An Interview with Tomboy Director Celine Sciamma

Celine Sciamma's first film, Water Lilies, was a lyrical and beautifully executed début about the sometimes painful process of a first (in this case lesbian) crush. Her second film, Tomboy, looks at a younger character; 10 year old Laure, who, after her family moves, begins introducing herself to the other children living near her as a boy named Michael. It's another sensitive and beautifully acted film, and establishes Sciamma one of the most interesting young (she's just 30) voices in French cinema.

I was lucky enough to sit down with Sciamma on a visit to London and chat with her briefly about her new film.

My questions are in bold, Celine Sciamma's replies are in normal type.


Celine Sciamma: The Hospital Club, London. 14/9/11

Sam: To begin at the beginning; your degree is in literature, and you trained as a writer rather than as a filmmaker. So how and when did you decide to become a filmmaker, to move into that side of art?

Celine Sciamma: Well, I don't remember making a decision. I really wanted to be a screenwriter, I wrote my first script when I was in school, which was the script for Water Lilies, which became my first film. In France there is this strange... all the directors write their own movies, unlike here or in the US, there is no market for screenplays, so once you have one that you wrote yourself that really entices you to direct yourself. So that's what happened. I was not sure, but I decided, I will say yes anyway, because the movie is not going to be made anyway because it won't find money. And then everything got really fast, because we got the money, so I got to direct the movie but I don't remember taking the decision, because I was so scared.

Sam: Just something that happened because of the way the industry works in France then?

CS: Yeah, and it was really lucky that it happened because I discovered how much I loved it, but I was really really scared of doing it.

Sam: Obviously you're a young female filmmaker, and both of your first two films are to a certain degree about young women coming of age. How much personal experience do you find leaking in to your cinema, and is it important to you that that happens?

CS: I think, especially when you do work about childhood, you go to your memories, the teenage years even more so, even more vivid because it's closer. But I think you have to talk a little bit about what you know, about what is true, so that you can bring fiction [to it]. If I'm talking about a fifty year old man, I don't know anything about that, so I think It's not going to be great storytelling, whereas, talking about childhood and teenagehood, as a rookie, as a coming of age director, I feel like I can go further from my life. It's not really autobiographical, I remember how it felt, so I have the feeling and then I can build characters that are very far away from me. But of course, especially in Tomboy, there are things that are memories from my own childhood, like the relationship between the two sisters, that's really something that is mine.

Sam: The other thing that is really central in Tomboy is the issue of gender, and I think it's going to provoke a lot of debate with audiences; is she transsexual, its it just a phase? Is that something that you decided for yourself, and did you discuss that with Zoe, who plays Laure?

CS:Well, I have my own opinion of course about who she's going to become, even if it's not in the movie, the movies contains all the hypotheses - willingly - that way everybody can connect. We talked, me and Zoe, about how she felt about the character, about who she was going to become, we talked about her opinion, because that's the one that really...

Sam: She's quite young to have a defined take on that.

CS: Of course, that's why it was interesting that she really connects with the character. To her it was just a phase, and that as important for her, that it was just a phase because then she could go really deep into the phase.

Sam: Does that come from the fact that she's actually quite a girly girl?

CS: She's not that girly, no. She was kind of boyish actually. She doesn't have the short hair, she had that for the movie but now it's grown back, but she's the kind of girl who plays with the boys and she's very childish, very into childhood, not interested in boys or girls, she just plays soccer everyday, basketball, she's really an outdoor little girl. She's kind of boyish, and that's why I think she connects, and why she thinks it's just a phase, because for herself she thinks it's just a phase.



Sam: Talking of playing with the boys, you cast some of Zoe's real life friends as her friends in the movie. One of the things that fascinated me about both Water Lilies and Tomboy is that you have very naturalistic performances from very young and generally quite inexperienced actors. o how do you work with them as a director, do you stick close to the script?

CS: Well it depends. When there are a lot of children on the set and we have those group scenes it's really about directing them in the moment. So I'm picking child after child and it's not totally improv, I'm telling him 'I'm shooting you' so they always know when the camera is on them and when they have to perform or they don't. So I just let them play football and sometimes I say 'now you're gonna spit' or 'now you're gonna look at her' So it's live, live directing, because they didn't read the scene before.

But when I'm with Zoe, or the little sister, it's all written down and they have to say the right words. Of course we bring a little improv, and we do very long takes - ten to twelve minute takes. They always have things to do; playing with play-doh, playing in the bath, to get this natural feeling, and then we try to get the words that have been written.

Sam: Talking of how you shot the film, you made quite an interesting choice with the camera you used for this film, which is a stills camera.

CS: Yes, the Cannon 7D

Sam: So, how did that influence the design of the film, and were there particular challenges or advantages to the choice of that camera?

CS: I chose it mostly for artistic reasons, it's a cheap camera and everybody is shooting with it now because it's cheap, it's a good camera, but it's cheap. What I really like about it is that it resembles 35mm, regarding the field of depth, regarding the colour, and so you can really get the characters and the blurry backgrounds that you get from 35mm. So to me it was an HD camera that had a very strong cinematographic feeling. It's also lighter, and the camera needed to be lighter because when you are shooting at a child's scale, like that [indicates camera height], you have to be lighter, so that was also part of the decision.

More philosophically I like the idea that memories from your childhood, it's still pictures, for my generation and for yours, now it's going to be different. I like the fact I was shooting with a still camera, the feeling, like those memories from childhood. But it's really because the image has a strong cinematographic feeling.

Sam: I know Tomboy came together very quickly, and that you had been working on the idea but banged the script out very fast. Do you think that benefited the film, or when you watch it now do you think 'I wish I'd had a few more months to work on that'?

CS: I think it benefited the film because I knew it from the start, it was my own decision that I only had three months between writing and shooting to bring the movie to life, so I made the script thinking about that, thinking 'okay it's going to be only fifty sequences, not too many sets' because I wasn't trying to make something that big [a large gap between her hands] fit something that big [a small gap between her hands]. But of course sometimes you have regrets, but that's not a matter of scale, it's a matter of pragmatism, you know? But the whole energy of the film was like that, it's been an amazing experience but I don't know that I'll do it again. One of a kind.

