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| Lakeview Photo: BFI Flare |
Darcy (Lesley Smith) is celebrating her divorce. A cluster of her friends are coming up to the house to celebrate with her, but they are the ones with the heavier emotional baggage. Tara Thorne’s Lakeview, screening as part of BFI Flare 2025, finds both comedy and drama in the women’s efforts to resolve their issues, find distractions or wilfully wallow in misery. When we met shortly before the festival, Tara tells me that she felt it was time to do something different.
“One of the things I always talked about is how lesbian films are always set way back before electricity was invented, and they kissed once, and then somebody died. Which was basically Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, which is an incredible movie. But I've definitely been feeling like I didn't want to do that. I wanted to do something that was contemporary and current where no-one was struggling with their sexuality, no-one was in the closet, no-one was estranged from their family because they're queer. It's feeling like we're in a time where the gay stories don't have to be about being gay.”
There’s at least one bisexual character in there too.
“Yeah, I think I'm atoning for some past biphobia,” she says, a little sheepishly. “I just feel like – maybe you had this experience, too – I had a lot of friends come out as bi over the years that were very strong. I think it's becoming more common because it's obviously okay, and it's just, yeah, it's fine. You can do it. It's certainly something that I've seen happening.”
And there’s also polyamory, which we see quite a bit in films about gay or bi men, but not so much in films about women.
“Yeah. And polyamory is not something that I practice personally, but again, in terms of trends, that's something I was seeing a lot too, among my queer and my straight friends, where it's just like everyone's polyamorous now. Everyone's relationship is open now – “My boyfriend has a wife,” or whatever – it definitely isn't something that I do, but I think is also just reflective of the time that we're in.”
With lots of different things going on in the film, how did she approach bringing it all together.
“I actually went through at one point and in the script software I use, you can count how many times people speak. I figured out who had the most lines and then tried to even it out. It was a practical way to evolve all the stories. Obviously we couldn't have four or five full movies within one movie, so it does narrow down to the one relationship, but in the beginning I wanted everyone to feel well rounded and like they had their own stuff going on.”
It's a very conversation-centred film. I ask how she planned out her shots to keep it visually interesting.
She laughs. “Our funder was like, ‘Why don't you get two cameras?’ And it's like, ‘Why don't you give us more money for double the camera crew?’ Because they were like, ‘It's very chatty.’ My stuff's always chatty. Lesbians love processing. And so they were concerned about crosstalk and things like that. I will say the scenes that had everyone in them took a lot longer than I would have liked and I think wore the actors out a little bit. So moving forward, I probably would figure out a way to either make those scenes shorter or just not...” She shrugs. “You always want everyone to be in one in one scene, in an ensemble, but just try to figure out a way to not be like, ‘Oh, here's six people at a table.’ Because there's only so much you can do visually. It's like, ‘Here's two people, here's two people, here's two people...’ It definitely was a challenge, and one of those ones where you don't realise until you're in it, where you're like, ‘Oh, maybe everyone shouldn't be talking to each other right now.’”
There’s also a scene fairly early on where everybody's dancing, which seems like a tricky one to film in a small space.
“Yes, that. So that was in the middle of the night. It was on a night shoot. Everyone was angry, everyone wanted to go home. And there was nothing scripted. It was just like, ‘They have fun.’ I can't remember what the direction was, but it was just like, ‘Everyone have fun.’ And we just sort of went with the flow.
“The song they're dancing to in that scene is It's All Coming Back To Me now by Celine Dion, which obviously we can't afford. It's not in there. I did that on our first movie, too, where we had a slow dance scene and there was no script. It was just sort of like, ‘Let's go with it and see what we find.’ And even though everyone was cranky to start with in that shooting process, everyone had a great time during, and I think it's reflected in what you see.”
There's quite a bit of crankiness in the characters as well, in places. I recall my colleague Paul Risker’s interview with her about her first film, [film=40827]Compulsus[/film] a few years ago, and her remark there that we don't really see women's anger expressed very much on screen.
“I certainly feel like I'm angry all the time,” she says. “I have been my whole life, and I have felt chastised for it or just been told it's too much. Especially as we're seeing our neighbours in America having their rights rolled back every day. And it's just like, they're definitely coming for women's right to vote. They're definitely coming for gay marriage. They're coming for all these things. They overturned Roe vs Wade, you know, all these things that people fought so hard for. It's like, I don't know how you are not mad all the time. And in terms of Lakeview, someone reviewed it and said there was an undercurrent of anger, which I don't agree with, because I felt like it was a more joyful movie.
“Yeah, I think people are complicated, and I think it's cool to be able to explore that. You know, when you're writing a script, a lot of times people will flag likability as an issue, but they never flag it with men. I mean, we just went through a golden age of television where all the men were terrible, but the second a woman is unlikable for a second, it's like, ‘Oh, well, we have to change that. If no one likes her, they're not going to like the movie.’ I just don't believe that.”
We also talk about the age gap relationship in the film.
“It's funny because Faly [Mevamanana], who plays Phoebe, is 27,” she says. “When we shot it, she looked 18. And more than one person has said when she gets out of the car, they thought she was Nicole's daughter. Which I think is a hard pill for Nicole to swallow. But, you know, age gap relationships, it's something I'm interested in. It's something that I always am judging men for. And it's been interesting in my own dating life. I tend to be interested in people who are younger than me because I'm in my mid-forties. I don't want kids. So the age has to be under a certain level if you want to go on without kids. So that sounds horrible. My current girlfriend is eight years younger than me. That's not that bad. It does pop up as a problem occasionally. But, yeah, I just feel like men are used to it and a young girlfriend, to a group of male friends, they would think that was awesome, but I think women would be like, ‘What are you doing?’ Which they are here. They're just like, ‘What? Why? Why is everything about you great except this one thing?’” She thinks for a moment. “And the younger girlfriend has more of the power.”
