I agree with that, I didn’t mean to say that he was insincere but it’s always a mix, there’s always a level of performance.|
It’s true and there is the actor in him, which was why I cast an actor in that role, it felt right, because sometimes I’ll cast non-actors. For example, the father of Julie is a local farmer who had never acted before.
I knew there were non-actors in your past films, I was wondering if there were in this one.
Quite a lot, actually, quite a lot. But it was very clear to me right from the beginning that Anthony should be played by an actor and that Julie shouldn’t be played by an actor and I wanted to find someone who could believably be a filmmaker, but there are quite a few examples of non-actors in there, which is always exciting to me, I love that.
What traits were you looking for in Julie? And could you tell me a bit about casting Honor?
First and foremost it was about finding someone who you could imagine is more comfortable behind the camera than in front of the camera, so I wanted a certain awkwardness, or self-consciousness. And also a young woman who could believably be from that point in time because young women are so different now, in the way they use social media and are very comfortable with an image of themselves, and Julie is so different from that.
It was a process of meeting lots of young actors and I met some non-actors, and then I also realized that I wanted to find a young woman who hadn’t necessarily grown up in London, who wasn’t street savvy in a way.
I cast Tilda before I cast Honor and I left it until the last minute, because it’s always difficult to find who I want and they’ve got to be absolutely right. I asked if she knew anyone, also she had been asking me, because I had already cast her and she was obviously curious to know who her daughter was going to be [laughs]. Then there was a point where we both realized that Julie was closer to us than we thought.
How did you strike a balance between showing Julie’s perspective and also allowing the audience a little critical distance from that character?
I suppose I don’t feel that critical distance myself, because I’m so connected to that character, it’s a version of myself. Maybe that’s in the way that I shoot, because I feel that I have more close-ups in this film than usual, there’s a sort of standing back and watching aspect.
It was a big question I asked myself – how subjective should this film be? I ask myself this question about every film I make. I’m obviously drawn to the idea of subjectivity, but in the end, I find it too limiting for the story I’m trying to tell.
That scene where Julie is at the dinner party and speaks to Richard Ayoade, it’s the bluntest possible way for her to find out, I also thought it was a little funny, even though it’s so devastating in a way.
[Laughs] Yeah.
Did it happen that way in real life, or did you decide to make it as surprising as possible for Julie?
It didn’t exactly happen that way for me, but it was very important that Honor not know what was going to happen in the scene, because she didn’t have a script, she didn’t see anything written down, she knew a lot about me and a lot about my development as a filmmaker at that stage, for instance about the project [Julie] wants to make, but she didn’t know what was going to happen from moment in the story and that’s one of those points, where she’s genuinely finding out for the first time that Anthony is a heroin addict.
And there is humor, I’m not afraid of humor, I find it very satisfying when people tell me they find things funny about my work [laughs].
Honor didn’t know anything going in, except for an emotional map?
Yeah, I didn’t want to tell her too much, I wanted her to discover things on camera. In that first scene where she meets Anthony, she hadn’t met Tom, so she really meets him for the first time in that scene, not knowing what significance that first meeting is going to have.
I’m excited for “The Souvenir” Part Two, is it soon after the events of the first film?
It’s almost exactly after the events of the last film, so it begins where the first film left off and it continues to be in London but also at film school, which is quite a drawn-out process for Julie.
‘The Souvenir” opens in New York and Los Angeles on May 17, with other cities to follow.