Sam: You also said that you didn't expect Tomboy to be your second film. Do you have one you expect to be your third and is it getting made?

CS: [Laughs] No. I don't know yet. I wish I could do TV, I'm interested in TV series also.

Sam: To tell a story across a longer period?

CS: Yeah, to follow characters for a long time.

Sam: And just a quick final question; aside from any of your own, what's one film you would tell everyone to see.

CS: Oh... The one I'm always showing to people when they haven't seen it is Mulholland Drive.


Thanks to Celine Sciamma for sitting down with me, and to Peccadillo Pictures and Premier Pr for setting up the interview. Tomboy opens on Friday and is one of the best films of 2011 to date, and Sciamma's Water Lilies is on DVD and is one of my Top 100 films. Check them both out, and Mullholland Drive if you haven't already, she's right, it's great.

An interview with Brian Welsh, director of In Our Name

I think I’ll always have a bit of a soft spot for IN OUR NAME, because it was through that film that I got my first real break as a critic, getting into this year’s London Film Festival, so it was a pleasure to speak with Brian Welsh about his provocative second feature. We spoke over the phone, me from my office and Brian from the bar of the Curzon Soho. There was some noise on the line, and from the bar, and that combined with Brian’s thick Glasgow accent has sometimes made this transcript a bit of a challenge. Still, it was a fun interview, and Brian was happy to engage with the various issues that his film throws up.


24FPS: Brian, I wanted to start off by asking you a bit about your background, and how you first became interested in becoming a film director.

Brian Welsh: Sure, my background is really in editing. I was working as a runner in a post-production suite up in Glasgow, and I was fortunate enough while I was there to get the opportunity to cut a pilot for a documentary, which fortunately got financed by the BBC. Then I continued to work as an editor, cutting films about social issues affecting Glasgow, cutting some films for the Scottish Socialist Party. I really wanted to get into drama, but realised it was hard to break in from Glasgow, so I came down to the National Film School. Using resources and people there, I decided to direct this script [I assume this is his first feature; Kin] and that no budget film got me the opportunity to get my foot in the door, and get the money to fund In Our Name.

24FPS: I noticed from your IMDB filmography, that you’ve done a lot of documentary and engaged with a lot of social issues in your films.

BW: Sure, yeah.

24FPS: And that’s something that In Our Name does as well, often quite angrily. So I wondered if there was a personal reason you wanted to engage with the ideas in In Our Name, and was it the issue or the story that you first came up with?

BW: It’s complicated, because I do tend to get my back up if there’s something I feel strongly that I want to talk about, but there are also a lot of personal things in it as well. I guess you’re asking did the story come first or did the issue come first. I was really drawn to write it because of the testimonials I’d been reading about soldiers, both in the states and over here, and their difficulties reintegrating back into society after being away, and this breaking of a kind of military covenant, the agreement between the armed forces and ourselves as a society. But as a story, I’m drawn to stories where something follows you and creates a stumbling block, and in this case guilt; guilt from the characters past creates problems for them in the present. So this idea of this soldier coming home harbouring these scars, this guilt, and it becoming a real stumbling block to them living the life they want to live, was something that drew me to it, as well as the issue.

24FPS: Obviously the big challenge of the film is finding the right actor to play Suzy. So can you tell us a little about how you cast Joanne Froggatt, and how you worked with her on that performance?

BW: Sure. I knew I wanted to see Joanne Froggatt very early on, and unfortunately we got a knockback to begin with, so I saw a wealth of actresses after getting that knockback from Joanne and I said to my producer in the middle of the auditions “look, I really, really want to see Joanne Froggatt, can we see if we can set up a meeting or something?” Coincidentally, she’d read the script by this point, it had been lying around in her agent’s office, and it was kind of a coming together. She said “Oh, I really buzz off the script”, and I asked if she’d come in and read for it. So she came and read for the part, and I was absolutely blown away by her first audition; visibly moved, and she really likes to work in the same way that I like to work. We were very much in tune with Mel Raido [who plays Suzy’s husband Mark] as well, who was fantastic from the first audition.

The process was… we spent a lot of time in rehearsal. We had a very intensive ten days, all living and existing as the characters, also with the kid, Chloe, who plays Suzy’s daughter. They spent ten days existing as a family, and improvising defining moments up to the moment that the story starts, so that when we got to the shoot there was a very three-dimensional, tangible relationship there.

24FPS: The other thing I want to ask about the preparation is; your two main actors are playing ex soldiers, so did you have them do any training for that?

BW: Yeah, I did. Mel’s an incredibly physically fit guy anyway, really fit, and coincidentally into boxing, which was in the script. But Joanne did some training in a programme called Brit Mil Fit where you can go to parks or sport centres around the country and ex soldiers train people in a military type scenario, and Joanne did that, and also I was keen that she bulked up a lot, because she’s very slight, so I had her pigging out on pizza and going to a lot of this training. We’re also very fortunate that Chloe, the little girl who plays the daughter, her Mother and Father coincidentally were both soldiers and actually met in the army, so they were a great resource for us to call on.

24FPS: I think when people see the film they’ll agree that one of the most striking scenes is when Suzy addresses her sister’s primary school class, and breaks down after telling them a war story. So I was wondering where that story came from, and the process of shooting that particular scene?

BW: Obviously the story is about something horrific that’s happened to a young Iraqi girl. Reading a lot of the stories, case studies and testimonies, children are very often a trigger and will stimulate memories and guilt, and the idea of children being victims of war, I felt that was something I wanted to include; her being a mother as well. So the idea of children and the effect that conflict has on children; that was kind of the reason for including that scene.

When we shot the scene, we shot it in a school up in Newcastle, and I was very keen that the kids knew nothing about what was happening, I knew from working with kids in the past that you’ll only get them to react to things in the moment once, twice if you’re lucky, or you’d have to rewrite the story every take to get that genuine reaction from them. So we shot the kids first, and they had no idea what the story was so that, and obviously Joanne’s performance, so that reaction you see from them is absolutely genuine. Every take we did after that they were completely desensitised, and by the end of three or four takes they were yawning.

