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Musical Underworld
We speak with British filmmaker Paul Andrew Williams who recently teamed up with UNKLE to create a musical short film trilogy.
"I do have other ideas that are nicer but they just move slower," laughs British director Paul Andrew Williams over the phone to FILMINK. "I like all different types of things but I guess my films so far have been darker. It's one way of getting your demons out. I tend not to be a very angry person so maybe that's why my films are like that."
Indeed, Williams has forged his career thus far by creating hard-hitting films which have a tendency to reveal the darker underbelly to British society. While a bleak vision, it is one which has earned him respect and accolades. His feature debut London to Brighton - a tale of prostitution, thuggery and redemption - was touted as the best UK film of the year by his national papers, with Williams swiftly crowned the industry's next big thing.
One gets the impression though that it's a title Williams feels rather burdened by. "It completely changed my life," Williams says about the response to his directorial feature debut. "I started off quite high in terms of people's opinions of what I can do and I don't think I'll do that again and again. It was a bit frightening because I thought people's expectations of me were too high."
Originally Williams entered the industry as an actor on shows such as Band of Brothers and the long-running UK television series Casualty but made the successful transition to directing, a role he feels much more comfortable in. "I actually started getting nervous about acting," Williams recalls. "I don't know why but that was the case and I had an idea for a short film and I told my friend and he said we should try and do it. We set up a company in 2000 and we made three short films and it built up from there. It's been a long journey."
After completing London to Brighton, Williams went on to make the darkly comic horror film The Cottage and his latest film, which he hopes will find its way to Australian shores soon, is the psychological thriller Cherry Tree Lane. "It's all in real time," he explains. "One evening, a lowly kid comes round to call on this couple's son and basically while they're waiting for the son, it's what happens. I don't want to give too much away. But the main actress, Rachael Blake, is Australian. She was just phenomenal."
We're talking to Williams because in between his film projects, the talented filmmaker teamed up with UNKLE to direct three music videos for the acclaimed electronic outfit. The videos comprise a short film trilogy titled Saviours and Angels which is set to screen at this year's Melbourne Underground Film Festival.
This creative arrangement came about when Williams asked UNKLE to score his film, Cherry Tree Lane. In return, the band's originating member, James Lavelle, asked Williams to direct music videos for UNKLE's fourth studio album, Where Did the Night Fall.
"James played me the album one night, he came up with an idea and I thought it was good and it all expanded from there," Williams recalls. "I think we basically respected and liked each other, and we were all in this thing together. It was mutually helping each other out," he says before adding with a laugh, "although I think I got the better end of the stick."
Backed by UNKLE's down-tempo electronic beats, the trilogy tells a story of a Romanian couple trying to pave a life for themselves in the UK. The first video, Caged Bird (which features Baltimore band Celebration's Katrina Ford), has more of a narrative than the second and third. More abstract, the second addition, The Runaway, demonstrates the danger and fragility of sex, and the trilogy is wrapped up with the psychedelically eerie Another Night Out.
Of the trilogy's narrative, Williams offers, "I liked the idea about this young girl who is so excited to come to London only to have her dreams dashed, which I think would be very hard. It was mainly about this journey and all the little things that set her free at the end."
While the first film, and the only one with dialogue, is in Romanian, the audience is able to understand the foreboding narrative due to the strong sense of mood created by the music, the acting and William's deft touch. When asked why he chose to focus Saviours and Angels on a Romanian couple, the actor is typically nonchalant. "It was the first thing that came to my head," he chuckles. "Then we met some Romanian guys and they said this shit happens all the time."
Beyond a few initial conversations, Williams says that shooting this project was not a collaborative process. "We talked to James about it and the record company discussed it a bit but to be honest, as they were with my film and I was with the music videos, we were left to our own devices. It's good and bad because on the one hand, it's great to have that bit of freedom but on the other, if you fuck it up, there's only you to blame!"
Saviours and Angels will screen at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival (August 20-18) as part of the short film section. For more information, visit the website. UNKLE's new album Where Did the Night Fall is distributed through Inertia and can be purchased at iTunes.
Picture caption: Paul Andrew Williams, courtesy of Getty Images.