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Kieran Evans talks violent sex


Kelly + Victor
19 October 2012

Premiering at the 56th annual London Film Festival, Kelly + Victor is a compelling and dark study of two lonely individuals relationship, and The Fan Carpet‘s Stefan Pape caught up with director Kieran Evans during the week in which he presents his debut feature film to the public for the very first time. 

Starring Antonia Campbell-Hughes (Kelly) and Julian Morris (Victor), we follow the pair as they delve in a dark, sadomasochistic world of fantasies lived out, and affections fulfilled, in a film based on the novel from Niall Griffiths.

Evans speaks of his relationship with the original author Griffiths, while also telling us of his delight in getting both Campbell-Hughes and Morris on board. Meanwhile, Evans discusses his future plans in film and how he may stay clear of submissive sex, for the time being at least.

 

 

Kelly + Victor is your debut feature film – and although you have done TV work and documentaries in the past has it always been your intention to get into cinema?

Yeah absolutely, it’s been a long project, working on it on and off for about eight years to get it to the screen so we started this journey in 2004. But you know I’ve always been into film and it’s been a steady progression really, trying to find the right project – I didn’t want to choose a typical British film, like a crime caper or zombie films – so I was looking for something more that I was about. Although I don’t know what that says about me, worryingly. But I’ve always been interested in films along with my mum who was a massive film addict  and she used to keep me up at night watching Hitchcock, and things like that – so it’s been there for a long time.

 

The film does deal with quite a taboo subject – do you have any concerns people may pre-judge your film given it covers quite violent sex?

It’s not necessarily about violent sex, it’s more about people walking around, thinking about why they’re here, about people being fired up, that’s the story – Victor being unlocked, it’s not really about violent sex as such. It’s two characters who collide, a bit like atoms and something sparks off their romance, and those moments happen all the time. It’s much more about that, the sex is just the thing that unlocks them, but it’s more about people trying to find themselves, needing some kind of answer as to why they are what they are. That’s the subject matter that struck me when I read the book really, the sex is graphic but it’s also about people who are struggling in life, trying to find who and where they are.

 

So tell us of the dynamic between Kelly and Victor’s relationship? Would you agree they are two lost souls who need each other as opposed to wanting each other?

Yes I think that’s exactly it, they’re almost like ghosts really, lost souls searching for something. The book crashes in at that moment when they meet and then crashes out at that moment at the end, and that’s what I wanted to maintain in this film – this idea that two people meet and they are lost souls trying to find something in life, with Liverpool being a great backdrop to the pain and suffering, it’s people looking for some answers really. So that’s what Kelly and Victor do – to try and find these answers with each other, they’re struggling with life, and their many different flaws, shall we say. Thing is they can forget these flaws with this other person for the first time in their lives.

 

When you first read the book did you instantly start thinking about adapting it?

I read the book when away on holiday – although it’s not a very brilliantly holiday read! Niall is a very visual writer, he conjures up images very quickly and when reading the book I was seeing things and sometimes you read books with the idea of making it a film and nothing really springs off the page but with Kelly + Victor it was a really strange reaction because things were flying off the page into my head and I read it, and then read it again because there were certain things going on in my head. I came back from holiday and went straight to my producer and said “I think I’ve found the book we’ve all been looking for”. You know sometimes when you read a book and you get so into it you miss your stop on the train, well my girlfriend at the time remembers speaking to me at dinner and me not hearing anything because I was so lost in the book, so that was a good indication that we were on our way.

 

 

Did Niall get involved in the making of the film?

Basically I was a big fan of his anyway and I was making some short films and a producer had asked me who I’d like to do something on and I said I’d do a little short film about Niall Griffiths, so I phoned him up with the idea of these short films and then at the time it became clear he didn’t really want to do that, but we just got on really well when we first met , we’re both half Welsh, half Irish, both Liverpool fans, so that was enough – we’re brothers in arms. So he didn’t want to do a documentary piece on him but something more, with a dramatic edge to it, so we wrote this short story and then  it got pulled, of course, but we remained in contact and would exchange emails and phone calls and then Kelly + Victor came about and that was it. The Welsh film board got on board straight away because he is a bit of a folk hero in Wales, and it was taken to start with that he would write the script with me, that was how it was going to be. But we started working on it and Niall got very bored of it, he is writing other novels so we agreed a structure where we wrote the characters and make an outline of the premise and then I took on the role of writing, and he just took a step back. He is in the film though, in one of the last scenes at the bar.

 

As for the casting both Antonia and Julian are brilliant, and very brave ones at that – how did they both come to be in the film?

We took the typical casting process, although the script did raise a couple of eyebrows in the casting agents definitely, but we started with this idea that we had two people in mind but they didn’t really fancy it. It is a strange process casting, because some people came on board and then we lost some funding and people along the route, but with Antonia what happened was we started working with this brilliant casting agency in Manchester and they were much more on it in terms of getting the script out, and I think they watched Lead Balloon one night and saw Antonia and just thought of asking her, and that’s how it started and then she came in for a casting, and when she walked in it was one of those moments and you can see it’s Kelly, she looked amazing and had that fragile look and she suffers from a cold a lot so she came in wrapped up warm and she was always shivering and she has an amazing face, an incredibly cinematic face and she looked the part straight away, that was the amazing thing. We did a reading and she was so intense during the reading and she just came at it in a very different way. With Julian it was different because we were talking with Treadaway to do it, and he came to do the casting and he was up for it but then got offered a bigger role with more money which is always the case, so basically what happened was Julian was in town and his agent and phoned to ask if he could send Julian to do a reading and he came down and I had looked at his CV and wasn’t sure, on paper it didn’t look good – very TV. But again he came in and was incredibly modest and quiet and enthusiastic and he came in and he just turned it on, read the lines in a very different way to other people had and again it was one of those moments where we just knew he was the one as well. He has a very pretty boy look but he has a real vulnerability and he brought that to the table at that reading, which was brilliant.

 

The film is very intense and uncomfortable to watch at times, which is a credit to yourself a director to have that effect – was it always your intention to make it that way inclined?

I would say for this film I had to be as honest and frank as I could, as the book is incredibly frank and highly descriptive and as a filmmaker I have to be true to the book and true to the story line, I can’t pretty it up and make it easy for everybody, I just felt this was the way to do it. It is uncomfortable, because that’s what happens, and I wanted to be true to the story. It’s not pleasant to look at in certain points and sometimes that’s what makes great cinema, that you’re thrown into positions with a load of people where you feel that collective gasp I suppose, and I wanted those kind of moments. Feeling uncomfortable is also part of the cinematic experience, as much as entertainment, as it’s all about life experiences and human experiences, and I wanted to illustrate that.

 

As for yourself and your future in film, do you see yourself staying within this niche from here on? Making dramatic, intense films, or can you see something more light-hearted in you in the future?

I don’t think I’ll be making another film like Kelly + Victor for a while, for me I really like human experiences and at the moment I’m actually developing a couple of films – one is a ghost type story which is interesting, and the other a four-part series, similar to… oh what’s the film about the man and the goats?

 

Oh, Le Quattro Volte?

Yeah that’s the one. I love films like that as well, and thinking maybe a film like that. I don’t think I want to do dark, sex films again. The filmmaking process is very intense and going through that is hard and stressful, especially when you’re dealing with a lot of naked peoples and sexually strong material, it’s also hard to get through it sometimes, purely because it’s so intense. Next time I’m not going to have any sex scenes in my film, I’ll take a breath from it. The characters can hold hands, but that’s about it. But seriously, for me it is all about finding the right story and I am excited by the couple of things I’m working on now – so fingers crossed.

 

 

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