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CAUGHT
IN LIMBO
Director Emily Young
A ctor Peter Mullan also knows a thing or two
about directing having been responsible for a couple of award-winning films, including the Venice Golden Lion winner, The
Magdalene Sisters. But even he was surprised by the closeness of the col- laboration between writer-director Emily Young and her cinematographer Wojciech Szepel on Kiss Of Life.
“I’ve not seen that quite so much,” noted Mullan who co-stars with Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkunaite, David Warner, Millie Findlay and James Martin in Young’s feature debut.
“Every director works closely with the DP, but they’re very much a kind of double act. Wojciech would work on the shots and sometimes even on a performance... that’s unusual, I enjoyed it,” said Mullan.
Young, an Edinburgh University graudate, first met Szepel at the Polish
National Film School in Lodz where she attended the directors’ programme.
Her two graduation films – the doc- umentary, The Tower Of Babel, about a deaf-and-blind sculptor, and the drama short, Second Hand, which won prizes at Cannes 1999, Taipei and Buenos Aires – were both shot by Szepel.
Young admitted that “there is an ongoing dialogue between us. We made a few shorts together while we were at film school and I think we push each other in terms of ideas an approach. We often have different opinions about how something might look. We spend a lot of time talking and planning: most decisions are made before getting on to set each day. Then it is a matter of seeing what the actors do and trying to evolve the basic ideas in that moment.
“At Lodz we always shot on 35mm; the film stock was very limited and so there was none to waste, which was infuriating and yet an excellent disci- pline. One of my main concerns is to
find the right dynamic and relation- ship between actor, director and cam- era which creates the rhythm.”
Backed by the UK Film Council, BBC Films and some French invest- ment, Kiss Of Life – originally titled Helen Of Peckham – was an Un Certain Regard invitee at Cannes 2003 and also received a showcase in this year’s London Film Festival.
Dapkunaite (Burnt By The Sun, Mission: Impossible) plays a South London housewife who is finding it increasingly difficult to cope with demands of two children and the long absences of her UNHCR aid- worker husband John (Mullan). Taking her children to school one morning she’s killed in a car acci- dent. Miles away in the conflict-rid- den Balkans, John is desperate to return home still unaware that his wife has died. Helen, caught in limbo between life and death, watches over a family still struggling to come to terms with her loss.
Said Young: “I wanted to explore the moment – the moments – after dying. I was curious about how it might be to be dead as well as wanting to describe the days in the family left behind after one of them dies; and the way it brings all the family together (the dead and the alive) in a period of limbo when time both unforms and drives relentlessly on.”
Szepel, who used the 35mm Fujicolor Reala 500D 8592, F-64D 8522 and, for 16mm, the Fujicolor F-
and Producer Gayle Griffiths along with DP Wojciech Szepel on their Kiss Of Life collaboration
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