[Interview] Nathalie Biancheri for WOLF

[Interview] Nathalie Biancheri for WOLF
Courtesy Focus Features
Believing he is a wolf trapped in a human body, Jacob (George MacKay) eats, sleeps, and lives like a wolf – much to the shock of his family. When he’s sent to a clinic, Jacob and his animal-bound peers are forced to undergo increasingly extreme forms of ‘curative’ therapies. However, once he meets the mysterious Wildcat (Lily-Rose Depp), and as their friendship blossoms into an undeniable infatuation, Jacob is faced with a challenge: will he renounce his true self for love.

For the release of WOLF, Nightmarish Conjurings’ Shannon McGrew spoke with Writer/Director Nathalie Biancheri, where they discussed the exploration of species dysmorphia in the film, how important movement was in invoking the animals onscreen, and what her approach was in making sure audiences walked away thinking about the film’s many questions.

How did you first learn about species dysmorphia? And was there a reason you picked the animals that you picked?

Nathalie Biancheri: I had seen a little news piece on a girl who believed that she was a cat, and it was sort of tonally, I thought it was kind of satirical and not interesting, but I didn’t know anything about species dysphoria. Even though the piece was saying that it is a syndrome, and it’s on the rise, and so I started doing the research and found out that it was predominantly amongst teenagers, and quite more common in the US. I even dabbled very briefly with the idea of could it be a documentary? Is that something I want to get into? But then realized that, ultimately, I was more interested in the kind of conceptual themes that it opened up. In particular, it was something I wanted to kind of judge in the real world, but rather, on the one hand, let’s say that you feel that you’re an animal, perhaps you chose to be that animal. You chose at some stage you decided to identify with an animal, and even wear a costume, or inhabit its characteristics. And so, then I’m like, Well, why? What pushed you to make that decision? What about our world? What about your life? What about the ever more alienating society that we live in, perhaps? And there was that whole set of questions with that. And then, on the other hand, I also thought what if you don’t choose, and what if you wake up, and as long as you can remember, felt that you should have claws and fur and, and sharper teeth? Obviously, it was such an unfathomable thing for me to be honest, and I spent a lot of time myself trying it out. But I thought that question was for me very touching and interesting to explore, and interesting to see if people could relate to it, despite it being sort of somehow unrelatable.

So, I had these two question marks that were slightly different, in a way, but both sort of, could exist under the umbrella of species dysphoria, and I decided to place them in a world which I wanted to be like our own. There’s nothing really that I think gives you any indication that it isn’t our time, except for the fact that we’ve not seen a place where this happens. And yet, we’ve seen it throughout our entire history. So, it’s no big surprise, and to give the chance for those people to live, and then to leave the audience with – hopefully – a million questions.

In terms of the animals themselves, I mean, to be honest, it was really quite arbitrary, which is funny. What I find always funny about films is…it happens a bit in the edit, but I guess in the writing stage, or when you first think of something or a character’s name, I mean, at least for me, it’s like that. I’m quite instinctive. And I’m like, this should happen, or this should be the name or this should be the animal and I actually rarely question it too much regarding the scriptwriting process, the endless workings, but there are a few pillars that just stay. And then, I always think when I’m in the edit, where you’re finally cutting something and you think how much like how much questioning goes into like a frame longer or less goes into it, and how much instinct somehow goes into the very first bit. It is interesting, because when I chose for him to be a wolf, I don’t know. I think I had interviewed someone who thought who had mentioned being a wolf, and that kind of stuck with me and it was like, yes, wolf! That makes sense. Really, with all of them, they were instinctive choices.

And so, then once I had said parrot and duck and squirrel, then I had to do an inverse process of figuring out what maybe had drawn them to. It was quite interesting how almost their animals informed the writing, and then the people they became otherwise in the words rather than having that and then building to it.

Writer/director Nathalie Biancheri (left) and actor George MacKay (right) on the set of WOLF, l Conor Horgan / Focus Features

This brings me to my next question, which is the relationship between the Wolf and the Wildcat. It obviously is the most important one that we’re seeing. But how did you know that George MacKay and Lily-Rose Depp were the right actors for those, because I’m sure, there are so many things that you had to look for?

Nathalie Biancheri: I think what happened with Wolf in the casting process was basically like, I learned along the way what I should look for and not in the different characters, and what I needed to be able to see either upfront or what I had to accept. Like, in George’s case, that I wasn’t going to see on a tape. But I didn’t know that initially. So I did watch a lot of tapes. In Jacob’s case, I think I needed him to be so committed to the wolf. And so, living and breathing and every bone and every bit of fur on him had to be so truthfully wolfish that I wasn’t going to find that in an audition room. It just wasn’t gonna happen. And so, it had to be a real faith in the actor that I had chosen. Obviously, I was very familiar with George’s body of work, and thought he was mesmeric, and kind and committed, and had huge physical versatility too. And also, then trusting in the movement specialist, Terry Notary, who is brilliant.

That was actually my next question. Those were some of the best movements I’ve seen in a character pretending to be an animal. So, that was what I was going to ask about.