But Joanne… one of the things that she really identified with in the script was that scene, and I was crying behind the monitor watching when she did her first take.

24FPS: A thing that really struck me visually about the film was your use of location, and how you use the derelict parts of Newcastle to echo Suzy’s experiences in Iraq and what she saw there.

BW: Yeah.

24FPS: and combining that with the use of sound to suggest her hallucinations. So could you tell us about designing those sequences; were they always designed that way, or did you initially want to go into the war itself?

BW: That’s a really good question, and something that not many people pick up on, but I felt that because it’s a psychological condition and most of the conflict in the film is inside her head we really have to see and feel things the way that she does. So there was a lot of sound written into the script, because that was a way that we could voyage into her head. It was quite difficult shooting a film like that; quite a naturalistic language but trying to show something that’s psychological. I fought a lot with whether to use flashbacks or not, but I came to the conclusion that we have to, we have to use flashbacks because we have to see what’s going on; just a glimpse of what’s inside her mind’s eye. I think that blending of languages gives it a uniqueness.

24FPS: You’ve partnered with a few veterans charities for the release of the film, and obviously you’re very passionate about the issues. Apart from the goal of finding an audience, is there a political goal for you with the film, and how might you define that if there is?

BW: Combat Stress were incredibly important to my research, they discussed with me the issues in the film, they allowed me to go up and spend some time at their centres and to meet real sufferers of PTSD, and that hammered home to us the importance of portraying the issue as honestly as we could. We hope that the film will help their cause and also perhaps reach out to people who need to seek help for a condition that obviously… obviously the army is a hyper masculine environment and talking about ones feelings isn’t always viewed as a strength. So it’s often bottled up and the average is 14 years for someone to seek help.

24FPS: I think it’s an admirable goal, and that’s also why when I saw that BBFC had given you an 18 I was a little disappointed, because there are kids who’ll be going into the army who aren’t yet 18, and I think it’s an interesting film for them to see before they do that.

BW: Yeah. The violence in the film is not explicit, the sex in the film, though one of the scenes is kind of harrowing, is not explicit. The reason it was given an 18 is that we used the word “cunt” five times. Apparently if we’d used it three times it would have been fine.

24FPS: [laughing] Still ridiculous aren’t they?

BW: But how many 16-18 year olds are going to watch it I don’t know. The film will be available on Curzon on Demand.

24FPS: Just a couple of quick questions before we wrap up. First of all I was wondering if you’ve got a next project yet and what you can tell us.

BW: I’ve been away, after the festival I went up to Scotland writing a new project. I’ve got pages and pages of stuff I need to read my way through, but I don’t want to say too much about it. It’s a film about looking for spirituality in all the wrong places.

24FPS: And just one final question; Aside from In Our Name, obviously, what’s the best film you’ve seen lately?

BW: Jesus, good question, what have I seen lately? I saw a wonderful film at the festival, it was a Vienamese film called Don’t Be Afraid, Bi.

24FPS: I wanted to see it, but I missed it.

BW: I thought it was a beautiful film. What else have I seen that I really enjoyed? I loved Of Gods and Men.

My thanks to Brian for taking the time to talk to me. His film opens on December 10th, it's playing at the Curzon Renoir in London, and should be coming to independent screens in the big cities. Check your local listings. You'll also be able to see the film through the Curzon On Demand service, which launches next year. You can read my review from the London Film Festival HERE.

An interview with Spork director J.B. Ghuman, Jr and actress Rachel G. Fox

For a lot of reasons I felt much more relaxed for this interview than I had for my last one. Rather than a rather blank office we sat in the Central London Hospital Club bar, much cosier (if noisier) surroundings than a conference room. Even before the interview actually began JB Ghuman and Rachel Fox were funny and engaging, both remarking on my little voice recorder when I put it on the table.

From the dress (JB remarked on Rachel’s tight striped number, saying that she looked “like a sexy zebra”) to the manner the whole interview was casual, the tone relaxed and chatty, as JB and Rachel expanded on my questions, often ending up talking among themselves. I hope the transcript manages to capture the tone between JB and Rachel, which was close, chummy and occasionally good naturedly kidding. The talk gets a little rambling at times, but you try and interrupt these two in mid flow (you’ll see what I mean).

I don’t know if I’ve just been lucky so far, but this was another very easy interview, with two people who seemed excited about their film and were only too happy to talk, again we overran, I was booked for 20 minutes, but the interview ended up running for the better part of half an hour.

My questions and other interjections will appear in normal type, with JB Ghuman’s answers in bold, and Rachel Fox’s in italics.

[Before the interview, I’ve just put my recorder on the table]
J.B Ghuman: Oh cool, looks like a robot. We’re easily impressed.

Rachel Fox: Yeah, amused very easily.

24FPS: Nice and easy to use, fortunately.

24FPS: Okay… I wanted to start by asking you about casting, because with a film so character driven as this it’s obviously key to its success so; that process from both of your points of view, and JB, particularly casting Spork, because it’s such an unusual role.

JBG: First of all, my casting director is Jeremy Gordon, and he came in and it was a very Type A casting situation, we put out a casting notice and we got hundreds of kids to come in for all the parts. Spork, I had seen tons and tons of kids. I got this crazy reaction; I wrote the film, just some crazy artist who doesn’t know what he’s doing. I didn’t know what to think, I didn’t know if agents were going to think “Oh my God”. The dialogue is very crisp, it’s very candid and to the bone, so I didn’t think that I’d get that big of a response, but I got this crazy response; all these casting directors and agencies “we love your script”, blah blah blah. LA’s so weird.

