Writer and director Lena Molander joins us on Close-Up Culture to chat about her BAFTA and BIFA-qualifying debut short film, All Change.
The follows two gay men as they expose the regrets they have over their friendship, which – years ago – nearly became something more.
All Change explores a relationship that might have been, and the possibility that one decision made out of fear can shape the rest of your life. What drew you to that particular kind of regret, where there’s no obvious person to blame and no easy way to put things right?
I think it’s the most compelling story there is. Anyone can be foiled by an antagonist, but it’s a special kind of character who gets in their own way. To me, that’s the perfect tragedy.
There’s also a quiet desperation there that I find fascinating. It usually doesn’t want to express itself, which is perfect for drama. Pinter called communication a “continual evasion”, and it’s a great challenge to try and convey meaning when your annoying, insubordinate characters are saying everything except what they mean.
It also forces you to write with subtlety. No-one really believes it when someone in a film shouts “can’t you see I love you?”, but when someone’s crush turns down a cigarette, and now they have to go outside to smoke alone but pretend it’s fine? Come on. That’s the good stuff.
You’ve described wanting to make a film where the characters don’t get a conventional Hollywood ending, but have to live with what happened. Why did you feel it was important to leave Max and Simon in that unresolved place, rather than give audiences a clearer sense of what happens next?
I think in a way it is resolved: they both have lives to go back to, and now it’s just a matter of whether or not they’re happy with that. Certainly there’s more regret now.
Whenever I see a film that ends with the hero saving the day, I always think “what happens the morning after? Do you say to your flatmate ‘hey, remember when I caught the bad guy and freed the hostages? Wasn’t that nuts?’” It’s not like it solves everything: you’re still gonna run out of milk.
When a character completes their arc, they’ve completed their useful life for the audience, which doesn’t ring true to me. No-one dies like an action star: we age, and in that time we start to believe in arcs less and less. You learn that life doesn’t always have neat resolutions, which can be a really difficult, bittersweet thing to accept. I’m always surprised by how rarely you see it on-screen, perhaps because we’re obsessed with telling stories about people in their 20s and 30s who haven’t aged that much. I tried to make the way we leave Simon and Max a bit more realistic and, hopefully, richer for it.
The film unfolds in one continuous take on a moving train, with the characters’ conversation doing almost all the dramatic work. What did that constraint allow you to capture that you think might have been lost with a more conventional approach to editing?
The camera’s on both of them for the entire conversation, so every shot of Simon is also a reaction shot of Max, and vice versa. You get to see them respond to each other simultaneously, rather than in sequence. To me at least, that adds a whole new dimension: every tiny shift in one character’s expression while the other one’s talking is like DVD commentary over the dialogue.
From an actor’s perspective, it’s a fun challenge (or maybe a nightmare inflicted on you by a neurotic director, but unfortunately for them, the neurotic director is the one being interviewed). Michael Gambon had a name for over-the-shoulder shots where he wasn’t the focus: B.O.H.N.A.R., ‘back of head, no acting required’. All Change has no B.O.H.N.A.R.! You’re acting every second you’re on-screen, which means there’s no room to hide. On a very practical level, that allowed me to capture two incredible performances. Our cast, Shaun Dingwall and Alexi Kaye Campbell, conveyed so much with the smallest glances. I’m so lucky to have worked with them.
The other thing about shooting a oner is that once the camera’s rolling, it’s out of my hands as a director. If I interrupt to give a note, I haven’t just robbed us of a take, I’ve flushed a version of the entire film down the drain. That means I had to stop being neurotic and just trust Shaun and Alexi, who in turn had more room to experiment. It’s the type of freedom actors tend to get more in theatre than film and TV. Alexi is a playwright, which I remember thinking during the casting process was a good omen. I wanted All Change to feel almost as much like a play as it did a film.
Simon assumes that Max, because he seems confident and successful, could never understand his fear of being vulnerable. That assumption turns out to be wrong. Were you interested in how easily we can mistake somebody else’s confidence for emotional certainty, particularly when romance is involved?
Definitely. Like me, Simon is quite a timid figure, and I think there’s something quite judgemental about wallflowers. You don’t hang back at a party unless you’ve already decided no-one is interested in talking to you. Simon makes quite a shallow judgement of Max – namely that he could never feel anxiety – and it costs both of them. If Simon had taken a more complex view of Max, maybe things would have ended differently. In that way, there’s a selfishness to remaining passive that I was very interested in exploring.
In the past, I’ve definitely been guilty of going “if I make myself small I can’t hurt other people”, but that’s a comforting lie. I think it’s just an excuse to deprive yourself of the thing you want most when that thing scares you. Max understands that desire is scary, but has the courage to pursue it anyway. He’s made a difficult, conscious choice to be brave, and Simon dismisses it as innate, or even arrogant. Writing is a great way of taking your flaws to their logical conclusion and proving to yourself that, yes, they are flaws. It’s very unlikely the viewer thinks about it in that much detail, but I like to think it’s what holds All Change together.
You’ve worked as a journalist and writer, and you describe in your director’s statement a period when you felt trapped in a job you couldn’t stand. Did making All Change change your own relationship with creative risk, or with the idea that it’s too late to change direction?
If anyone from my old job is reading, I have been misquoted and deny everything.
This film has changed my life. It’s made me realise that you don’t need a massive crew and a soundstage to tell a good story. Production budgets are bloating even as the industry shrinks (that’s partially why the industry’s shrinking), which makes it harder and harder to get things made. All Change was a lovely first-hand lesson that it doesn’t need to be that way.
It’s also definitely helped me see that a change in direction is possible. As a kid, I thought that ‘real’ writers and directors did it full time, and anyone else was just a hobbyist. The past year of going to film festivals has made me realise how stupid that is. Doing something meaningful at whatever level you can is the only thing that matters.
The film’s production sounds like it involved some genuinely unusual challenges, from starting at 5am to squeezing the crew out of shot on a real train. What was the most ridiculous or unexpectedly memorable moment on the shoot that you wish audiences knew about?
The 5.00am start was brutal. I was worried the cast and crew would mutiny, but they were unbelievably nice about it.
Before the shoot, I rode around on that exact train route again and again to time everything. How long the train stays on the platform, how long it takes for the doors to open, all that stuff. My notes made me look like a serial killer.
Then, when we were doing a test shoot, a very unimpressed announcement came over the speaker that filming is not permitted. We had to tuck our camera and boom mic under our jackets and pretend we didn’t who the announcement was for. It was like in The Simpsons when someone puts their hand in their pockets and whistles to try and look inconspicuous. A couple of little girls started laughing at us. It was great.
During the real shoot, it took a couple of false starts but eventually we got a take that was going really well. Then a member of staff walked in front of the camera and asked “hey guys! Are you doing anything?” He was lovely about it, which of course made it worse.
The crew were genuinely amazing. Our sound recordist, Gosia Adamowisz had to squeeze herself into the side of the carriage to stay out of shot. We didn’t have a tripod, so Charly Gautier, our DOP, wrapped himself around the floor-to-ceiling pole to keep the camera steady. At one point, I had him by the shoulders and he said “don’t guide me: just hold me”. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, but I thought that was incredibly profound.
Title image credit: Charly Gautier/Lena Molander
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