. What was your experience watching that? And was there a certain thrill breaking new ground in some ways about analyzing that project?

It’s just extraordinary. I think it’s one of his greatest works. It really struck me, very powerfully, how Oz-ian it really is. There are so many elements of it that harken back to The Wizard of Oz. To be honest, even that final moment––and I know it’s not something I talk about in the film––but when they’re in our world, they are bringing Laura Palmer to the house and you have this woman who apparently lives there in real life. She opens the door and she talks to her husband that we never see. He’s off-screen and he’s behind the curtain. [Laughs] It’s just one of those moments: I’ve always loved it because I think there’s something really beautiful about that.

Was that conscious? Not conscious? It doesn’t matter at the end of the day, because I think the journey is very much Oz-like. There are certainly conscious references; when Cooper wakes up in the hospital bed and he’s surrounded by people, which is something that Lynch does several times. That has to be conscious. All those things are very clear markers. But beyond that, who knows. I never thought of it that this is one of the first analyzes of [Twin Peaks season 3]. I don’t really ever look at it that way. It’s not about competition. It’s really about the joy of picking the brains of people that I love and admire and who are not just great filmmakers or film geeks or film critics, but people who think about film in different ways. And I think to be able to have those conversations with them, to me, is always mind-opening and mind-expanding, and that’s the fun of it.

One of the elements I really love is how you expand beyond its title. I love the section where it’s discussing these directorial motifs many use––including Terrence Malick, Abbas Kiarostami, Jane Campion, and Wong Kar-wai. It opens up your mind so much about how you could have a film about any director in the world, really. How did you come up with that sequence?

Yeah, I know. I mean, that to me is ultimately the thesis of the whole film. Even though the film is about David Lynch and The Wizard of Oz, it’s fundamentally a film about the mysteries of influence and inspiration and the creative process. So I really was very attracted to this idea of building a montage that speaks to the fact that it’s not just Lynch and Oz. Every filmmaker out there, every artist, when you grow up and you’re moved by something or something leaves an impression on you––whether it’s another film or a work of art or an event or trauma––whatever the case may be, that when you become an artist, you regurgitate that. You keep going back to that well and filling it up again and again in your work, no matter how conscious you are of it or not. And that is not a reductive thing. It’s a beautiful thing. It was important to build up to this particular montage and obviously to have as much diversity as possible. But yeah, that took a lot of work and I think it’s a fitting ending to Lynch/Oz.

I loved David Lowery’s section and how he discusses the hidden, terrifying things in films that he would revisit over and over again. That feels a bit synonymous with a lot of your work, where you’re really taking something that someone might know at face value and then diving into it and changing the way you see it. Can you talk about crafting that section?

Yeah. I’ve known David for a while and this wasn’t the first time that I got to interview him. I wouldn’t say “frequently,” but every now and then we’ll just touch base and text or email. I’m a big fan of what he does and he’s been very kind to watch my work over the years. I think we’re very aligned in a lot of his ideas, but I think his chapter is really meaningful. He truly brings it home, to use an Oz pun. It’s the chapter that sort of takes it full-circle. One of the things I really appreciate about it––in fact, what I really like about all the chapter––is that these are not just people who are talking about film as an art form, which in and of itself is already sort of fascinating and would be fascinating enough.

But they start bringing elements of their childhood or personal experiences in life and connecting those to the act of watching films. David Lowery talks about growing up watching The Wizard of Oz in black-and-white, and then eventually watching it in color, and how that sort of changes his perception of it. Karyn Kusama talks about being in New York City and being a waitress and serving pancakes to David Lynch with lots of maple syrup. John Waters talks about growing up watching The Wizard of Oz and the clear influence on his own work. 

To me, getting to the sort of personal aspect is where the juice is, if you will. That’s where the beauty of making a film is. That’s what it’s about, because once you start tapping into the personal––the scares, the trauma, the wonder––these handful of films that have had such a profound impact or influence on the filmmakers, that’s where you get to the heart of why they also are filmmakers now. So even though this is about Lynch and Oz, it’s also about that. They’re little sort of mini-portraits of these filmmakers as well.

I was curious if Lynch is aware of the film, and if he’s seen it.