I got hundreds of kids to come in for the different parts, and Spork, obviously that role was the big role to cast and I saw hundreds of kids, but when Savannah Stehlin came in. I’m big on character, so I don’t know if they say you should or shouldn’t dress for the part, to me I think that’s totally good advice, and she came in totally dressed for the part. I’m very visual, so for me as a writer/director, I love that stuff. She had her crazy hair, she came in in jean overalls and she really nailed it. I didn’t give her nay notes and I said “definitely her for the callback”. She came back for the callback and she had to do the scene where she yells at her mother – the gravestone. I didn’t want to do that scene, I went through an acting phase myself and I hate, hate auditions like that.

RF: Where you have to scream and cry.

JBG: It’s like, really? And you’re outside the room and you hear the other actor screaming. I hate auditions like that.

RF: I agree.

JBG: Because, when you get the part you have time to prepare.

RF: But in the audition you just have to turn it on right there, and you get one time to really nail it.

JBG: It’s like “Oh, nice to meet you. Go crazy.” And you’re thinking “Oh my God, I have to act like a sociopath” [Both laugh]. It’s so weird.

RF: And you have to not care about what anyone thinks.

JBG: And then they say “thank you” and you think “I’m going to leave, and totally go crazy”. It’s so unhealthy to do that to anyone, let alone children. But, mind you, I did it. I put it in there, because I was scared, it’s my first film, so what if I get on set and... this moment is so pivotal in the film, and if this girl, whoever I cast as Spork, can’t do it… It’ll ruin the film, it won’t have any heart, cause she won’t ever get there. Savannah came in – nailed it – never embarrassed for a second or anything, she came in and completely fell apart. I hugged her, she was crying, and it wasn’t even that, it was just her vibe and her energy. I’m not Miss Cleo, but she had a great vibe to her, I knew that she was the one.

Rachel came in – her story is awesome [Rachel laughs] – Rachel Fox who’s sitting next to me who played Betsy Byotch, she’s been working for a while, she was in Desperate Housewives, so she didn’t come in the conventional classic way, she wasn’t waiting in a queue at a casting session, me and Rachel had a meeting. Cause when you’re an actor, in the States at least, and you’ve done a lot of work you end up taking meetings with a director rather than coming in for casting. She came in, and she took a different route, Rachel didn’t come in in character, didn’t come in looking the part with her bangs and super bitchy. She actually came in very sweet and humble, very professional, and she brought a guitar with her.

RF: [Laughs] Yeah, I remember.

JBG: And she was like: “I’m going to sing you a song”. [Rachel laughs]. The song was about loving yourself, and I said “You know you’re up for the evil rotten bitch, right?”

RF: I came in like the opposite of my role, I don’t know why I did that.

24FPS: But obviously the singing is key to the part as well.

JBG: Yes, and she performed the song, she’s a singer songwriter as well and she wrote and sang it, and she nailed it. So of course that’s great… and now let’s read some lines where you have to be a complete witch, and she did, and what it did show me is that she has incredible range. Lucky for Rachel her body of work really complemented the part, because she had done a role on Desperate Housewives where she played a really mischievous, evil, female Omen child, and I knew, when she left the room. We already had the casting session out, it had been set up before I met Rachel, so I ended up seeing hundreds of girls for the part, but throughout the process Rachel was the comparison. I was like “Not better than Rachel, nah, not better than Rachel” [Rachel giggles]. At the end they said “who do you want?” “I want Rachel, as long as she will frost her hair”.

RF: [Laughing] Cut my bangs, bleach blonde, completely.

JBG: But she did it.


RF: That pretty much explains it from my perspective too, I don’t even remember why I came in sweet, with my guitar. I was just being myself.

JBG: You are sweet.

RF: Thank you. I don’t know, maybe I wanted to show how much I could flip it, how evil I could be. It was fun, we had a kind of general meeting, we talked about stuff and life and then about the script. I got the script from my agent and I loved it, and I definitely wanted to be a part of it.

24FPS: The singing and dancing is a key part for you, so I imagine there was a lot of rehearsal for that. How involved were you in putting those scenes together, you and the other girls?

RF: Really involved. I actually had to learn three different dances. One was the dance down the hallway, I had to learn a Britney Spears dance – a Britney Spears parody – and then I had to learn a dance from the sixties… sixties disco music so ... Actually a lot of the rehearsals were quick, we had to learn the dances kinda quickly. We learnt the sixties dance disco thing the day before we shot it, so we had to be good with picking up things quickly. I actually didn’t sing in the film, just mostly dancing.

JBG: People keep calling my film a musical. It’s not a musical. They say “It’s like Glee”, and no it’s not, it’s way cooler.

RF: No one’s singing. Just dancing.

JBG: I keep calling it a dancesical. “That’s not a word”. I’m like, “it is now”.

24FPS: Another big element in the film is obviously the visual design of it, which is very striking. So how did you and the art department go about designing that very particular world?

JBG: I’m what you call a type ADD control freak, so… All of this was in my script: the lightning bolt on the finger, the boom box with the Christmas lights around it, it was all in my script. The vines reaching her feet, her collage wall, it was all written down from 2003. How did I go about it? You know, ---, he was my visual effects supervisor, I art direct my own films, and I just came into it with a big imagination and hard work. It just came about by seeing things, drawing things out, working with my special effects artitsts. I’m a huge Tim Burton fan…

24FPS: I can see that with the vines.

JBG: Yeah, so obviously I don’t have a Tim Burton budget, so I don’t have Johnny Depp running around with scissors on his hands, but I do love surrealism. To me, everyone has their own reasons for telling stories, I like to see stories from a point of view we can’t see with our two eyes, cause to me if you’re going to tell a story, why tell it in a way you can experience it? Might as well tell it in a way we can’t ever see it, so that’s why I like that stuff.

24FPS: As far as Betsy is concerned, I think we’ve all met a Betsy…

RF: In our lives, absolutely, yeah.

24FPS… you don’t have to name names, obviously, but is there a particular Betsy that you based yours on?

RF: I had a couple of Betsy’s, cause I’ve been to different schools and I know that every school I went to definitely had at least one Betsy, so I pulled from the different ones that I knew. I guess I should thank them for helping me out with the role, cause I just basically pulled from exactly what they did. I just used that as my backbone for Betsy Byotch, I remember the feeling that they gave me in my stomach when they were doing really evil things, and I tried to put that into Betsy and give the audience that feeling, and give the other actors that feeling. That same really evil, tight feeling.

