And now for something completely different… The Extraordinary Miss Flower, a new biographical filmic experience from British artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, known for their Nick Cave film 20,000 Days on Earth, is set for its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival (LFF) on Saturday. The event’s 68th edition, which opened with Steve McQueen’s Saoirse Ronan-starring Blitz, wraps on Sunday.
Miss Flower is very different from many of the other offerings of the LFF. “When Geraldine Flower passed away, her family uncovered a secret cache of letters containing declarations of love from suitors around the globe, hinting at the possibility of a life of espionage,” reads its synopsis. “Taking inspiration, Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini recorded an album that forms the spine of this filmic fever dream. The songs and images bring these amorous words and the beguiling Miss Flower thrillingly back to life.”
On their website, the directors highlight how the project does not neatly fit into traditional genre and form definitions. “Part film, part theater, part fever dream — The Extraordinary Miss Flower takes the form of a series of specially designed performances by Emilíana and her band, combined with dramatic scenes and readings from letters by well-known actors and musicians,” it says. “It’s ultimately a heartfelt love letter to the enduring power of creativity and friendship.”
Caroline Catz portrays Flower in the dramatic scenes of the movie, Cave shows up reading letters from one of her suitors in Australia, with Alice Lowe and Richard Ayoade also appearing, along with the voice of Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Plus, two dancers add another artistic dimension to the film. Oh, and Ben Wheatley is an executive producer on the project. Just like on 20,000 Days, Erik Wilson did the cinematography for Miss Flower, right after finishing his work on Paddington in Peru.
THR spoke to Forsyth and Pollard about how they found the idea for their new project, their creative inspirations, the importance of showcasing musical and dance performances, and the state of independent film.
Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth
Courtesy of Paul Heartfield
Miss Flower isn’t a classic biopic or documentary. How much did you think about what kind of genre or form to make the film in?
Pollard When we started making 20,000 Days, we didn’t really think about what kind of a film it was. Maybe it’s because we’ve come from an art background, we’ve come from making installation and video work for museums and galleries. And so the idea of having a captive audience is really quite new to us, like an actual audience that’s there from the beginning to the end. And the possibilities of what you can do with that is just wide open. I think we’ve always just decided to not make decisions like that straight away.
Forsyth It’s never felt important. In the way you approach making a work of art, many people don’t think: “shall I make sculpture, or shall I make a painting, or shall I make a video?” You express what you want to express in the best way that you can and hope it connects with an audience.
With 20,000 Days we just felt we were making a film and having a story. But it wasn’t until that film got accepted into Sundance, and our producer phoned to say it would be playing in the World Documentary category.
Pollard A lot of our artwork prior to getting into film was about performance to camera. We were always really interested in that. We kind of came in that way and then began to look at the different flavors of music film in particular. Music is one of the things that we bonded over and decided to begin working together, and I think it’s been woven into almost everything we do in some way.
But performances on camera, like concert docs, are often just disappointing. It’s always a secondary experience. It’s always once removed, even the ones that are incredibly good. You still feel envy for the audiences in the room.
Forsyth It still feels like an inadequate representation of that experience, because it’s not my experience.
How did you meet Emilíana and find out about Geraldine Flower?
Forsyth She’s an Icelandic singer-songwriter, and we have quite strong connections with Iceland. We have friends there, and we were going there quite a lot to visit a friend who was directing her first film, and we were helping her navigate her way through that. While we were there with her, she took us out to dinner and said, “I’ve invited a friend of mine, Emilíana.” So we had dinner in Reykjavik.
Pollard We knew her music. But there’s nothing that quite prepares you for meeting Emilíana, because she’s like a little whirlwind. She’s got a real glint in her eye, and she’s just really engaging and warm as a person. And you immediately just think: “Oh, she’d be very good on film.” She can tell a great story.
