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Charlotte Wells talks to RogerEbert.com from Zoom about working with Barry Jenkins and Adele Romanski, filming in Turkey, and how David Bowie and Queen’s “Under Pressure” became the focal point of her film’s most emotionally bruising scene.
You’ve talked in past interviews about how the script started off as more conventional in its plot until you started putting parts of yourself into these two characters. Was there any reluctance to get more personal?
I mean, on some level, yes; but it just felt impossible not to. I worked on it for so long and there was always a personal infusion into the characters. This has never been lacking. I just think that in the process of writing and letting childhood memories and anecdotes form the first skeleton of this script was a process of searching my own past. And that process found its way onto the page, you know? So the film took that as a retroactive look that wasn’t there in this more conventional concept.
Did you feel you had to dive into personal memories?
I think I just started from a place of thinking about what my first film could be: A young father and his daughter on vacation. I have a lot of experience to draw from, and it’s a relationship I don’t see described too often in the way I think I can write about. And wouldn’t it be fun to shoot a movie in a resort village? [laughs]
I had done one short film at that point and I did two shortly after that. But it was really early in my filmmaking and writing, so it came from a much more pragmatic place. I was at school and everyone was told to think about their feature film. By allowing it to be personal, I think it ultimately comes from a sincere place of expression. I don’t really write from the outside in; I think I write from the inside out. So unfortunately, as someone who doesn’t really like to talk about myself, even in person, that’s just the reality. I found this way to articulate things that I don’t think I could articulate in any other way.
On that note, how does it feel to see people’s reactions and sit in the audience while the film is playing?
Well, that’s two different questions, because it was almost torture to sit in the audience while the movie was going on. I finally had the experience in Telluride where I was able to watch it. And I think because I’ve seen several movies in the same cinema, there was a comfort there. I feel like for the first time I was able to just watch and not be super stressed. So now I think I’m done watching because I’m just grateful that I was able to have this experience.
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