He was the first one I reached out to. I knew he was not going to want to participate, and I honestly feel like it’s probably better this way. We all know he doesn’t really like to talk about his work, but he was very nice about it. His response was, “Thank you, but I need to keep my eye on the donut.” Whatever that means. [Laughs] It’s a very typical Lynchian response. But he’s aware of it. In fact, we invited him to the world premiere at Tribeca and he didn’t come. And again: I’m not surprised. I mean, I’ve known from Jon Nguyen, who co-directed The Art Life, and [Lynch] participated, obviously, in that film. But he didn’t show up to to the premiere in Venice. And so there’s certainly no big expectations.

But we did show the film with a screening at the Coronado Island Film Festival, and his sister Martha lives there. And so she came; she actually introduced the film. She watched it there for the first time, and came up to me afterwards. We had a long conversation. She loved it. And she actually told me, she said, “Yeah, I mean, David growing up was really quite obsessed with The Wizard of Oz.” So it was really nice to hear from her. And she said she was going to tell him about the film. So I don’t know if he’s seen it. Certainly, if he reaches out and is curious I’d of course be delighted to send him a link. But he has not reached out at this point. And I don’t want to keep bugging him, you know?

Of course. There’s a very playful element to your film. I recall one line where it’s talking about how Lynch is not just regurgitating Wizard of Oz. And then you see evil Cooper, like, puking. There’s this light touch throughout, which makes it an entertaining watch. Can you talk about capturing that tone?

Yeah, well, that’s the joy of the process when you’re working with so many, many, many film clips––and I have to give a lot of kudos to David Lawrence again, my editor on this, because we literally auditioned a number of clips for every single moment. Every single moment has to land and every single clip has to work, oftentimes not just on an A-B level, but on multiple levels. Anytime you have an opportunity to use a clip and give it a little bit of humor as well, or to make them breathe as sort of dialogue between the clips. We have a couple of really pretty funny split-screens. I think it’s in chapter five, with Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, where you have these scenes of Lula and Sailor [from Wild at Heart] just having wild sex and then a split-screen with Dorothy looking completely shocked, which usually gets a laugh in the theater.

We have these great moments also between Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life, where the scarecrow is dancing and then he’s got Jimmy Stewart, dancing, falling into the pool. Of course, that’s part of the joy is to find these echoes. These moments that make you wonder, again, how certain films may have impacted other films––to go beyond just Lynch and Oz to start really delving into the mirror effect of cinema history and how movies lead to other movies, to other movies, to other movies. 

You probably spent much time rewatching Lynch’s films, and I was wondering if one stood out, where your perception shifted the more you watched it? I had this feeling last year revisiting the new restoration of Lost Highway, where it felt like a different movie from the one I saw 15 years ago.

I think every time you rewatch a David Lynch film you usually have a new experience. Mulholland Dr. is one of the films that I’ve definitely watched the most. I think I’ve seen it probably more than 70 times. It’s up there for me with Blade Runner and Vertigo. Those are the films that I’ve watched obsessively and will continue to watch obsessively. And every single time you have new discoveries. I think, as far as this particular project, it’s really interesting to start rewatching the body of work of David Lynch, but this time specifically look through the Oz-ian lens and where are the possible connections. So every time you do something like this you obviously start making discoveries and I don’t know if there was a particular film [where my perception changed].

I think exploring Mulholland Dr. with Karyn Kusama, I think, was different. She always had such an incredible perspective; she always brings so much depth and insight. I just absolutely love to work with her. She’s amazing. She’s actually going to be in one of our next docs again because she’s just too great. I feel like every time I sit down with her and talk about my favorite films, I’m going to walk out of the conversation having gained so much insight, such a new, fresh perspective on things––that’s just the way she is.

I don’t know if there was a particular film, but I think that when we started going down the rabbit hole, I was surprised by the amount of discoveries that we made. It goes a lot deeper, too. The point of the exercise was not to include every possible reference or echo from The Wizard of Oz and David Lynch’s films, because we left many out. It was really remarkable to realize: wow, you can absolutely look at his entire body of work and you can find these motifs, you can find these totems, and they’re there from his early, early, short films all the way to Twin Peaks: The Return.

Lynch/Oz opens on June 2 at IFC Center and will expand.

The post Unpacking David Lynch’s Life-Long Obsession with The Wizard of Oz first appeared on The Film Stage.