She’s definitely one of those people where the imagination is quite close to the surface, and I love that in people — when you feel like you can feel and see their thinking. She told us about a box of letters. She’d just been in London singing at the memorial of a friend’s mother who passed away, and they’d found a box of letters, and in there were amazing things that even the daughter of the woman didn’t really know much about. She was high on the potential of this collection of things and the stories that they might tell, or the things they might hint at. At the time, I don’t think she had decided she was going to make an album out of them yet.
Forsyth It’s been very interesting talking to Emilíana amd Zoe Flower, who is Miss Flower’s daughter and our producer, in the same room. Emilíana is constantly on a flight of fancy: “There is this letter from this guy, and I think this bit is code. I think he’s a spy, and he knows this guy and uses a P.O. Box, so that obviously means this.” And Zoe is a lot more like: “I don’t know.” So you’re sort of getting the yin and yang.
Pollard Four or five years later, Emilíana and the story of the box came back, and it was like: “Oh, we’d love to work with this.” It was just about how do you tell that story on film in the most interesting way? I’m sure that there’s an interesting real documentary version digging into the letters. But for us, we’re always looking to connect and come into a project on the same creative footing as our subject.
That’s very much what we did for 20,000 Days. This film has to be as good as Nick Cave, it has to meet him creatively, and that’s what this felt like. We were hearing these amazing songs. This album was just full and brimming with ideas. It felt like we had to put something together that kind of attempts to bottle that in some way.
So we sketched out the skeleton of a budget. This is the least amount that we think we can manage on and that’s going to mean that we have to film all of our performance in two days, plus a day of rehearsal time, and then treat all of the letter reader recordings as separate satellite recordings. And we put a team around us that was small enough to move quickly, but also brave enough to move quickly. And Zoe comes out of unit publicity.
Did you know her before?
Pollard No, not at all. She just stepped up and took on the producer reigns and pulled in co-producer Andy Starke and a lot of of people who she’s connected to, like Richard Ayoade and Alice Lowe.
And of course, Nick Cave reads letters from a man in Australia…
Pollard We didn’t ask him to begin with. But there was just nobody else for this role.
There are so many directions you could have taken this film into since it’s the story of Geraldine Flower seen through the eyes of Emilíana Torrini, and then there is a range of men, and daughter Zoe. Talk me through how you decided what to focus on and what to keep out.
Pollard It was about trying to live inside Emilíana’s imagination, trying to stay in that space. That’s certainly the way we scripted Geraldine, Caroline Catz playing Geraldine.
Forysth Having access to Zoe obviously is the best shot we’ve got of getting to some sort of “truth.” Even as her daughter though, she can’t really answer every question, because lots of these letters predate her birth. But it’s very tempting to say: Did this happen? Who actually was this guy? But we really tried to hold off all of that. In a way, I almost thought of the film as something that almost existed in Emilíana’s head. It was about that process of processing.
We found some voicemails from Zoe’s mother. So fortunately, we and Caroline were able to listen to those and she could really try and pick up on…
Pollard …the way she spoke and her turn of phrase. But the best thing was a letter Geraldine had written to her brother about being arrested. And that was pages and pages long. It’s amazing. In that, her voice suddenly became really clear. We can see how she’s thinking, and the kind of the patterns of speech. And it really helped us a lot to find Geraldine’s voice in the piece.
Your film feels a bit like a house party with music and dance and fun…maybe even a collection of music videos?
Pollard That’s very interesting what you are saying about the house party element, because something that’s missing or that we’re losing in contemporary culture is the studio shoot. What you’re watching isn’t in real time, but it’s a condensed version of real time. And that’s what we wanted it to feel like.
Forsyth We’re not in a golden era of music promo videos.
Pollard We need a period of reinvention or revolution around how music works with film, because let’s hope to god, it’s not the lyrics videos that you see flooded on YouTube. Surely this remarkable strand of culture can do better than that visually.
Forsyth It used to offer such a great playground for up-and-coming directors to be able to cut their teeth and learn their craft.
Speaking of artistic playgrounds. You have two dancers that add energy to the whole film. Where did you find them and why did you decide to include them? At first I thought one of them was Tilda Swinton…
Pollard They are Kate Coyne and Viva [Seifert], who is a [former] Olympic gymnast.