I suggest that the balance of power is a shifting thing, especially after the introduction of Dax, a character who is famous. Where did that aspect of the story come from?
“When I was writing the story script, it was during lockdown and Phoebe Bridgers had become quite famous. Her record had come out, Punisher, and she was doing these late night performances, but they had no audiences, so they were doing these really interesting things. And so she became famous in the pandemic. That's how I envisioned Dax: as someone who had been working for a while, but just sort of tripped into fame. And then Phoebe Bridgers became way too famous for Dax to be her anymore. So now I think of her as someone that sells out 600 cap rooms maybe, and the reason she's famous is because the idea that you're in a room and someone's singing a song and you know that song is about you and it's a radio hit – I would be so smug. And that's a thing that happens. It's like, you still have to reckon with the real life and the real people that you made the music about.”
Dax still has less power than those around her assume.
“She really does. And she's really sad, she's really lonely. So it's like a lot of it's just a façade, which is part of the fame as well, where you know it's fake. You think she's picking someone up every night, but she's going home, listening to ASMR and going to bed.”
I ask Tara if she always wanted to have music in the film?
“I did, yeah. I'm a musician first, so it's the part that I know the best. And our sound designer, James O'Toole, was also our sound mixer and he came from music. He engineered a record of mine 10 or 15 years ago. Hilary [Adams], who played Dax, was working on an album leading up to the shoot, so those are her songs that she's performing in the movie. I think it stressed her out, but it added a layer of authenticity and it changed everyone's day when we got to do music. It's a different sound approach. You don't have to worry about sound because you're going to loop it in later, and then it's just a fun performance that you get to watch over and over. So the crew really liked it too, to the point where I'm quietly working on a musical for a few films down the road, because it was so fun. I'd like to explore the options more.”
We talk about the character of Lucy, who, I says, seems really damaged compared to the others.
“I feel like Lucy is a mess,” she says. “You have your friends who are drama queens and you love them because they're good people, but when they're on, they're really on. And I think she's just in a really on moment where they want to help her, but she's so self destructive and doing it in this very active way where it's like, ‘You could not do that. Then you wouldn't be having such a bad time.’ So when Julien flips out at her, it's a culmination of watching and not saying much, to where previously she was like, ‘Let's take you out. Let's look you up with someone. We can fix this.’ Lucy doesn't want to. She would rather wallow. And I mean, that's something in me too, the dramatic tendency to just be like, ‘No, I would rather be sad. It's better for me that way.’”
We go on to discuss casting.
“Four of these folks are in my first film, Compulsus. Lesley [Smith], who played Darcy, Hilary who played Dax, Kathryn [McCormack] who played Julien, and Katie, who plays the bartender, they were all in Compulsus. And I started writing this film immediately after Compulsus because that's a drama but they are really funny and I wanted to work with them again. So they were all plugged in from the beginning.
“We had an audition process for half of the other characters. So Faly, who played Phoebe, JB [Jessica Marie Brown] who played Lucy, and Stephanie [Clarke] who played Julie Anne, they're all new actors to me. We had an interesting situation where I called it calibrating the ensemble, where there were half the folks that I had worked with before and half that were new to me. The half that I worked with before, I know what they can do, and I wasn't worried about them, but I didn't want them to feel left out or like they weren't getting enough attention. But I also wanted to make the new people feel welcome and feel like we're all part of the same thing, because when you work with people over and over, you develop a shorthand and inside jokes and things like that.
“Luckily everyone got along as far as I know, and they gelled right away. When you're just in a house for 20 days together, eating every meal, taking every little walk, shooting every set together, you become fast friends. And if you're not friends, it's really unfortunate. But luckily everyone here really gelled. Also, this is Halifax. It's very small, so everyone knew each other already in some capacity. Whether they were in the same friend group or not, they were all familiar with each other.”
They weren’t actually staying in the house where they shot, she clarifies.
“We talked about it. It was three levels. We only used the top two, and then the production was in the basement. So really that midsection of the house is what we use the most, and we just drove people every day. It was about 25 minutes outside of Halifax, so not too bad.” With so many people involved, it’s hard to avoid a film becoming stagey. How did she keep it feeling fresh?
“I'm glad to hear you say that because it's something I worry about with so much talking,” she admits. “You don't want it to feel written. And that is something that in early drafts, I always get flagged on. It's like ‘Well, people don't talk like this, actually.’ I'm a triple Virgo, and I find this surprising about myself. I'm not that precious about the dialogue. Generally a scene has something to accomplish, and you need to say the one line, but otherwise improv is welcomed and it was something we did a lot of. And they had to cut me out, laughing in the background.”
And then there’s Flare...
“I'm so excited!” she says, looking it. “And it's almost sold out and no one knows us there, and I am very nervous. But that's a festival I really wanted to go to with Compulsus, and we didn't get there. I'm just so stoked to be going there and meeting all the other filmmakers and seeing all the other films. And I'm seeing Cate Blanchett on stage, and I might just die there, so I might not come back.”
