JUNE 2015 and Helen Walsh has a film premiere to go to. In under an hour the Warrington-born novelist will be walking the red carpet at the Edinburgh International Film Festival for the world premiere of her directorial debut The Violators.
The film is a dark, disturbing slice of north-west English life. It explores the marginal lives of those who live in marginal estates in the Mersey hinterland. The title – inspired by Andrea Dworkin – offers a flavour of what to expect. The result is a murky vision of power and abuse lit up by strong performances from leads Lauren McQueen and Brogan Ellis.
Even though she has a premiere to go to Walsh, whose best known novel The Lemon Grove explored the difficult terrain of desire in the much more upmarket setting of a Mallorcan villa, is happy to sit down and talk about her new film, the difference between novel writing and directing and what it’s like to make a “French” film in Birkenhead.
Do Helen Walsh the novelist and Helen Walsh the film director operate in very different worlds?
The two different forms don’t sit opposite one other I think they share the same nature. I tend to write cinematically. I tend to write in scenes. As a writer if you are story-driven and character-driven - and I’m both - then you are directing your characters. You’re directing the story. You’re trying to create a visual image for your reader. A great novelist is a great director in being able to conjure up an image in the reader’s head.
[Making a film] is less lonely of course and you need to be more democratic and social.
You can be a dictator when you’re writing then?
That’s exactly true. You have some writers who say ‘oh, my characters ran away with me.’ It’s not true. It’s a myth. You’re always in control.
And I think that was the big shock for me in the first four or five days [of filming]. You can’t exercise that level of control over your characters. You have to allow for a certain degree of autonomy and interaction.
Lauren McQueen plays Shelley. When I wrote her she was streetwise and she was edgy. But she didn’t have a vulnerability. Lauren came in for the casting and she brought a certain tenderness and vulnerability to the character so I rewrote certain scenes with Lauren in mind.
It’s a disturbing story. Why was it one you wanted to tell?
A long fascination with intergenerational relationships. A few years ago there was a big scandal in Rotherham with Pakistani taxi drivers and girls from care homes and I was really interested in the girls’ voice. It was silent in media representations, and understandably so because the voice is a child’s voice. I wanted to give the child in those situations a voice.
What is the world of this film?
Shelley’s world is so singular and so far removed. This particular estate we filmed in in Birkenhead is so economically and socially marginalised and very, very detached. Not just from Liverpool but from Birkenhead. And though Shelley’s story may seem very shocking to many people it’s very normal. I try to present her world as being a naturalised, normal world, as opposed to presenting it in a voyeuristic way. This is how a certain marginalised minority of society live.
The local tourist board aren’t going to like you.
Interestingly, we finalised our locations and then the local council got a hold of a script. My producer had been telling them it’s a rom-com called Shelley and about six days before filming we had all our locations pulled. It was really sad. We managed to keep the estate and because our crew was so small we could literally turn up film and move on very, very quickly.
There’s a lot of stuff that we shot that I made a decision at the editing stage not to put in. There’s a truth to it. It was engrained in the landscape and therefore engrained in the story. But there’s a fine line between poverty porn and presenting the landscape as it is. I think you do have a degree of responsibility to the people and the world you are depicting.
Since shooting the whole landscape has been gentrified. All the rubbish has gone and there’s a kind of beauty in the landscape.
What are the challenges of being a first-time film-maker?
In a novel if you don’t like something you go back and edit it before your agent sees it, before your publisher sees it.
You have six weeks on a film set and if you f*** up you’re f*****, especially on a low-budget film like ours.
We filmed for under £200,000 and the BFI came in in our final hour of need and pushed it over £200,000. And it was really tough to film on that budget. But the style – the handheld cameras and the natural lights – was set down and agreed upon.
I think it was much easier to manage a smaller crew of nine or 10 than a vast crew and a vast budget.
Which film-makers do you admire?
I do watch and love some British cinema. I love Andrea Arnold. She’s such a bold distinctive voice. She’s a genius. You can really smell and taste her films.
I’m quite a big fan of the Frenchies. Jacques Audiard is my favourite. I love him so much and I love the Dardenne brothers.
I only met my director of photography two weeks before we started filming. We spent a whole day trying to deconstruct the opening scene in Jean Luc Godard’s Weekend. We bonded over that. And then a day into filming he turned around and said ‘are we making a French film?’
The Violators is available on demand on Friday.
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