There’s a comfort witnessing characters in a Nicole Holofcener film discuss banal, everyday topics—ones largely absent in cinema. In her latest, You Hurt My Feelings, sisters Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Sarah (Michaela Watkins) discuss throwing out old underwear: one does, one doesn’t. Sarah’s husband Mark (Succession’s Arian Moayed) obsesses over moisture-wicking socks. And when Sarah and Beth find themselves stuck standing next to actor Josh Pais (playing himself) after a play, Beth asks how he commutes to the theater each night—turns out he Ubers. 

These trademark Holofcener moments are peppered throughout a narrative kicked off when Beth is sent spiraling after she overhears her husband Don (Tobias Menzies) reveal that he doesn’t like her new novel. This news threatens to derail an otherwise loving marriage—a marriage so loving, their son Eliot (Owen Teague) wonders aloud why he often feels like a “third wheel” when with them.

The anxiety at the center of You Hurt My Feelings is familiar to anyone involved in creative endeavors or close to those who are: how do you give or take constructive feedback without things getting messy? Where’s the line between being supportive and realistic? This extends to Beth’s parenting, where her motherly instincts with Eliot leave him confused about where his talents actually lie, now that he’s out of her protective grasp in the real world. 

From her debut, 1996’s Walking and Talking through seven features, Holofcener has yet to make a film over 100 minutes and You Hurt My Feelings runs a zippy 93. She attributes this to her “brutal” nature. “Cut, cut, cut,” she tells me over Zoom, where we also discuss her short stint at art school and who she trusts to give feedback on her scripts, lest she end up in the same situation as Beth. 

The Film Stage: Sometimes, when you have a writer with a very distinct voice, you end up in this situation where every character feels like a version of the writer all talking to each other. Your work is very dialogue-heavy with lots of characters, but they’re firmly their own people––even the minor characters. How do you fill out their lives and make it so it’s not just a bunch of Nicoles conversing?

Nicole Holofcener: You know, I have no idea. I just write the dialogue coming out of that person’s mouth, and I feel that if I know that person well enough, it’ll sound unique and individual. Which often surprises me, because I worry that everybody sounds like me. Because they are all parts of me, even people that aren’t playing me. Most of the people in my life kind of talk the same. We have the same sense of humor or similar rhythms––not everybody––but I think that’s what draws us to each other: our similarities. So whether I’m writing characters that are based on people in my life or just imagining them, we all live in that same world. But I’m very happy to hear that they sound different, because they should. 

You Hurt My Feelings deals specifically with the white lies people in relationships tell each other, which I found as a bit of a contrast with some characters in your other films, who are often the opposite. They can be open and blunt with one another, like Frances McDormand’s character in Friends with Money.

Frances McDormand’s character says exactly what she feels and that’s very much a part of me. I can be very blunt, I’ve been told, and gruff, and I don’t like that about myself. But it was really fun writing a character with those qualities. When I’m creating a character they’re all different. Some would never say certain things. For instance, the Joan Cusack character is Miss Manners and would never be like Fran’s character. That’s what’s fun: putting these people in the room together. It’s the same with the foursome in this movie: how they behave with each other and away from each other. 

I read that you went to school to be a painter and realized, once you were there, that perhaps your mom had inflated your talent. I’m curious how that experience was swirling in your head for this story. And then more broadly, about your experience as a daughter with your mother, and then as a mother with your two kids––how did those two roles influence this story with Owen Teague’s character?

I felt hoodwinked by my mom when she said “you should go to art school,” maybe for drawing or painting or something, because I loved doing it. And I wasn’t bad for a teenager––I wasn’t bad. But when I got to art school I was like “Oh, I’m out of here. I can’t even begin to compete with the talent of these people.” So, with my own sons, I love what they do, they’re really creative, and I try to support them as much as I can. I don’t want to make them think everything they do is genius, because then it will lose its meaning.

That’s what I was exploring in Owen Teague’s character. He couldn’t tell anymore. With the overpraising, I think it has become a trend, but not when I was a kid. I was normally praised and normally criticized, I think. Normal expectations. But if you don’t want your kid to turn out like you or have the same problems as you, you sometimes go too far in the other direction. All of it informs it: how I grew up, and how I parent, and how I am with my mother now––all of it. 

That’s a very human tendency: “Well, this didn’t work, so let’s swing the pendulum way over here.” When there’s always a middle choice.

Yeah. That doesn’t work either. 

Do you show your early drafts to people? That can be a very tricky process. How do you decide who?

