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| Joshua Griffin and Ruaridh Mollica in Too Rough |
A short film which really punches above its weight, Sean Lionadh’s Too Rough has been on our radar here at Eye For Film since the Glasgow Short Film Festival in March, where it won the Audience Award. It has since won a Scottish BAFTA and is now qualified to enter the Oscar race – a big deal for a small scale project about life in a Glasgow council flat. When we met, however, Sean was upfront about his feelings on its success. “Filmmaking is always so hard that you feel you’re owed awards. So I have a sense of entitlement after the suffering of actually making it. It hasn’t really clicked that it actually all paid off. But yes, it’s a lovely feeling.”
It tells the story of Nick (Ruaridh Mollica), who, after a drunken party, impulsively takes his boyfriend Charlie (Joshua Griffin) back to his place, only to wake up the next morning terrified of the possible consequences. Charlie, who has not previously taken his fears seriously, gets a crash course in where they come from as the two are trapped in a tiny bedroom with Nick’s alcoholic parents raging outside and a tearful little brother (Oliver Wright) looking for help.
“You know, I've been thinking about the shoot recently, and how much of that I can’t remember, because it was so intense, like, instinctive,” Sean tells me. “I can't remember a lot, but but I think it was a two day shoot or a three day shoot, so quite intensive.”
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| The morning after |
He knew exactly what he wanted as soon as the team went into rehearsals, he says.
“I knew exactly the feelings I wanted to try and reach. And, you know, we got to the point where, I mean, it was so performance based and performance heavy, once we reached that performance, I just let that happen and everyone just followed their instincts. It was so time sensitive and intensive that we were just operating purely on instinct, I think. And yeah, I edited it myself. I don't know how any one can give their film – well, I understand why they give it away to editors, but to me, it's like, I've done all this hard work, gathered all the footage, and now I want to do the fun part and put it together because I really enjoy that. When I can edit I feel like I've suffered for this and here’s the reward, and the excitement that you get to see it, my God – did it work? Did it work? Did it work? You know?”
It sounds as if the pressure of the shoot mirrored, to an extent, the tension in the film. Did that help the actors to get into the right mindset?
“Yeah, I think so. I think it was such a claustrophobic space that we filmed in. And yeah, I think sometimes a film set can be like, especially with male directors, it can feel a little bit methodical or tight. I’m always trying to really use emotional language, and try and use evocative language so that everyone feels like they can do something, rather than just, you know, being too mechanical.”
It was filmed in ac actual flat, he says. “Which had its upsides and downsides. But it feels real, you know? It has a real Glasgow wallpaper.” He grins.
Did that also mean that the camera was physically closer to the actors?
“Sometimes. Sometimes I was in another room alone with the monitor, which was quite an experience because I could react honestly to what I was seeing. I could feel what was happening on screen and even cry if I wanted to cry because there was no one in the room with me. It was quite liberating.”
The story was quite personal in origin, he reveals.
“The actual plot came from me having to sneak a boyfriend out once, and the absolute sort of pressure cooker of that and the lengths I was willing to go through, to the point of asking them to like, ‘Can you jump out of the window?’” He laughs. “But then underlying main thing I wanted really to explore was having a background or a family or a trauma that you don't want to show to your partner. Feeling like at some point, they're going to find you out, they're going to find out that you're damaged or you're broken. And that’s a very particular experience that I don't think everyone understands. Everyone has some level of shame but there's something, I think, in some people, where you just feel fundamentally wrong in yourself, some way, because of what you've experienced. That can be a really horrible thing to bring into a relationship, and a really dangerous thing, because there's so many spiky barriers it puts up.
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| Nick and his father |
“I just wanted to tell the story. I guess when you're writing a story there’s a point where you're not really in charge anymore and you're serving it rather than it serving an agenda, you know? I think you can’t go in with too clear an agenda, because then you're too prescriptive. You have to listen to what the story needs. But I think I just wanted people to be softened by it or be moved. And I guess whenever I watch a film done right, I come out feeling so much more empathetic. And I think it's such an important thing. One of the most important things in the world is to constantly be bringing empathy out in people because it's what the world needs so much more of.”
