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X at BIFF
One of the highlights of this year’s Brisbane International Film Festival will surely be the Australian film, X. This provocative thriller takes a look at the world’s oldest profession while telling a tale of reinvention that will keep audience members on the edge of their seats. There are also some great performances by Viva Bianca as the elder escort Holly and Hanna Mangan Lawrence as the new to the business escort, Shay. I recently caught up with director/writer Jon Hewitt for a chat.
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“It was an original screenplay written by myself and my wife Belinda McClory. We usually come up with an idea we want to tell and then throw ideas back and forth. We then pin the story down in almost point form and divvy it up scene by scene. It’s a very collaborative process.”
I really enjoy films where you learn the character’s back-story through their actions instead of dialogue or voice over but a lot of viewers don’t care for this, did using that method restrict your writing at all?
“I know what you mean, and if I can relate it back to X, I think you can discover a lot about a character by how they relate to other characters. For instance when Belinda and I were developing the script, which started over ten years ago, numerous people gave us feedback and one of the things that they always mentioned was how enigmatic the lead character, the elder escort Holly was and that you didn’t know much about her but almost everything you need to know about her back-story is reflected in the younger character Shay who is just starting in the business.”
It is a balancing act isn’t it?
“I think it happens to just bout everybody, there is this constant pressure from outside to make things easier to understand. It seems to be the nature of the beast to take subtlety out. The really skilled writers and directors seem to be able to find a path through all that and end up with the work they wanted to make. ”
But then you see films from certain directors who seem to have enough clout within the system to be freer from outside influences.
“Sure or they are making their own films for lower budgets or working outside the system but then there are big Hollywood film makers like David Fincher who gets to make films that always seem to be his films.”
Even with really strong subject mater he seems to reinvent them in his own way.
“Yeah, he’s had enough success to be trusted to make something that costs over 100 million dollars, he’s made a movie like Seven that made a squillion and was a really rich, coo,l difficult film. So the trust is there to roll the dice again.”
I found a lot of clever touches in X, like having your lead character speaking in French in the opening scene. Was this a nod to the film’s likely destination of being played in Art House Cinemas?
“It was more a neat little trick where the character yearns to reinvent themselves in Paris and start a whole new life. That’s what the whole film is about, it’s not about the sex industry or hooking really, it’s about changing you life and taking that step and how liberating and annihilating that can be. We also always wanted the film to be in French with no sub-titles for the first 30 seconds or minute so the audience would think, Fuck this is a French film, are we in Paris? ”
That wouldn’t have happened with sub-titles.
“I never wanted it to be sub-titled and I think people sort of know what she is saying anyway and I wanted the film to start like she could have been in Paris already just for a second, put the audience on their toes. It was also a happy accident of the shoot and editing because I just love that round sort of stuff and I loved the way the film starts with the main character Holly looking and talking to the audience and then at the film ends with the younger Shay doing the same.”
The film does a good job of not being judgemental on the world’s oldest profession, was that a dedicated effort to keep that level of neutrality?
“Yeah, I wanted it to be truthful and brutal and controversial and show it in all its nitty gritty but I didn’t want it to be a moral tale or a cautionary tale about the dangers of falling into prostitution. We also actually live in King’s Cross and right at this moment I’m standing five floors above the strip on Darlinghurst Road and looking down at a prostitute plying her trade. We know a lot of these girls and we see it as a legitimate business, yes it can be dangerous but I certainly didn’t want to be moral and go like this is what will happen to you if you get in the game.”
X screens on Saturday, November 5 at 7:00PM at The Tribal Theatre.
Brisbane International Film Festival 2011
Dates and Venues:
Brisbane 03–13/11/11 Palace Barracks Cinema, Palace Centro Cinemas and Tribal Theatre
Event ticket: See BIFF website for ticketing options
Official Site: www.biff.com.au
Facebook: www.facebook.com/brisbaneinternationalfilmfestival
Twitter: www.twitter.com/brisfilmfest
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