 |
| Sophie Barthes on the production design of The Pod Generation: 'The whole intention was to do feminine sci-fi' Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute |
In the first part of our interview with Barthes, she told us about her influences and her concerns about what the near-future might bring. Beyond the philosophy of the film - which tackles everything from parenthood anxieties to the tech takeover of the modern world - she also chatted about the feminist production design and told us about working with her cinematographer husband Andrij Parekh.
The film is a masterclass in world creation, from the watchful eyeball AI that is on hand to help with everything from breakfast to happiness levels to the pastel perfection of the pods themselves.
“I'm a very visual person, I think if I wasn't a filmmaker, I'd want to be a production designer,” says Barthes.
Originally, the plan was to shoot in New York but, due to the pandemic, production moved to Belgium, with Clement Price-Thomas - who Barthes describes as “an incredible aesthete” - onboard as the production designer.
She adds: “He's worked mainly in commercials and I think this is one of his first features as a production designer. I was presenting him with all these concepts, you know, the artificial eye and the biophilic wall. I had already developed these things and other things he came up with.It was a great collaboration. We had the same love for shapes, colours and textures.”
The look might be considered softer than many science-fiction films, which often aim for a metallic masculinity in their approach.
 |
| Sophie Barthes: 'I'm trying to do something that is light and comic but also say things that matter to me.' Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute |
“We wanted to do something much more round because it's about pregnancy and the uterus so everything is a circle. Even the way the story is built is circular, the character of Rachel is very ambivalent and she goes in a circle. So everything had to be round.
“One of the influences was Zaha Hadid. I love her architecture. She works a lot with organic shapes and roundness. Also, Georgia O'Keeffe was a great reference for colour, a lot of her paintings are about the uterus. We took a palette of colour from a lot of female painters and female architects. The intention was to make feminine sci-fi - it is a world of seduction for women, they have to want to put their baby in that centre, it has to feel appealing.”
Barthes says she also loved working with her cinematographer husband on the film, who she previously also worked alongside for her debut Cold Souls.
“He’s very supportive,” she says.”I think a lot of female directors work with him because they like how he's not macho at all. He's a very sweet, gentle cinematographer. He really listens to what you want as a director.
“We love creating together because we like the same movies, we like the same painters. We have the same aesthetic - we have a language together. He’s a prolific and successful person. He's on Succession and now he's doing House of Dragon in London, so he has his own career that is much more ahead of mine.”
Although much of the film concerns itself with the commodification of modern life, it also tackles a lot of fears that will be familiar to mums and dads-to-be. Barthes says she drew on her own experience of pregnancy in the US and from talking to other young mums about it.
“I think pregnancy in America is seen as a disease. It's not like something that you celebrate or is great, it's seen as a major inconvenience for your career,” she says. "That's how society makes you feel - I don't think that's how a woman feels.”
She adds: “Companies have replaced public health, which I think is insane. When you have a company that tells its female employee, we're going to give you $10,000 to freeze your eggs, because there's never a good time to have a baby. ‘So why don't you have a baby in 20 years, when you're extremely tired? And why don’t you remain competitive with your male coworkers?’
“I feel from a moral standpoint, they're trying to help but it's the completely wrong feminist message because it's telling women there's never a good time to be a mother. Instead of saying, ‘We support you’, like in Scandinavian countries, or even in France, where you have a good maternity leave, they don't care. It's just about productivity.
“It's a society that sees human beings as not an end by themselves but a means of production. So when you tell a woman, ‘We're going to give you $10,000 to freeze your eggs’ or in the movie, ‘We're going to give you a downpayment to have a baby in a pod', it's the same thing. I think it's outrageous.
“It’s an awful message because they tell you, if you want to remain competitive with men, you have to suppress the power you have to give birth in order to be equal. But equality is completely absurd. We're not equal through biology, we do desire to have children, we do have a biological clock. Some women do not want to have children, it's perfectly fine. But I know when you're 30 to 35, you start to have all the hormones kicking in, and you do want to have a child every time you see a baby in the streets. It's a natural thing. So why are we fighting our natural impulse because the capitalist society is telling us this never good moment?”