I don’t give it until I’ve finished a draft, unless I’m in trouble. A few years ago I started a draft of a script, and I was in the middle of it and I didn’t know where it should go. I gave it to some people, and I didn’t end up finishing it because it didn’t go anywhere. Their feedback was valuable, and I agreed with it. But when I have a first draft, generally that is OK––I got to the end, it’s there. I give it to a few friends––not many––and get as much feedback as I can. I give it to my producers, my agent. I think they’re smart people. And a few close friends. 

Has this been the same group of people over your career?

I guess it’s been the same people. Although, if I’ve given a script to someone and they just decimate it, I’m not going to give it to them again. [Laughs] To give them another one I’d be crazy. Or if they were critical in an unkind way, but that doesn’t happen very often. I have kind people who will give it to me straight but with kindness. 

As someone who is known for their writing, how do you keep the visuals from being the neglected middle child of your film? You’re still making a film, a visual object, so how do you approach that aspect?

I rely a lot on my crew. I storyboard my films sometimes and create the look of the film with the DP. It’s very collaborative. That’s not what I do best. I do other things really well, so I rely a lot on the DP to help me set up shots, figure out where to put the camera. Intuitively, it’s already in my head because I’ve written it. But it’s nice to have someone see it a different way, and explore that different way. Because sometimes what I see in my head is not as interesting as what he or she can come up with. So I know that about myself. 

You know, the stuff they teach you in film school is generally so useless to most people. Like foot-candles. I don’t even remember what foot-candles are, but it’s about lighting. I had to memorize this shit. It’s like taking chemistry when you have no plan to be a chemist. When I got out of film school and was making my first couple of films, I felt on set that I had to know everything: every lens, every light, every filter. I started to just relax and let other talented people help me and let me do what I do best, and let them do what they do best.

I’ve been on student film sets and they’re using all these terms and all the gadgets and it can feel like kids pretending they’re adults on a bigger set. It’s a weird feeling. And I’ve been on bigger sets, real sets, and they’re not nearly as crazy about using all the terms and stuff. 

I know! “French overs” and this and that. Sometimes people talk about stuff and I don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s like, “What is that equipment? I’ve never used that equipment, or could never afford that. Explain it to me.” But that comes with age, too, and with experience. I don’t have to act like I know everything. I don’t think anyone should. Because it’s pretty transparent, like you said, when you’re faking it. 

When you’re writing these interactions with these very fun characters, how do you balance the comedy and the drama, so that not everything has to be a joke? How do you keep it from devolving into a screwball comedy? 

It’s down to good taste. I like to think I have good taste, or my own taste. A screwball comedy is great, if I was to make just that. Intuitively, I write scripts that are both comedy and drama. They go together. Life is a tragic comedy. The situations between people are so enormously entertaining and rich that they can be very funny and also very dramatic. I don’t think about that fine line. I just do it how I want to do it, and it generally turns out well in that way. Certainly there’s moments I regret where I’m trying too hard to be funny, or I wish that wasn’t such a dramatic scene. I watch my films with a very critical eye. But I think I can do comedy-drama in a natural way, and that’s what I like doing. 

When you’re on set, what’s your #1 focus?

Oh, the actors. 

In what way? Are you trying to make them comfortable, making sure they know what’s going on? 

Well, the first thing is making sure we’re all making the same movie. That happens in prep. You read the script and talk about it and take notes and change things. Of course when I’m making a movie, if I don’t have good acting, it doesn’t matter how good it looks, or how good it sounds or what your soundtrack is like. So my focus is always getting the performance that I want. For me, it’s having a very relaxed set where people are free to try things and have laughs. I always have laughs. Especially on this movie, we had a lot of laughs, with Jeannie [Berlin] and Michaela––all of us. Certain actors can just flip a switch and do the drama and laugh in-between, and it’s just as real for them. That’s great. 

You’ve said before that it’s important to be mindful of getting caught up in a great performance if it’s not serving the mood of the scene or the film at large. Here, you have all these funny actors on set––how do you reign them in when it’s clearly very funny but not working for the film or moment at hand? It’s like, you’re killing the mood, right?

Yeah, I know. There was an instance in this movie where Julia said something really, really funny. I mean we were peeing in our pants, the whole crew. “This is brilliant. This is going to be amazing. This was so funny.” It didn’t make it in. Julia and I were just talking about how disappointed we are that it didn’t work. It didn’t work for a variety of reasons, but it didn’t work. Not because it wasn’t funny; it was about the camera placement, timing. So I think I know when it’s a stinker. And I certainly pay attention to audiences when I’m looking for feedback to where they laugh and where they don’t. And if they’re not laughing: “Ohhh. Take it out. Embarrassing.” 