JBG: Rachel Fox is strong, even if you’re unaware of it. Most these Betsy Byotch girls are insecure, anybody that’s really mean to other people and is really hurtful and vile with their mouth and just overall spiteful, they’re obviously very insecure. It reads as very strong, but it comes from a place of their own pain and all that crap. Rachel Fox has a very strong sense about her. At her age usually girls are girls and women are women and Rachel Fox is lucky, at least I think so, because her face is… the way her bone is structured, and her cheeks, she has the semblance of a woman, which gives her a strong face. For a girl who is 12, 13, 14, she’s very mature, so it can read as very bitchy. I don’t know how much in your private life that affects you, or if you go to school and everyone thinks you’re a total snob or what. But when you look at Rachel Fox, she’s so sweet [looking at her in this moment, sweetly embarrassed would be an accurate description], she came in with a guitar and sang a song about loving yourself [Rachel starts laughing, clearly a little embarrassed]. Then if you Google her she’s got this song – I hope I’m not embarrassing you – she’s got this song about shopping, she’s like this Clueless girl. [To Rachel] That’s a 90’s reference, sorry.

RF: No, I know.

JBG: She’s like this valley girl, and she’s actually very funny and she’s very sweet, very kind. She’s very sweet to me at least, but she has this sense of strength about her whereas in the film it comes across as very bitchy evilness, which is good. Most of those girls come across as very strong, and they’re leaders, but the real reason is that they’re so insecure, that’s why they make such an effort to be a leader and be so mean. Lucky for me her strength can be perceived in this film as very bitchy. Might be why you keep getting those roles.

RF: It must be.

JBG: She’s like a little Madonna, her face is very angular, she has these strong cheekbones and your eyebrows are so beautifully pronounced over your eyes.

RF: [slightly questioning] Thank you.

JBG: She looks like a woman, but she’s 13 in the film. So when you put Rachel Fox around other 12, 13, 14 year old girls you’re like: “That’s the leaderbitch”. [Rachel and I start laughing]. She looks like the mean girl in the middle, but it’s really because she looks so mature, and so strong. I hope that doesn’t backfire on you.

RF: I hope it doesn’t either. That’s a good point.

JBG: Do you get flak at school for being a brat? Do they call you snobby girl?

RF: No, cause they know me, but like you were saying I’m just a girl with a guitar; I’m nice and happy and I don’t hurt people, I’m not mean.

JBG: If I didn’t know you, and I was a nerd in school, I’d be like “here comes Rachel Fox, she thinks she’s so cool cause she’s on TV”

RF: It’s so funny, I asked my friend what her first impression of me was, when she saw me, and she described something similar to what you said.

JBG: For film and roles it’s great, cause you walk in the room and it’s “she’s very strong”, but in life the kids who aren’t as strong would think “She’s such a brat”.

RF: They’re so quick to judge you by the way you look.

24 FPS: That’s another thing I wanted to bring up in relation to the Betsy character

JBG: Oh yeah, you’re here.

[Everyone laughs]

24FPS: No, it’s fine, thank you…. was that you do seem very nice and very sweet…

RF: Thank you

24FPS:… So does that make it a particular challenge to play someone who’s so bitchy, and such a vile person?

RF: Well, acting is what I do, so I have to go and change into completely different people, so it’s not difficult, it’s just fun. I just look at other people, other Betsy Byotches and I follow after them, I look at other films, at the people in them and I follow after that. It’s what I do. Everything has its challenges, but, it’s just fun for me, it’s like an activity.

24FPS: Something else I was going to bring up with both of you actually is, are there other films that you particularly looked at? Particularly, JB, from your point of view; there are a lot of different cultural references in Spork so I wondered what the particular influences were on you?

JBG: I keep laughing when people ask “who are you influenced by?” and I’m a complete hack, I’m the Gwen Stefani of filmmaking; I don’t care, I will openly say it just like she does: I am a giant mixtape of things I love, and anybody who says otherwise is totally lying. To think you have an original voice is so egotistical. I don’t think it’s possible, I think it’s like saying “My hair’s an original colour”. Everyone has their twin and for me, of course, I’m just a collage of what I like – I’m confetti. I love Todd Solondz; Welcome to the Dollhouse. I keep being told “it’s like Glee, it’s like Napoleon Dynamite” I’m like, “seriously, dig deeper”, neither of those movies inspired me. Welcome to the Dollhouse I love, Todd Solondz I love, such a talent, and why he’s not doing giant studio films I don’t know, maybe he doesn’t want to.

24FPS: I can see that, and also I mentioned John Hughes.

JBG: I like John Hughes, I’m more of a John Waters… actually that sounds so arrogant. I’m not John Waters, but I’m more of a fan of John Waters. John Hughes, he’s a little before my time [Ghuman will be 30 in December]. I didn’t really get into it, cause it was very much a Molly Ringwald misfit, it wasn’t really biting or offensive, it was just heartfelt 80’s, whereas to me John Waters was crazy. Divine and drag queens killing each other [Rachel laughs], surburban moms becoming serial killers? I’m like, he’s amazing, he’s so crass and crazy. So I love him for his characters.

24FPS: Rachel, were there any particular things that you looked at? Heathers seemed like a reference to me.

JBG: She’s not gonna get that, but Heathers was a huge reference for me, thank you for saying that.

RF: What is Heathers?

JBG: Heathers was the predecessor to Mean Girls.

RF: That’s amazing, cause I was just about to say Mean Girls, the role of Rachel McAdams, that was what I based Betsy Byotch on in my mind. I pulled from my own mind and girls that I knew, but Mean Girls was the main film.

JBG: Which, literally, everyone called the new Heathers.

24FPS: [To Rachel] Well, Kim Walker in Heathers.

JBG: Yeah! Heathers is a little darker, cause in Heathers people die.

RF: Oh God.