Although these ideas burn strongly beneath her film, Barthes also displays a lightness of touch when it comes to the tone of the film, which also has a strong romantic element.
“I'm trying to do something that is light and comic but also say things that matter to me. I think life is like this. Some people don't like that - they want amovie to be one tone, so they know exactly what they're going to get. Like, if you go to Starbucks, you know, the coffee you're going to get is going to have the same flavor as the previous coffee.
“A lot of people in the film industry think like this - if you're going to go see a Western, it has to be like the classic Western. But the films I like the most and what's the closest to my experience of life is like, in one day, we can be completely elated and joyful, and we can also cry. It's the pain and the joy.
“So for Rachel and Alvy - she's completely lost because she wants to conform to that society. He's an utopian, who doesn't really fit into that society. So they're up and down all the time, in terms of trying to fit in. And why? Because that society doesn't leave a lot of room for people to have agency, I think people are becoming blind to what the society is asking them to be doing to be good citizens and to be politically correct.You can't talk about anything, you have to be nice, so it's completely polarized. Everyone hates each other. If you try to have a constructive debate, you can only choose one side, it's Manichaean.
“What about the in-between? All these things are coming to us in terms of progress and advancement way too fast and in a way that we cannot comprehend so it's creating a lot of anxieties. I think that's what the character has with this egg at the beginning. It's a seductive thing, she doesn't put too much thought in it, she's conforming. And then it's almost like a postpartum depression. When she has this thing at home, she cannot feel anything for it, she cannot connect with it. So that's also a metaphor of giving birth in America
“There is a very melancholic moment for her where she feels, it's easy for him. It's always easier for men, like he can connect. He's seeing the thing as a wonderful thing that he's able to connect with, despite his previous skepticism towards the technology, but she can't. And that's what I felt I wanted to say with the film, it's always more difficult for a woman. It's more difficult because there’s more expectation for us to be the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect worker. Donald Winnicott, he was a psychologist in the Sixties, said, ‘Forget about all this. It's okay to be a good enough mother, you just have to be good enough’. And that's already a lot.”
 |
| Michael Stuhlbarg and Rebecca Brooksher in The Muse. Sophie Barthes: 'I’ve researched so much about Hopper and his life, so I think it will be a fun one and it’s nice to go from the future back into a period film' Photo: UniFrance |
Looking to her own future, Barthes already has a project in the pipeline.
She explains: “It's a surrealist biopic, although I wouldn’t say biopic. It's about Edward Hopper, the painter and his muse - and the muse was his wife. So it's the same actress who’ll play the muse and the wife. It's sort of a surreal comedy, a bit like Barton Fink or Midnight In Paris. I've been writing this for a long time.
“I did a short film, The Muse, for a Grand Palais exhibition they had on Hopper - that's what triggered the feature. They asked eight filmmakers to create a short film inspired by a painting. So I did one, and then I couldn't get it out of my head.
“I picked Nighthawks - it’s with Michael Stuhlbarg, I’m a huge fan of his. I’ve researched so much about Hopper and his life, so I think it will be a fun one and it’s nice to go from the future back into a period film.” The film is about the relationship between Hopper and his wife Josephine, who was a painter in her own right.
Barthes adds: “He completely crushed her. She wanted to be a painter, but there was only room for one genius in the room in the apartment they had. But she was very supportive. She was his agent, his manager, she was his Muse - he could only paint her.Behind every great man there is a hard working woman to support him. He was a very difficult person to deal with, like every genius he was very self-involved and I think he was very neurotic. They had an insane relationship. They were fighting all the time but at the same time, it was completely symbiotic - they couldn't live without each other. So there is room for comedy there because the fights were so absurd and so violent. It's a bit like Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf but in a comic way.”
Read more about what Sophie Barthes told us about the ethical and philosophical questions her film raises.
