By Sophia Watson
Screening at the upcoming Gold Coast Film Festival, Sophie Mathisen, Drama is set in present-day Paris where Anna, an out of work actress still obsessing about her ex, escapes to avoid her uncertain future. The film’s been described as “a relationship film about love, life, death and what’s for dinner”, and that’s a pitch we’re sold on.
You wrote, directed and starred in the film…
“Absolutely…this was my first attempt at all three, separately and together. The three crafts intersect in a fascinating way. I understand story because I understand how to interpret it, and I think about character as much as I think about space and frame. The three really feed one another. When I’m writing, effectively I’m improvising in my head, and when I’m directing, I’m thinking about how best to facilitate a meaningful dialogue between audience and actor. It’s really not that uncommon for actors to do a lot, and I really model myself on people like Sarah Polley, Warren Beatty, and John Cassavetes. Because movie-making is a business, a lot of content often seems disingenuous, as it’s made with only the bottom line in mind. When you look at films made by people who have spent their entire lives thinking and feeling about cinema, it shows.”
When and why did you decide to embark on this project?
“It wasn’t until I was doing my Masters at The Royal Central School Of Speech And Drama in London that it all clicked, and I felt like I had enough chutzpah to put pen to paper. I knocked out the script in a week. Every creative idea has its own timeline. I have scribbles in moleskins from when I was seventeen that may end up as fodder for future work. It’s all about the right timing. When I was at RCSSD, I met a wonderful actor and dear friend, Jonathan Burteaux. We clicked immediately, and we had very similar trajectories, although he is purely an actor. One dreary London day, I remember saying to him, ‘Instead of making a short, I’m going to make a feature.’ He laughed, but followed it with, ‘Do it, babe!’ That was enough. We started scheming immediately: who did we know, where could we shoot etc. We started thinking about production before we had a script, but because I knew that I was writing something for the both of us, I felt confident in what the story would become.”
What were the starting points for the film?
“The starting points for Drama were two thematic elements that I cared deeply about: one, being the unique closeness between a gay man and a straight woman, and the other, the carnage that I saw actors inflict on themselves in periods of creative frustration. Most of my friends are actors, and I’m astounded by the insane highs and punishing lows that they are subject to, often self-inflicted. When I talk to non-actors, I really understand how actors and creative types create the instability of the industry within their lives too. It’s the old adage of, ‘You are your job.’ That was the beginning of the story, and once I started writing, it all flowed naturally. I’d spent 25 years researching those subjects, so it seemed easy to put it into practice at that point.”
Is the film autobiographical at all?
“The source material is my relationship with my best friend. We’ve known each other for over a decade, and outside of my family, he has been the most important person in my life. He’s probably the closest thing to a life partner that I have. When times are good, he’s there, and when times are rubbish, he’s there too. We’ve weathered an incredible amount of life together, and we challenge and confront each other to be better people. Romantic love is not necessarily the cornerstone of our lives in the way that it was for our parents or grandparents. I wanted to make a film about that: a real love story about two friends. I wanted to provide the platform for celebration that it’s often denied. It’s not to discount romantic love at all, but I’m more aware now that lovers come and go, and that there are a select few who you really know will be there when you’re old and grey…and that might not be the people that you’re partnered with.”
Where did you shoot?
“We shot for 31 consecutive days almost entirely in Paris, in various places that we borrowed or brokered thanks to the faith of some wonderful people. We shot in the parents’ house of our focus puller, which is an incredible space in Montreuil that became two apartments, a club, and various other bits and pieces. We shot in a cheese shop owned by some Parisians who once lived in Melbourne. We shot in a regional hospital wing donated by the hospital director because he loves film. We shot in the streets of Paris, from a van that our DOP was strapped into; we could open and close the door whenever we saw the police as we had no money for permits. At the tail end, we shot for one day in London, which felt so strange, because by that point we were used to hearing French accents.”
Was it a tough shoot?
“In a low budget environment, everything can and will go wrong. Money is the insurance that you can get everything the way you want it, and when you don’t have that insurance, you have to think very fast, and problem-solve like MacGyver. The strangest and worst things can and will happen. Fights will happen. Things will break. Relationships will crumble, and in the midst of that, you have to keep going. I had to travel back to London at one point because my financing account had been frozen, and there was no way to pay for the lights. I got used to sleeping for about an hour a night. The stress of the shoot turned a section of my hair white. My sister, Dominique, who produced the film with me, is about 50% grey now – we both put it down to the film. In the scheme of things, we had attempted the hardest thing possible: making our first film in a foreign country where we don’t speak the language, and with the lowest budget imaginable. It’s a testament to my amazing crew that we have any footage at all, let alone the incredible film that we do have.”
Drama will screen at The Gold Coast Film Festival, which runs from March 31-April 10. Sophie will attend the screening for a special Q&A. For more information, head to www.gcfilmfestival.com.