24FPS: One thing we haven’t mentioned yet is that Spork has a particular identity, as an intersex kid, which is very unusual, as a leading character. Did that make it especially challenging to get the film made, and have you heard anything back from people with the same issues?

JBG: Did it make it harder? No. I wasn’t, and I openly say this, I wasn’t and am not trying to make an anthem for intersex, hermaphrodite, whatever term is considered not offensive, for that walk of life. I’m a gay man, and I didn’t make this movie for gay men. I’m not trying to speak for anybody, other than the misfit. With this movie I was reaching out to everybody in the room; the cool kid, the nerdy kid, everybody. So, was it difficult making this movie cause that was my lead? No, because it’s indie film, I wasn’t going to Fox or Disney where, yeah, that probably would have been an issue.

Did anybody come back to me? Yeah, I’ve got nothing but positive feedback though, I think because I didn’t try to hit the nail on the head, because I didn’t try to do a shower scene where she cries at her crotch. I’m not trying to go there, I’m not trying to speak for the intersex community, I’m trying to tell a story about a misfit, who happens to be intersex – or in my film we say hermaphrodite. I think the reason the community has responded so positively is probably because I did that, because otherwise I’d probably have fallen short. I don’t know the jargon, I did not research references and a ton of media for hermaphrodite little girls or boys, because I didn’t really feel the need to, because that’s not really the centre of my story. I treated it just like a common thing kids go through, or just something she had, but really she needed to love herself for who she was, not just because she’s a hermaphrodite.

24FPS: We’ve talked about this a bit, but as far as the cast goes most of them are very young. So is there a specific approach that you took to directing the kids as opposed to the adults?

JBG: Yes. I love answering this question when I’m with the kids. When we’re on stage with one of the adult actors I don’t know how to answer it without offending them. It’s my first feature; I’ve done music videos, I’ve done some documentary shorts, I’ve done experimental art shorts and I’ve done a couple of narrative shorts, but never a feature film with kids. So, as a first time feature director, I was nervous, and I didn’t want to step on anybody’s toes, do I say “Do it again, but my way”… is that rude, what do I do? [24FPS laughs]. I went through an acting phase myself so I did know a little bit from an actor’s perspective. But working with kids, I would say, is awesome, by far a better experience and I’ll say that to anybody. I think we’re born smart, and then as we get older I think the trick is staying smart, not getting smart, kids are just so much more uninhibited, they’re so free.


I’m sitting next to Rachel Fox right now and she comes across as very mature, very together, but on the set he ego is so minimal. She doesn’t have that life experience behind her, she hasn’t been told, she hasn’t been told yes or no so much. So she she’s so accessible, so open, so free and that goes for a lot of my kid cast, it was like having fun. They take their art very seriously, and they work very diligently, their age doesn’t make a difference, they’re just as focused as the adult actors. But on the flipside, directing them and handling them, particularly with Rachel cause she’s here now, it was very much more like having fun, which I appreciate. Mind you, the material is light hearted so it wasn’t like we were doing Gone With the Wind. So maybe it’s a different experience if I were doing Let The Right One In or something [laughing] might be a little more intense. But in this situation, which is my genre, and I’ll probably stick to my genre for life, it was fun.

The only part I was a little nervous about was the dialogue versus the age. Rachel, and I’m sure you’d be fine to admit it, she said “I don’t wanna say the F word so much”, and I said “It’s in the script sweetie”, she’s like “alright, well can I do some where I say fudge?”

RF: Yeah! I remember that, we did takes of one scene where sometimes I’d say freaking, and other times I said the F word.

JBG: And she’s a sweetheart, and she’s like “I don’t talk like this in real life” and she’s a very professional actress… this is actually a cute thing, but she always gave me two options. She said “Look, I’ll totally do it your way, the way in the script” but she’s an independent young woman, growing into herself, and she has the right to own what she does, and she’s like “Well, I have my own rights and wrongs and I’d like to do it both ways, just to say that I did my thing”. That was the only thing. Even with the other kids… she had to say some racist stuff, they had to curse a lot, Charlie was being called a fag, I was like “this is so awkward”.

RF: It was awkward for me. It didn’t matter cause when you watch it it’s not… it’s funny.

JBG: I think in the moment it feels a little more biting, cause you haven’t seen the final product yet, so in my brain I knew what the final result was, and it’s not supposed to be taken that seriously, it’s hyperreality.

RF: Exactly, when we watch it it’s funny.

JBG: But in the moment it’s… “This dialogue’s really intense”. I’m saying “It’s not supposed to be, just say it, trust me”.

RF: [laughs] “Just trust me”, yeah.

JBG: Cause in the moment you would have to say it over and over and over again. She’d say “I really feel bad saying ‘fucking wee wee’”. [Rachel bursts out laughing]. I’d tell her “Just trust me, it won’t be taken so seriously once you see the film.

24FPS: You’re using a lot of stereotypes obviously, but also to break them, I think.

JBG: Right, so in the final result once the music was in and the colours and it was very colour booky and hokey. The film doesn’t take itself very seriously… I mean, Spork falls off a swing at the end, right when she says “love yourself” and then once that energy is put in there… I hope at least, people realize it’s not… that offensive.

RF: No, it’s not.

24FPS: I think we’re going to be wrapping up pretty soon, so I just wanted to ask you both about your next projects. JB, obviously this one took a while, so is there something you’re going to be able to move on to quite soon?

JBG: Oh, absolutely. I have another script called Rhino, and it’s another JB collage/ripoff of fifty things. It’s about a half latino half… I keep saying Mullato, but that’s not the right word, it’s actually Blatina, which is more offensive. I’m like “don’t say that” [24FPS laughs] but it’s half black, half latin girl – she’s blatina – and it’s hopefully Rosario Dawson, she’s my muse I’m going after. She dresses in these lace unitards, she’s crazy, she’s so awesome. It’s very late seventies, she’s obsessed with Prince; Purple Rain era [to Rachel] that’s another era where you’ll go “What?” [Rachel laughs] but it’s crazy, it’s fun. She works in a tollbooth on the highway. It’s very, very dark, but funny, and it’s a film more about being yourself in that she teaches people to strip down to their underwear and kinda explode into magic and love and all that crazy hippie shit I like. So it’s gonna be a musical.