Forsyth Kate could be a good body double for Tilda.
Pollard Zoe was like: “I know a dancer.” And as a director, you’re like: “Oh, really, I don’t want to have to say no to your family friend.” And then she’s like: “Yeah, I’ve known her for years – Kate Coyne.” And we were like, “we met Kate years ago.” And I just think she is one of this country’s most phenomenal dancers and choreographers. So we were like: “Oh, brilliant!”
Forsyth And it was a fun shoot.
Pollard It was stressful, but there was an amazing amount of energy in the room. And I think that some of that is on camera. You can capture that. We’ve talked a lot with them and the musicians about how you do that and the ways in which you can somehow translate what’s happening in the room and actually get it onto the camera. I think, speed, size and being nimble and working fast is key.
Overall, you seem very comfortable going across and beyond genre and form barriers and moving across various artistic forms…
Pollard It’s just about playfulness. Yeah, important films are getting made. But I think being playful is important too to push boundaries and to just be in the moment with something. I think our faith in playful creativity was restored by this film because of those dancers and the serendipity that was at work with this project which was weird.
Forsyth If I believed in that sort of thing, I would say there was somebody slotting the pieces into place, some sort of cosmic [power].
Anything else you’d like to mention?
Forsyth There’s a weird connection. Angus Sampson is the actor who reads a letter that Geraldine sent to her brother back in Australia, Paddy. And Paddy’s son growing up was Angus’ best friend.
Pollard The whole thing is just this amazing woven web of wonderfulness. But it was also, just for us, exactly what we needed as a creative charge in the arm or kick up the bum. It has definitely driven us into other projects with more energy, because seeing something come together like that through so many favors and bits of luck and chance is great. What’s interesting is that our funding came from a music [company].
Is that Distiller Music? I saw the movie was filmed entirely at its own Distillery II location. What are they?
Forsyth It’s a group of companies. They have a music label, the record label, they have a music management company, and a music publishing company. So they have all sorts of music-related companies and are run by a guy called Sam Dyson who went to school with Zoe.
Sounds like another part of the “web of wonderfulness”…
Pollard And he is a huge fan of Emilíana but it isn’t Emilíana’s record label — just somebody open-minded who could see, given the budget level, what a return it would be and that we were talking about attempting to achieve something quite substantial on not a massive investment. I think those sorts of acts are going to be needed to open up new possibilities for funding in film and show how film and music might work together.
Forsyth It just feels like we have gotten the thinking so wrong on [film financing]. It just feels like there are types of people that can do such incredible things with often not that much.
Pollard And things often get played really quite safe.
Forsyth The other thing is that I think we as a collective society have become so untrusting of audiences. It feels like we need to go, “that’s a Marvel film audience, that’s an art house audience.” Most people I know do not watch one type of film or one budget level of film. You can watch the most obscure thing, and you can watch Barbie and Top Gun.
Any new projects you can talk about yet?
Pollard We can’t. I wish we could. But portraits is really what we’re coming back to. 20,000 Days on Earth was a portrait, and I think The Extraordinary Miss Flower is a portrait. We keep coming back to this kind of ground.
Finding that new way of working between music and film, or of film interacting with music can, when it’s done really, really well, almost be transcendental. There’s so much potential. It can lift you into another kind of place gain. We just want to keep pushing there.
Forsyth On that idea of being able to lift you into another place. This is a longer conversation. But obviously, there’s a lot going on right now. The world is a difficult, complex, worrying, troubling, dark place for a lot of people a lot of the time. And you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t at times think: “making films with singing and dancing, is that the right thing to do, is that the right thing to spend your time on?” But I think that the arts in the broadest sense, film and music and everything else included, are so important right now, because they enable you to project into these other places, and it enables you therefore to understand and experience empathy. And the one thing that it just feels like the whole world right now is lacking is empathy. If we could project ourselves into the feelings of other people long enough to realize what our actions are doing, I think a lot of actions would change very, very quickly.