Is that like test screenings?

More like friends and family coming to see an early cut. There have been test screenings of my movies, but they don’t matter as much to me. It’s interesting to read responses and stuff like that, but not as valuable as the people I trust. 

What were we talking about?

Drawing back on the comedy if it’s too much. 

Again, it’s a matter of taste. I just feel like, “Ehh, that’s silly. That’s not realistic. That’s like a hat on a hat. We’re pushing it too far. That person wouldn’t say that even though it’s really funny.”

Is it hard, though, to kill that energy, when everyone’s playing off of each other?

Yeah, it is hard. But I don’t hang onto stuff a lot. I’m pretty brutal. That’s why my films are so short. They start out at an hour and 45 minutes and then it’s like “Ehh, cut, cut, cut.” Doesn’t make it. And that’s sad, and it’s sad for some of the actors who end up getting cut out too. But I can be brutal. I think people should be brutal, and then fight for what they really want to fight for. Which I also do. When people say “Well, this scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the plot. Why is it there?” I have my own reasons, and it might not be evident, but I’m not taking it out. I’m keeping it in. 

You Hurt My Feelings opens in theaters on Friday.

The post Nicole Holofcener on Fighting for Small Character Moments and the Useless Aspects of Film School first appeared on The Film Stage.

Nine years after Zachary Wigon’s feature debut The Heart Machine, the writer-director returns with another lean thriller, again with elements of romance and comedy. Sanctuary, coming in at a speedy 96 minutes, only features two characters––a dominatrix named Rebecca (Margaret Qualley) and a hotel heir named Hal (Christopher Abbott)––and a single location: the heir’s hotel room. It’s taut, sexy, and explosive, even with its clear theatrical leanings. 

Wigon’s film, penned by Micah Bloomberg, follows Hal as he tries to end his business relationship with Rebecca, cornering these two characters into this hotel room, along with the corresponding hallway and elevator. The discussions soon turn personal, giving Abbott and Qualley ample opportunities to flex their chops. They devour Bloomberg’s script, and Wigon seems happy to honor these monologues, consistently pushing his lens closer and closer to their faces. It’s a showcase for two of Hollywood’s most versatile young stars. Actors that have shown their taste and willingness to work in the independent space. 

As the extent of their relationship expands, so does the apartment. Sanctuary intentionally spins out of control, with both characters oscillating between reality and a pseudo-fiction, playing versions of themselves seen in previous, mutually agreed sessions. There’s a level of inherent confusion for the audience, an exciting inability to decipher which of these people is telling the truth. It has an effect of reeling the audience in, forcing each person in their seats to join this guessing game between Hal and Rebecca. Violence and sex become intertwined in this game, and Wigon is apt with these changing tones. 

Ahead the film’s release this Friday, I chatted with Wigon about his return to directing, his style on set, and his method for managing Sanctuary’s tonal shifts. 

The Film Stage: It’s been nine years since your last feature. How did it feel coming back to direct another film? 

Zachary Wigon: It’s been a great joy and a great pleasure. As a filmmaker, at least for me, it’s always been about trying to get stuff made under the right conditions. The right way, the right story, a story that you feel is going to be meaningful to people. And that’s what I’ve always been striving toward, and to be able to do that with a script that you love enormously, and actors that you think are absolutely phenomenal. It’s a great joy. It’s a great pleasure. The first day back on the set, it was just very, very emotional. You’re focused, and you’re working, but there’s a part of you inside that’s like, “I remember what this feels like. This is great.” So it’s been wonderful.

Did it take a minute for it to kind of come back to you, or did you feel like you picked it back up right away?

It was basically in stride, because a lot of the work that I do as a director, maybe even the majority of the work that I do as a director, is actually done in prep. Because I pre-visualize everything. And while I don’t believe in rehearsing enormously with the actors, I do talk with them a lot about the roles and what the story is about. We did a couple of rehearsals, but the pre-visualization work is really important to me. So when I step on the set for the beginning of day one, the whole movie has already been shot-listed. There’s a pre-visualization shot for everything in the movie already, so we can watch it edited in my head before we start shooting, which is just what works for me. 

Director Zachary Wigon. Photo courtesy Keith Barraclough.