24FPS: So this one IS a musical?

RF: This is going to be singing and dancing?

JBG: Well, it’s more of a dancesical again. I don’t get singing, I can’t sing so I can’t relate. But I can dance. And I’m putting together a studio film with Hasbro.

24FPS: And Rachel, I understand you’re working with Daniel Craig.

RF: Yes, I just wrapped a film called Dream House, we shot up in Toronto for a couple of weeks, it’s with Daniel Craig and Naomi Watts. It’s really cool, and it’s coming out February of next year.

24FPS: So that’s a big release in the States, right?

RF: Yeah, it’s a worldwide release, with Universal, and it’s a psychological thriller so the complete flipside of Spork, which is a comedy and this is a dark scary… it’s not a horror film, it’s a thriller.

24FPS: And just to finish up, again for the both of you. Leaving aside Spork, what’s the best film you’ve seen lately?

JBG: [To Rachel] You go first.

RF: I just saw The Social Network, and I thought that film was amazing, cause all the actors in it were really… [to JB] Have you seen it?

JBG: No, I’ve been told by so many people that it’s amazing.

RF: It’s such a good film [to 24FPS] have you seen it?

24FPS: It’s one of the best films of the year.

JBG: Does it make you hate Facebook or like it?

24FPS: I hate Facebook already.

RF: Yeah, I hate Facebook too, but it makes you see the genius points of it, the creation and why it’s such a phenomenon.

JBG: [To 24FPS] Oh, really? I haven’t seen anything new.

24FPS: Doesn’t have to be new, just something you’ve seen lately.

JBG: Well, there’s a movie I watch all the time that I love.

RF: What is it?

JBG: The Dark Crystal. I love that movie, I love Jim Henson, so I’ve seen that movie on a loop. You know what, to give you a really cool answer, cause I’m watching movies for the Hasbro film I’m trying to put together, and I watched a film called Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains.

24FPS: I’ve been wanting to see that for ages.

JBG: I stumbled on it for research, cause it’s a rock n roll girl hero movie. It’s so good; Diane Lane and Laura Dern, so random, so obscure, but it’s so amazing. It has the drummer from The Clash and all these crazy people in it and it’s a really kickass movie.

24FPS: You can’t get it anywhere.

JBG: I have it, I got it on DVD, can you believe it?

24FPS: No.

RF: Where’d you find it?
JBG: Netflix. And it’s really good, Diane Lane’s obviously beautiful in it and she’s really talented, and the make up and the clothing. It’s so kickass to see it.

And with that I thanked JB and Rachel for a great interview. I hope you guys enjoyed it, any comments will of course be welcomed as I’m still pretty new at this whole thing.

An interview with Katell Quillévéré

The day after seeing her debut film, UN POISON VIOLENT [LOVE LIKE POISON], I went to meet director Katell Quillévéré at the offices of Artificial Eye in London. I had prepared, but this was my first interview and I was (hopefully not too visibly) nervous. As I sat and waited I saw other journalists doing their interviews, which seemed to be taking a long time. Shit, had I prepared enough questions? Quick, think of more.

I was told I’d have 10 or 15 minutes with Katell, which put me a little more at ease, and I was ushered into the conference room where two women had been sitting with the other journalists. As I was introduced to Katell I was shocked to discover that she was the younger of the two, the woman I had assumed was the translator because she looked so youthful.

Katell was petite, and though she’s just 30 she looked a good deal younger. Shoulder length dirty blonde hair framed a classically pretty face with a friendly smile. If she noticed that when I was introduced I initially went to shake the translator’s hand she either found it funny, or was simply polite enough not to mention it.

I made a hash of the beginning of the interview, as my nerves prompted me to try and stretch by asking an opening question that I hadn’t written, and a follow up that was an attempt to be chatty but which, I realized the second I asked it, could easily have been taken as my asking for Katell’s qualifications. I learnt my lesson fast, and stuck to my notes thereafter, at which point Katell seemed to be much more at ease, and the interview began to fly by.

Our 10 to 15 minutes actually ran to 20, and so full were Katell’s answers that I didn’t get through all my questions. For the most part I think she understood my questions, but she answered, most of the time, in French.

My questions are in bold type.

24FPS: LOVE LIKE POISON is your first feature film as a director, so I wanted to ask you about how you got into film in the first place and what you’ve done before, because this will be the first time that a lot of my readers will have come across one of your films.

KATELL QUILLEVERE: At university in Paris I studied philosophy and Film, and I made three short films before this one.

24FPS: Did they also play at LFF, or other festivals?

KQ: There are shorts at the London Film Festival, I think. The first of my shorts did actually do quite a lot of festivals.

24FPS: Okay, so moving on to LOVE LIKE POISON specifically, it is a very intimate film in a lot of ways, and it feels like a very personal piece of work to me, so does it draw on any personal experience?

KQ: Yes, it’s a very personal film indeed. I wouldn’t say that it’s literally autobiographical, but there are some bits that are inspired by my own personal journey, especially, for example, her journey with regards to her faith, the young girl’s faith and her doubts and losing her faith. I grew up religiously, in a catholic family, and I lost that faith when I was around 14 years old… 13 or 14, and that was a very fundamental moment really. I find it very inspiring, this moment that we all go through as teenagers, this moment when you sort of topple into the adult world when this change happens, when certain illusions are lost and we enter a rather violent conscious world of awareness of the world around us. At the same time there is this loss of this perception we have of being an adult, as if the adult age is empty, as if there’s no such thing, that’s the realization that comes to us.

24FPS: So obviously the role of Anna is very personal to you, and that was one thing that really struck me in the film was that Clara Augarde – I hope I pronounced that right…

KQ: [In English] That was good

24FPS:… is a real discovery, so can you tell us a bit about the process of casting Clara as Anna, and about how you worked with her on set to get that rather remarkable performance out of her.