In this case, I note, that empathy extends to the difficult characters, such as Nick’s violent father.
“Yeah, and to be honest, I didn't know how successful I'd been, because you need to have antagonists in the movie, right? I'm glad you say that because, yeah, at the end of the day, alcoholism is a disease and masks a lot of pain. I think that was important, that they feel in pain as well.”
Before we meet the father, we hear him shouting a lot from another room. I ask about that structure, and Sean tells me that it wasn’t the original plan.
“There's two scenes cut from the start of the film that actually would have completely changed that. There was a scene of Nick leaving. We see that situation before he goes to the party in the original script, so that you know what he's coming back to. But the scene just didn't quite work in the end. Everyone felt that. And we cut it. And as you say, now, in the film, it's a mystery, with the unknown family on the other side of the door. And actually, yeah, that thing that happened almost by accident was an incredible thing to happen.”
How did he get such an effective performance out of the film’s child star?
“It was very tricky,” he acknowledges. “My little brother's autistic, so I'm very used to anything that may come up as a result of that. We worked with Oliver and, yeah, there were a lot of things that he really didn't want to do, that I really wanted him to do and had to let go of. He didn't want to sit down on the floor. There’s a scene where he’s being put to bed and he didn't want to get under the covers. He had these sensory issues. But in the end, we just worked around that, you know? I negotiated with him carefully, but in the end, he was the boss. So we worked around him. I mean, you just have to respect someone as they are and try to guide them into the story, but maybe they'll go to the edge of their comfort zone.
“We had a casting director for the first time. I've never worked with one before, but yeah, that was great. We had auditions and then yeah, immediately, I knew that Ruaridh was the one, because there was just a look in his eye that said everything that I needed it needed to say. So that was a relief, when we found him.”
It’s a film full of beautifully observed details. Whilst I don’t wish to slander a city I love, I tell him that I found the cigarette butt dropped into a pint glass full of piss just perfectly encapsulated a certain aspect of Glaswegian life.
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| Hear no evil |
“I worked with a partner who's an amazing production designer and just had such an artistic approach to the whole thing. I wanted you to be able to almost taste the piss,” he says, laughing. ”I wanted that. These sensory things. Because as much as they're in this traumatic family environment, they're also hungover and hungry. I mean, it's hell. I feel like I could have pushed that further because when I wake up like that I can't even see, never mind have to go through all of that hell, you know? I feel for them.”
Eventually, something in the story has to give. Readers should be aware that there are some spoilers in this next section, as Sean discusses why he chose to take it in the direction that he did.
“That was one of those things where it just happened in the script. I wasn't even considering it. I was writing and suddenly the story took me. It wasn't even me in charge, like I was talking about earlier. It was like, ‘Oh, this is what happened,’ like I had discovered that rather than created it. I just knew, because I think I was thinking about Hitchcock, we're talking about suspense and how if you have a bomb on a train, as soon as you blow the bomb up, then there's no more tension. So I guess the parents were the bomb that didn't blow up. They're intoxicated and are in this other world, almost, when Nick and Charlie finally reveal themselves.
“I just thought it was the perfect way to end it. Almost the highest crime that they could commit was absence. We're expecting this homophobic response or an explosion but it's all very still, and I guess I just wanted neglect. I think that was really important that neglect was a theme came through, because that's sadder, to me, than any sort of arguments that could have happened. And Nick had to also take responsibility, you know? He had to come into a position of power at some point, and that situation really enabled him to do that.”
Audience reactions so far can be divided into three groups, he says.
“Not that many people, but some people are not comfortable with the abuse at all, and maybe for some reason were switched off to it because of that. And then there's some people are like, ‘Yeah, it’s good.’” He says that in a very noncommittal voice. “And then there are people who just love it and feel so emotional about it, and those are my favourite people.”
Oscar or no Oscar, he has plenty to be excited about in the future.
“I'm developing my first feature. I can’t say too much, but it's a gay love story about two young men that evoke a supernatural entity that is fuelled by their love.”
You can watch the Too Rough trailer right here.