Are you someone that likes to shoot lots of takes? Are you able to move quickly through the script? 

As far as the takes, well, we had 18 days to shoot this. We had to move quickly––relatively quickly. But Margaret and Chris are so exceptionally talented, we were in a great position. Because of that we were able to move quickly and we had a great crew, a really great crew. But then as far as knowing what I want, typically, if there’s a complex camera movement, that is something that I’ll be able to see very, very clearly. For example, there’s a shot in the movie where the camera’s on Chris in a close-up and it inverts. And then it comes to Margaret as she’s crossing the room inverted and pushes in on her, and then it inverts. That’s something I could see very clearly in my head, and I wanted to capture that.

What I don’t see in advance is what the performances are going to be like. That is the most exciting part of being on the set, looking at the monitor as you’ve got all the visual work taken care of––now you can focus one-hundred percent entirely on what’s happening with the performances. What you want with the performances, for me anyway, is you always want to be surprised, but it’s also truthful. It’s something that you never would have expected. But as soon as you see the actor do it you realize that it’s absolutely truthful to what’s going on with the character.

You mentioned how much you love the script. How do you adapt a script that can often feel stagey, almost like a one-act play, into an even more visual medium? 

That was one of the really interesting challenges about this. That was one of the things that made me super-excited to direct this movie, that level of difficulty. When I started talking about the concept with Micah, I thought to myself “Okay, this will be very, very hard. It’s tough to do that because you’re just so limited with your options visually.” As far as how that was solved: there were a couple craft things. One: I wanted to make sure that we never repeated blocking positions. So over the course of the movie, the actors are never actually in the same positions in this space. And then the other thing was I wanted to make sure that we never repeated camera positions or compositions, which was difficult, but we had 1,200 square feet in the hotel suite. So it was difficult, but it was not impossible. Between the hotel suite and the hallway and elevator, I had enough that we could make it work. So those were the key things. 

The other thing to speak to your question is: there was this idea of varying the visual approach in different sequences. I like to break scripts down into sequences or chapters. The opening sequence, for example: the camera moves very, very little, almost not at all. It’s almost all static shots. And then the second sequence, which is after the characters break from the script––apparently, seemingly––that was all Steadicam until you get to the bathroom door, and then it goes into a different idea. So just starting at the first sequence being all static, and the second sequence being all Steadicam. It goes like that for the rest of the movie.

There’s a sequence later on, by the elevators, where it’s a long handheld oner. Because the actors were going to be the same throughout and the set was going to be the same throughout, I felt like I had more creative liberty with mixing different visual styles in a way that you normally wouldn’t be able to do. I feel like normally, in a movie, what you want is a cohesive visual style to unite many locations and many actors. This was one location and two actors. So the visual style was almost doing some of the work that, in a regular movie, the different locations and actors would’ve done. 

I think as you’re watching it, you can feel the apartment almost expand. And this little world feels a lot larger than it did when the film begins.

I wanted it to feel like you were almost getting lost in it. It was almost a psychic space at a certain point, that these two are sort of falling through quicksand into this impossible-to-leave psychic space in the hotel room. So that’s great that it started to feel larger to you. Because they can’t leave, right? It’s this normal hotel suite as it goes on, [but] they can’t leave and so why can’t they leave? Well, if they can’t leave, it should be partially because it feels larger and larger and larger.

These sequences that you’re talking about, most of them happen with tonal shifts within the script. How do you guide the audience along these shifts in the film? 

There’s two ways to do that. One, you have to understand the script completely and understand how and why the script is making the tonal shifts. So it’s either logical that the tonal shifts are occurring in the story, or it’s not. The first thing is just making sure the way that the script is shifting totally is not gratuitous or just to be provocative. It actually logically follows a row of dominoes. There’s a reason that this is happening. Then the other way to do it that I discovered for myself, that I thought was really interesting, was I called them these “drop-down moments,” or respites.

So basically, what worked for me––when you build an atmosphere, you build a tone. You’re dialing up the volume of that effect, right? So if you’re creating a suspenseful atmosphere, it could be a one out of 10. It could be a three out of 10. It could be a five out of 10. That’s the suspense style, right? Then let’s say you’ve got a comedy dial and you want to dial down from the suspense––like you’re at a seven on suspense and you want to get to like a five on comedy. What I found was you have to dial it down to a one or zero and then you can jump anywhere you want. You have to give these palate-cleansers in between.