Nathalie Biancheri: So, I had Terry on board before having any of the cast. Actually, I think we just got funding and I’d seen him in…I don’t know if you saw a film called The Square?

It’s on my list of films to watch.

Nathalie Biancheri: Yeah. You should if you’re interested in movement to have your mind blown, because in that he plays a performance artist who comes into the room and is an ape, and it’s unreal. And I mean, the scene has such tension, and again, kind of really blurs the boundaries between like is he performing? Is he not? Is he an animal? And I was like, this is the guy for us. The great thing is that Terry also totally got the script. I remember in one of our first meetings, he was like, “Yeah, of course.” l thought I just had to explain things. Not in a patronizing sense, but again, I didn’t know who I was speaking to and whether he was just very moved by the physical side of things. And he was like, “No, no, no! Of course. The duck doesn’t think he’s a duck. He feels the likeness of the duck. He’s in love with what a duck can offer him.” Anyone who’s speaking and saying what a duck can offer you gets it.

Particularly, with George, that was such an important part, and he was the first member of the cast that we did a very full-on week workshop, and then it kind of went on and on. With George, we had two, three weeks of rehearsal plus a whole pandemic of him like crawling around and testing things out. And, with Lily as well, of course, her character also needed a lot of work. But there was always, in my mind, a very clear differentiation, which is this is a girl who somehow perhaps since she was born, and perhaps it’s almost intrinsic to her, but it is a performance to a certain extent. And that’s also very difficult. How do you work to the level where it feels so natural that it’s something she’s been doing as a child, but not so natural that she lives and breathes it in the way that George should? So, it was quite fascinating working to figure out the different degrees of credibility, of animality. It was a lot of trial and error and movement and observation, really.

And the other characters that are focused on here, the Zookeeper and Dr. Angeli. I think that they’re both very important characters, because they’re kind of the opposite of one another. Can you kind of talk about the importance of that?

Nathalie Biancheri: The script and the characters mostly stemmed initially from the patients, and then you sort of have to flesh out these antagonists to a certain extent. I think I really like the question of what do I want them to bring to the overall question of the film. I think there were a few things on my mind, and one of them was I wanted the Zookeeper, in particular…I think Paddy [Constantine] does it and it’s very, very challenging, and I hope the audience do question that, for certain moments he does say things which, again, as a spectator coming into this world and seeing teenagers who effectively are quacking and non-speaking, should that be here? Is this effectively a way to live your life? And is it not better at all? Of course, his methods are sort of quite quickly…I think that does sort of signal a lot of alarm bells quite soon on for the audience. But, of course, if you were to listen to what he says, and I think he has that kind of like, quiet charisma, especially initially of someone who knows what they’re talking about…I felt that was important because I felt if they’re just so despicable or are sort of one-dimensional villains, is that going to just reduce the whole question to, they’re bad and these guys are good. So I’m not going to ask myself anything else. There was more room for them in the script, as there was more room for the secondary characters, because again, I always felt like I was exploring a question from different angles. But then, in the edit, it just honed in on Jacob, because he just was such a carrier for the film, for rhythm for everything, for emotion.

But, you know, it was a shame to let go, because I think there was a conversation between the two of them in which Dr. Angeli even disputed his methods and was really broken after the rebellion, and it’s a shame that that didn’t make it. I think she’s well-meaning and cares, and that was quite important for me, for her and the work that we did together that she was someone who actually genuinely cares. I think he does to a certain extent, but I think in a sense, she’s so damaged herself. She’s also living in this institution. She’s also terribly lonely and has a completely controlling and dysfunctional relationship with Wildcat, which I thought was, like, very, very interesting for her. But ultimately, she’s kind of a child herself, and can only sort of live in narratives. So, you are this because of this. And you are that because of that, and I do think that is a bit of a problem we have today, which is like expecting that everything has like an answer, or resolution or this can be solved through this, or that can be solved through that. And I’m like this, because of this. No, actually not. You don’t know yourself at all, and we never will, and it doesn’t matter how long you try. We’re also constantly changing. So it’s an impossible battle, and maybe the only thing you can hope to know is that you don’t know.

I personally love films that are vague, because it leaves a lot for your imagination to fill in. And, to wrap this up, is there anything for viewers that may not be comfortable with their selves? Or they’re trying to find their own path that you hope that they learn from this film?

Nathalie Biancheri: Yeah, I guess, at the heart of it all, I hope that you do want him to escape. In the simplest form, with so many questions I wanted to ask, I think a lot of it just boils down to it being a very simple tale of breaking free and accepting who you are and the limitations of what who you are will bring. Because if you want to be a wolf, it’s certainly not easy and you might have to renounce many things, but ultimately, what are you are the consequences? If you try and repress who you are, often that stems in violence and, certainly unhappiness. It was very important for me that that wasn’t the only thing that the film brought to the table, but it is, without doubt, the heart of the movie.


WOLF is now playing in theaters from Focus Features.

This interview was edited for clarity and length.

Shannon McGrew
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