Madison from FILM IN REVOLT spoke with director Renee Petropoulos about her latest short film Tangles and Knots – which screened at this year’s Flickerfest (Best Direction in a Short Film). The film also screened at the Berlin International Film Festival (nominee – Generation 14plus – Best Short Film) and SXSW Film Festival. Tangles and Knots is about when an intimate bond between mother and daughter becomes threatened when the mother helps her teenage daughter throw a house party to impress new, more popular friends.
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Tangles and Knots was definitely one from the Flickerfest lineup that stood out to me most, so thank you so much for speaking with me today about it!
I found your plot really original, I loved the unpredictability which definitely lent a hand in creating that sense of reality. Can you talk me through the process of writing this film, and especially the early stages when the film was first coming together?
I wrote for my thesis project at Columbia University – it was the final film that you do to graduate. That being said, I’d kind of been writing a mother- daughter story for a few other short ideas I had. But it had never really clicked in the way I wanted it to – the stories never felt authentic – so I had a an eureka moment. I spoke to professors and friends who were like “this doesn’t feel real enough, I’m not getting what I want out of this short story”. And a very very wise professor told me, “you know what, I know you’re basing this off the relationship – the real relationship – between you and your mother. Why don’t you sit down and write some memories and go from there.” So I literally just plotted out, wrote a bunch of memories I could remember from growing up as a teenager, even early adult years, plotted everything out, took a couple from there, and just went from there.
It took about 3 months to get a script into a good spot. And it didn’t really change much after that – even in the edit we just pulled a few scenes and cut the dialogue but that was about it. And it was hard at first to figure out how to handle a ‘two protagonist’ story in a short. I had a lot of people say “you shouldn’t do that, you should have one”, but for me it was really important for the story to have two protagonists. It was a little tricky at first to figure out how to change perspectives but it was a great challenge. And with the ending of the film, that was based more in fiction: I really wanted to critique ideas of sexual assault, toxic masculinity, the idea of consent. So I based the characters off me and my mum and the memories we shared, and then the film evolved from there.
I found the connection between the mother and daughter was very candid, did you write either of these roles with these actors in mind, or did you go through the casting process?
When I was writing the story I just imagined me and my mum as the characters: which is a bit weird and a bit hard to see it objectively. When it came to casting, I just wanted to find the best actors I could for the roles and to see the characters in a new way.
As I was looking through reels and work from actors I was interested in, Odessa and Leeanna were the top of my list. I was just watching The Daughter, I was watching Looking for Grace. I was also watching, with Leeanna, a lot of her stuff from Wentworth and some of the other projects she had done previously – and she’s obviously a huge Aussie icon, so I was a bit intimidated by her at first, but I love her work. In the end, just seeing the complex performances that both of them were giving at the stage where I was casting, I was like “it’s got to be these two, I don’t want anyone else”.
And with the help of Stevie Ray from McGregor Casting I reached out to both actors. He really helped me get in touch with them, and essentially from there they both said yes really quickly which was very cool because I wasn’t expecting that. They signed up really quickly and then from there I was elated and the rest all fell into place.
The ending left me speechless – and I loved the juxtaposition of the mother- daughter roles from the opening scene. Was this how you’d always planned for it to end, or were there other potential paths you were going to go down?
The ending was always there from the start. I really wanted to play on the title as well in the final moments and show a reversal of roles. At least in the other films I’ve made – the other shorts – I’ve always been interested in complex familial roles that are unique and weird and unsettling in a way, so I really wanted to push that for sure. And in terms of the twist – it was always there from the start – everything was building to that moment.
There was a really clear sense of intimacy throughout the film, especially since it was filmed predominantly in close up shots. Was this visceral experience a goal in creating the film, and were there any other measures you took to achieve this?
Yes, that was another thing from the get-go. I wanted to get close to these characters; almost too close to the characters so you can’t really look away, through the direction and intimacy of the shots. But then as soon as the ending starts to happen we pull back, back, back, and things get out of the character’s control and we can feel that shift. I definitely had it built-in in terms of the direction and how to approach it with being as close to these characters as you possibly could be, and then when the final ending happens, you’re so far back and it’s like a horrifying detachment as you’re watching the whole thing unfold. For me, it was definitely once I had written the script, it was like “this is how I’m directing it” and I just stuck with it.
I’ve always found that the films that stand out to me are those with a really clear aesthetic tone – which yours definitely had! Did you spend much time designing the look of the film or did it come through more in post production
I love working with colour – maybe it’s a weird attribute of the director, but also because I paint a lot as well so I’ve always been obsessed with colour, and films that use colour in interesting ways. There was definitely a colour shift that was orchestrated by me and my production designer Diva and also my cinematographer Zoe – we were all on the same page. The film shifts from these greens and earthy tones, to blues when it gets to the party, and then even more desaturated towards the end of the film. There’s this clear shift in terms of where the production design is and also, the costumes as well – Lucia was a fantastic costume designer – and everyone was on the same page and that was really cool. So it was in the production of the film. and then the colour correction was just elevating it a bit more, but, it was from the beginning.
Tangles and Knots definitely has had an impact on me. Is there any particular film that would you say had the greatest impact on you during your youth?
That is interesting, because growing up I feel like the films I liked when as kid and teenager are very different to the films that had an impact on me as a filmmaker.
That’s a hard question, I think the first one that really had an impact on me was when we were studying Blade Runner at school – that was a film that really changed it for me, that made me want to become a filmmaker. Blade Runner (The Director’s Cut), really showed me the potential of film to be meaningful and explore themes by using all the tools of a director: shots, performance, costume, production design and cinematography. A film that changed my world, in terms of already wanting to be a filmmaker, was A Woman Under the Influence by Cassavetes. Knowing what you can do with a character, having more of a loose plot, and having it more of a portrait of a character and a family – that shook me in a way that other films haven’t. For me, A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night for sure – both are Cassavetes films – really rock my world.
Oh cool, I’ll add them to my list!
Yeah definitely check them out – you’ll love it!
So to finish up, what advice would you give to young people wanting to make an entry into the film world?
Another hard one! I feel like everyone makes their own path into it. A lot of people – myself included – went to film school. I feel like I needed that kind of guidance. I came out of my undergrad – I did my undergrad at UTS. It was a fun degree but also didn’t really leave me with enough knowledge about directing and screen writing, so I feel like I needed that help. But I know a lot of people who never went to film school and they also just consume a lot of film and made their own trajectory that way, so it’s hard to say. I think looking at what you need as a director or a writer and being honest with yourself about your strengths and your weaknesses, and then if you need film school then definitely do it and pursue it , and if you can’t then there are other ways of getting there. I think everyone has their own trajectory.