You mentioned you’ve been looking for a script or a story that you thought would be important to people. How did you find ways for audiences to relate to this story about a dominatrix and a hotel heir, two hyper-specific characters and professions? 

In my opinion, the only way that audiences can ever really relate to a story is through human psychology. The idea that was so fascinating here, to me, was the idea of two characters who are not very comfortable, and perhaps not very happy with who they are in reality. But there’s one space where they go once a week, where there’s a particular set of rules, and inside this one space with this one other person and these very specific rules, they delve into artifice. But inside the artifice they find a much truer version of themselves than the version of themselves that they are playing as themselves in reality.

For me, that’s very relatable. It makes me think a little bit about making movies for a living, because you’re out in the world, you’re being yourself, and then you go to this specific place with these specific rules. All of a sudden you’re in make-believe, but the make-believe almost feels truer than reality in a certain way. So I found it enormously relatable, but I think that my hope, and my belief, is that other people probably feel this way too. That when they’re going through their waking lives they’re not necessarily being the truest version of themselves. Maybe they need the veneer of artifice to give themselves permission, ironically, to be who they actually are. There’s just something very poetic for me about that idea.

Working with only these two actors, how did you attempt to create that intimacy within the set so that they felt a connection and felt comfortable throughout the entire experience?

When you cast really phenomenal actors, I really think that there’s only so much you need to do. And I felt really grateful. Margaret and Chris are extremely talented. I talked with them about who the characters were and what the characters felt about each other. We did a read-through and we rehearsed a couple of scenes, but there really wasn’t a whole lot that I needed to do there. They’re both just exceptionally talented. They were friends and I think they trusted each other and they trusted me, and it just flowed pretty naturally. There weren’t really any speed bumps that we had to navigate. I think the key thing when I think about just working with actors through difficult stuff is just making sure everyone’s on the same page about what we’re trying to accomplish and the way we’re trying to go about accomplishing it.

Sanctuary opens on Friday, May 19.

The post Sanctuary Director Zachary Wigon on the Truth of Artifice and the Location Creativity first appeared on The Film Stage.

Throughout his career, director Emanuele Crialese has focused on telling stories about migration, both literal (his gorgeous Nuovomondo chronicles an Italian family’s journey to NYC during the turn of the century) and figurative (in Respiro, a woman rediscovers herself while battling mental illness). In L’immensità, he brings both dimensions into play by telling his most personal tale yet; an autobiography of sorts, set in 1970s Rome, in which the young Andrea (Luana Giuliani) begins to question their gender identity.

Andrea’s only aid is their mother Clara, played by Penélope Cruz, who herself is going through an existential crisis. A Spanish immigrant living in Italy, Clara lives with a husband (Vincenzo Amato) who demands the loyalty and compassion from his wife that he fails to provide. Cruz, who has built an impressive body of work in four languages (Clara speaks Italian with a Spanish accent, adding another layer of nuance to the character), gives one of her finest performances yet as a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage, trying her best to take care of her children while maintaining her own sense of self.

As the film begins its U.S. release, we spoke to Cruz about working with Crialese, how Clara’s costumes informed her sense of time and place, why it means so much to her to tell stories that deal with social issues, and the Italian diva she would love to play.

The Film Stage: In L’immensità you play a version of Emanuele’s mother. In Pain and Glory you played a version of Pedro Almodóvar’s mother. What’s it like to have auteurs you love select you to play their mothers?

Penélope Cruz: It’s a great honor because in these cases it goes beyond picking the right person to play the character. You need a connection that goes beyond that, which I’m lucky to have with both of them.

What kind of work did you need to do with the actors who play your children in the film? Did you have conversations with them about what is happening in the family dynamic onscreen?

For Emanuele and me it was very important to take the time to build strong relationships with the actors before we started shooting, so the children came to my home in Madrid and we rehearsed over many days in a local studio. We shared meals and spent time together, they met my family, and that way we were able to create a real relationship. 

By the time we arrived in Italy we knew each other very well and had created the kind of trust where, if they had had any issues on set, they could come to me or Emanuele and talk to us openly. Whenever I work with children, even if they’re babies, I take the time to develop a connection with them. Everything is so new to children––we might be shooting a scene where we address subjects they’ve never been exposed to before, so we have to prepare and help them.

