Director Luca Guadagnino on his erotic drama 'A Bigger Splash.'
Italian filmmaker, Luca Guadagnino, on his latest erotically charged drama A Bigger Splash, plus his relationship with Tilda Swinton and his stance on Italian cinema.
A little over seven years ago, Italian director Luca Guadagnino made his first feature with Tilda Swinton, I Am Love. Critically applauded, I Am Love had audiences begging for a second collaboration. Finally, that wait is over with the release of A Bigger Splash, an erotically charged drama exploring the complexities of modern romantic relationships set against the sweltering backdrop of a remote Italian island.
In A Bigger Splash, Swinton stars as a celebrated British rock star, Marianne Lane, who is seeking rest and relaxation with her filmmaker boyfriend Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts), following a throat operation. The couple's bliss is soon interrupted by the arrival of an old flame – the unpredictable, and outrageous music producer Harry Hawkes, played by Ralph Fiennes – who is accompanied by his beguiling, illegitimate daughter Penelope (Dakota Fanning).
Guadagnino believes that this impressive ensemble cast is by far the film's most integral component to his latest feature. “It's important that when you choose your players, you choose people who can be completely organic to the characters”, he says. “They need to be absolutely believable in what they are and renew the wonderment of the audience – even if these people are known – as if it is the first time that you've seen them.”
Swinton's character remains predominantly silent throughout A Bigger Splash as a result of her recent throat operation, yet is nonetheless impressive for it while her two male co-stars offer a somewhat stark contrast. Schoenaerts portrayal of Marianne's troubled boyfriend Paul is a character that Guadagnino was keen on creating following the actor's praised performance in Michaël R. Roskam's Bullhead (2011) . “We flirted with the idea of making films together because I had wanted to work with him and we actually found this character together”, says Guadagnino.
Guadagnino is also a great admirer of Fiennes – who's back catalogue of titles includes The English Patient (1996), The Reader (2008), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) - and was determined to seek out the actor whom he refers to as “a complete joy” to work with.
The fourth actor in this cinematic quartet is Dakota Fanning. Fresh of the set of the set of Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), the young actress came as a surprise to Guadagnino, who was told about her by fellow director Sam Taylor-Johnson. “Sam said 'you really need to meet this young woman because she is fantastic' and she was – the clever sharpness of this woman struck me so strongly.”
With a troop of actors of this calibre, Guadagnino believes that they each needed their time on screen to shine. “ The movie is very strong in that it gives you all of them, not just one or two”, says Guadagnino. “I wanted to make them all significant and make the relationships meaningful with another – I wanted to play a charade between the four.”
A Bigger Splash is a loose revival of Jacques Deray's 1969 Italian-French drama La Piscine. Guadagnino emphasises the increased complexity of the modern-day romance from Deray's original script – a factor that the director was adamant about rejuvenating. “The force of desire ruling them out is what interested me in doing this movie, but I didn’t want to follow the strict rules of the drama and actually follow behaviour.”
While Guadagnino was firm about revising La Piscine, he was determined to subvert the original tones and follow his own instincts. “I wanted to be consistent with the way that I like to do things which are very distinct and unique to myself”, he says. “I try not to adapt to a new way of being to the way things are to be done – so it was a test.”
In September 2015, Swinton posed for the cover of the Autumn/Winter issue of AnOther Magazine as Marianne Lane. The actress took part in an interview for the magazine posed as her latest character. This mock-interview was encouraged by Guadagnino and American writer Glenn O'Brien. It is ambitious and unconventional stunts like this that distinguish Guadagnino as unorthodox, especially in his native Italy. “I am not the precise representative of Italian cinema, to be honest - not as an Italian director but as an Italian”, he explains. “However, this movie felt organic to me because I felt that this was going to be my farewell to Italy, in a way.”
A Bigger Splash received its world premiere at the 2015 Venice Film Festival where it competed for the Golden Lion Award. Despite receiving critical praise and applause – at both Venice and the 59th BFI London Film Festival - some Italian members of the press were not as welcoming. “ The Italian press were a big aggressive towards the movie – we did receive some boos”, explains Guadagnino. “They are very conservative, it’s very peculiar and people fear out of the box – rare birds in Italy are not very welcome. I think there is a little bit of envy in Italy right now – humiliation and envy, I don’t know.”