Brazilian-Algerian director Karim Aïnouz is akeen collaborator. He doesn’t write his own screenplays and was intrigued by Efthimis Filippou’s modern reimagining of Marco Bellocchio’s Fists in the Pocket as he eyed up making aleap to satire. Filippou is best known for his work with Yorgos Lanthimos, and with Rosebush Pruning the pair have crafted asick, sad world of blackly comic despair, following arich American family living in Spain under disturbing patriarchal rule.
LWLies: Iwas struck by the visuals and cinematography by Hélène Louvart, who you have previously collaborated with. Can you talk to me about your working relationship with Hélène?
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Aïnouz: We met in 2018 on The Invisible Life. Working with two actresses who had never been on amovie set before, Ireally wanted to have awoman DOP to create asense of safeness on set. Ireally connected with Hélène because there was amovie she had done called The Wonders, which had aprofound sense of humanity. There was abeauty that wasn’t narcissistic and the framing was organic. This is our fourth collaboration back to back, and Ithink the reason we really connected… well, there’s afew things – she’s aVirgo, she’s really precise and obsessed with light and how the light hits the characters and creates atmosphere. With Hélène there’s something about the strong intimate connection she has with the characters that, for me, is so beautiful.
This film also marks anew collaboration with the screenwriter Efthimis Filippou. How did that comeabout?
The collaboration is the result of abrilliant producer. At first sight we don’t seem like we would be amatch because my films are sentimental. Iwork alot within melodrama and he works in adifferent key. There was asense of humour he has on paper, on set and off set, that really connected us. There is areal sense of love for people. We first met during the pandemic on Zoom. He was warm and funny. He really allowed me to play with humour and irony, which was always something that Iwanted to do but never really got to go there before. He really pushed me to that place. It was really liberating. We looked at that family not as dysfunctional but as adamaged family, and that renders asense of humanity to each character. It’s very contradictory. They’re not necessarily people who you actually like, but it was important for me that they had asense of humanity. This was really something he brought.
I enjoyed the use of Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Paninaro’ on the soundtrack – can you tell me about that choice?
It was there from the first draft of the script. At the time when that song was composed, it was about how Italy was losing its identity and becoming American. That was areally conceptual choice. There’s asense of irony and trashiness to that song that Ireally love. The music came about because Iwanted to design auniverse that was very pop. With Jack [Jamie Bell] he is aspirational, so he’s asquare guy who loves techno music. It’s like with fashion and how you access acertain identity by buying certain brands and how you access that also through the music you listen to.
Shock-value filmmaking from people like John Waters can be extremely confronting and thought-provoking…
I was thinking about John Waters and the early movies of [Pedro] Almodóvar. Camp and outrage were really important factors and together they create shock and scandal. Iwas interested in questioning the safe space of contemporary cinema. There are alot of movies being made about certain themes and made with very good intentions, and I’m not thinking that they shouldn’t be but I’m also lacking asense of disruption in the things we can do in cinema. Maybe what’s interesting in acinematic experience is not empathy but perhaps it’s discomfort. These are tropes of the cinematic experience that are so important and that are there throughout the history of cinema. Ithink that has been subsumed into aconceptual relationship we have with character. Before Ishot this film Isaw aplay by an Austrian choreographer called Florentina Holzinger. There was asense of outrageousness that really reminded me of early queer cinema. John Waters had this sense of the scatological and outrageousness. Some may think it’s juvenile, but Ithink it has asense of disruption and areally exciting energy that he brought tofilm.