KQ: I did what is known as ‘wild casting’, where I don’t go to specific agents. [Katell and the translator burst out laughing]

Translator: It’s just, it’s an answer I know.

KQ: [In English] She knows my answers, so…

KQ: It took about four months to find her, because I put an ad in newspapers and I saw about 400 young girls. It also took time for me to know what I was looking for, that’s maybe also the reason I saw so many girls; to help me find out what I was looking for. When I saw Clara Augarde, there was a sort of obviousness there, no doubt also because now I was ready to see her, and now I knew what I was looking for, because casting is very much about a meeting of two people, two minds. In her physique she had that duality in that she was just between childhood and adulthood, and there was a contrast in that her face was still very childlike, and her body was already that of a woman. She had within her a natural ability to act; very correct, very right. Most of the work with her was then to push her, to get her to go towards more subtle things, or more intense things depending on what was required. What’s really quite particular about working with a teenager is that she is at that moment actually going through that change herself, so it’s sometimes quite complicated as an adult to get what’s going on in her head, because so much is changing and everything that’s happening around her has a bearing on her acting, on what she’s doing. Sometimes there would be a scene where she was just stuck, she’d just clam up and it wouldn’t work, and two hours later I got it, and it was because just before shooting somebody had said something to her and, you know, it was all going round in her head. So there’s something there as a teenage girl where she’s unable to separate when we’re shooting and when we’re not and it’s real, so she’d sometimes barricade herself into some sort of protection. You can’t do very much against that, that’s in her nature as a teenager, so the work is more about being patient and maybe accepting that we have to do something again a bit later. There’s a lot of mystery, and a lot of things that you can’t be in control of, even less so with an adolescent than with another actor.

24FPS: Were there a lot of scenes that you had to come back to with Clara, or did that just come up once in a while?

KQ: It happened only really once, but also, from a concrete point of view, because we didn’t have much money, I didn’t really have the means to do a lot of scenes again, so I had to find tricks to go around the problem.

24FPS: Another interesting thing, I found, in the film is the use of music, particularly given that the main character is a teenager and most of the music is choral, which isn’t what you might expect. So, were there certain pieces you always heard in the film, and how did you go about choosing the music for the film?

KQ: I worked with somebody called Frank Bouver, who is a musical researcher, so he was really there from the start, when I was writing I’d given him the script to read so he’d given me certain things to listen to and led me, guided me towards certain things. It’s through him that I discovered American religious folk music; Barbara Dane, Collie Ryan. So a lot of the things that he made me listen to I had chosen before even shooting, but at the same time I had to remain open, I didn’t know that they were definitely going to feature in the film, but I had chosen specific pieces. I also worked with a composer at the editing stage for the church scene; the lyrical songs and the organ music.

24FPS: I assume you also worked with the composer writing Pierre’s song, which struck me as one of the funniest moments of the film, and one of the most true about him as a teenager, because it’s so awkward.

KQ: Yes, that wasn’t the scene that was in the original script. It was supposed to be another scene, which I wasn’t able to film for financial reasons, because it was too expensive. [Laughing] So I had to invent this scene that happened just in the one room. So I had this idea of this song, and my DP, in his own free time, is also a little bit of a singer-songwriter [Laughing] and he’s also somebody who hasn’t completely quit adolescence, he’s still a bit of a teenager. So I asked him to write a song for Clara so he said “yeah, alright I’ll try” and two hours later, it was a Sunday, he came back and I listened to it and I thought it was perfect, because there was something that was really at the border of something ridiculous and really very serious, and that really is what adolescence is about.

24FPS: So, can I ask what was the scene that that replaced?

KQ: [I didn’t need this sentence translated] Non, c’est pas tres interessant.

24FPS: Fair enough. The film also deals with Catholicism in quite a lot of detail, particularly at the end with the reading of the letter to Galatians, which given Anna’s experiences in the film seems like quite a pointed criticism of Catholicism [KQ nods]. Is that something you’ve had a lot of controversy about, the way the film mixes a religious and a sexual awakening?

KQ: Originally, Paul’s letter to the Galatians wasn’t in the first script. Roughly a week before shooting I was actually present at a confirmation that was happening in that church, because I wanted to see what was happening for real, the real bishop that was there etc, and they read this text. I found it so violent and anachronistic for 2009, and it gave me this desire to integrate it in the movie. I wanted to put it in the film partly for me, in terms of my position towards Catholicism, but also because I felt the film needed it, because I felt that at this point something had to be said – something we feel from the beginning – but this difficulty to… apprehend the body, the flesh, and it was necessary for the spectator to be slightly surprised or shocked into something. So the film positions itself in a specific way; on the one hand there is a certain amount of love and respect for certain figures of faith, through, for example, Father Francois, who is a modern priest, generous. But also [the film] quite clearly is against Catholicism as an institution, which I find really aging, and out of touch with society today, and is still selling the guilt which you should have towards your body and flesh, that’s what it’s still promoting. I find that that’s really quite dangerous for teenagers.

24FPS: We have to finish up, but just before we do, one quick question: Aside from your own, what’s the best film you’ve seen lately?

KQ: [Laughs, then in English] OF GODS AND MEN, I really enjoyed it. I’m sorry to choose a French movie.

24FPS: No, that doesn’t surprise me, having seen your film actually, because it shares quite a lot of…

KQ: [Still in English] I have to find something else. I liked THE SOCIAL NETWORK too.

24FPS: So did I.

KQ: [Still in English] I saw it two days ago and I really enjoyed it.

24FPS: Well, thank you very much for your time. I wasn’t going to tell you this, but that was my first interview, so thanks for making it so easy for me.

Speaking to Katell was a pleasure. I was nervous that I wasn’t prepared for what seemed like it might be a longer slot, but honestly I could have gone on and on talking to her. LOVE LIKE POISON is being released by Artificial Eye after playing the London Film Festival. It’s an intriguing film and marks both actress Clara Augarde and Katell Quillévéré as names to watch in the future, check it out when it comes round your way.