Right, like the babies in Parallel Mothers, who were so tiny…

I spent a lot of time with those children. Their mothers were so generous as well––they trusted me with their babies. When they’re that age, children need to get used to scent and sound, so because I knew them so well they never cried when they were with me. Milena [Smit] and I made sure to work with them so they wouldn’t feel uncomfortable.

I love the scenes in L’immensità where you and the children recreate all these famous musical moments from Italian culture from the ’60s and ’70s in order to take a break from life. Where did you escape to when you were a child?

You’re not going to believe this, but one of the places I escaped to was Raffaella Carrà’s musical numbers. I used to perform her songs in parks. My grandmother requested numbers, and I loved performing for her. It was an honor to do one of her songs in the film; I felt as if I’d been preparing for this my whole life. I used to study her movements and style when I was a child. Raffaella has been very important in my life, although I never met her.

Also, the Patty Bravo number in the film made me think of my mother because she loves her. That song is also very touching because it’s about thanking others for accepting you for who you are. Those two numbers specifically were so moving because it’s the place where all these characters can truly be who they are; it’s where they can be who they dream of being and aren’t allowed to be in real life.

You also seemed to be having a lot of fun during those sequences…

It’s an incredible adrenaline rush. You end up having a lot of fun. But think about the fact that we were replicating the exact same choreography from the TV shows: Emanuele decided to shoot the scene by recreating it shot-by-shot, and those numbers were so cool they look modern, even today. So it involved a lot of work and preparation from choreographer Blanca Li and the children. 

I love how Clara uses her clothes and hair as an armor to face the hostile environment she lives in. There was a scene where she seems to be a Joan of Arc-like figure getting ready for battle in her bedroom. Can you talk about Clara’s relationship to her costumes?

Clara doesn’t do any of this for her husband; her costumes are another tool she uses to become a little bit more like the person she wants to be. She also uses this to help Andrea become who they want to be, since Clara is the only person in the family who respects and values this. When Clara realizes she won’t be able to give Andrea what they need, she enters a profound depression because she can’t do what she believes is right. Clara’s wings are constantly being cut off. 

Back in the ’70s, women were very conscious of their look and took great care of it. I’m not saying they don’t do that nowadays, but I remember the things my grandmother used to do at home. She taught me how to sew by hand and she used to make beautiful mantones de Manila [Spanish shawls] which you look at now and have nothing to envy haute couture garments. Women took great care of themselves from within their homes, using the skills they had developed. Clara uses all of this to be able to fly.

What does it mean to you to be part of this film at a time when trans people’s rights are under attack all over the world?

It’s very important for me to be part of this story. When I first read the screenplay it went beyond just liking it––I was honored to be asked to be another piece of this puzzle that addresses all these important themes, as well as domestic violence. We might be in 2023, but there are women all over the world living like Clara. Or in much worse conditions. 

Emanuele touches on these themes with nuance––he knows what he’s talking about––and this shows in the film. Being a part of this adventure with him has been a dream. Although it seems things have gotten much better, Emanuele speaks of an arc: where things have progressed in some ways, but there’s another extreme that seems to be more radical than ever when it comes to ignoring, suppressing, and oppressing other people’s freedom. Perhaps things need to go through this in order to achieve balance? I don’t know, really, but I believe it’s important not to lose our hope. 

You were a producer in Juan Diego Botto’s brilliant On the Fringe, which deals with the massive eviction problem countries like Spain are facing. Is it important for you as an artist to be part of films that touch on important social issues?

It’s always a plus. You can’t really decide that you’re only going to make films about these themes, or that you’re always going to play mothers, or star in dramas. You can’t really plan anything that way in our field, but when I have three screenplays on the table I will always choose the one that moved me the most or the one that triggered emotional reactions that don’t necessarily have to be the most comforting, but start a movement inside me that then I can turn into something external through the character. I’m interested in having dialogue and debate. We know a single film won’t change the world, but when movies turn out right they can touch people’s hearts and contribute something. Films and music have that power. 

Going back to music briefly: if Pedro Almodóvar is finally able to make the Raffaella Carrà biopic he’s mentioned wanting to do in the past, you’d definitely say yes to playing her, right?

Can you imagine? I would love to! Daring to play her would be an incredible challenge, but yes––of course I’d say yes. I adore her.

L’immensità is now in limited theaters and will expand.

The post Penélope Cruz on Trans Rights and Why She’s Been Preparing Her Whole Life for L’immensità first appeared on The Film Stage.