Slut In A Good Way Interview: Director Sophie Lorain On Pushing To Get Bold Film Made

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBnQwvgs-IY

Movies are pretty damn hard to make even without the financial burden. Just crafting a story that’s worth telling is a mammoth task in and of itself. But add in the burden of financing, then every aspect becomes an obstacle. This was especially the case for Slut in a Good Way, the film with a problematic title, subject matter, and black-and-white look that made it a little bit hard to get government-subsidized funding. At the end of the day, these things don’t exactly make the film incredibly marketable.

But that’s also part of the reason the film becomes special when it does hit. I had a chance to speak with director Sophie Lorain on the phone, and in our discussions, we go over the difficulty in funding, the reason they went for a black-and-white look, and this very relatable take on sexuality the film portrays.

Below is the official synopsis for Slut in a Good Way:

“One tipsy evening, Charlotte, the recently heartbroken, Megan, the anti-love anarchist, and Aube, the shy romantic, stumble into the ‘Toy Depot’. Charmed by the male employees, the girls fill out a job application and quickly become part of the ‘Toy Depot’ gang. Charlotte has found the guys to be particularly helpful in getting over her heartbreak, to say the least. But has she taken it too far? The film explores teenage girls’ desires, the blurred lines between sex and friendship, and the unfair double standard imposed upon girls. It is a story of desire, self-censorship, and self-assertion.”

Slut in a Good Way is out in select theaters now!

 

LRM Online: How did you get involved in this project as director? 

Lorain: Well, Catherine Léger, who the writer of the screenplay, actually called me at one point because she’s a friend of mine and we worked together before. We co-wrote a movie together. She called me because she had some problems getting the film financed. The process here is very different. It’s not private financing. It had to subsidized. It had to go through the government to get funded. She couldn’t get her movie to go through. So she thought maybe there was something wrong with the writing so I had a look at it and it was really the subject that got me interested because I thought it was quite funny. I thought there was no movies being made on the side of young women and their sexuality. We don’t talk about that. Their desire, their need to explore in a healthy kind of way. I thought well, if you’re looking for a director I want to direct this. That’s how I got involved with the project.

LRM Online: That means it was very challenging from the beginning.

Lorain: Oh, yes. It was really challenging because like I said, the film wouldn’t go through. She had the first director attached to the film at one point and it didn’t work out. That’s when she called me and I went back to the institutions here with the film and I had to really fight for it. Their point that it was not very interesting to hear about what the sexuality of young girls was all about. They thought it was a bit shocking and maybe the subject was too old, all kinds of reasons. The film just wouldn’t get made. We had to fight all the way through the financing, yeah.

LRM Online: Honestly that’s what attracted me to it when I first got it sent and I saw the trailer. I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is different material.” This is out of the box.

Lorain: It is. It is. Also the title in English was the same in French, and the distributor here had me change the title because he wouldn’t go for it. Every step of the way, there were problems. Getting the money to do the film, choosing the title, doing it in black and white, all kinds of reasons why it just wouldn’t get funded.

LRM Online: Yeah, Sophie, that was gonna be one of my questions. What got you guys to end up filming this in black and white? I thought eventually maybe they’d be color. I don’t know.

Lorain: For several reasons. One of the major reasons that I don’t know if you’ve ever stepped in a Toy R Us in the states because they’re all over the place and they’re all the same. It’s an orgy of colors and an orgy of primary colors and I thought if I shoot my film in colors, that’s what’s gonna come out is these primary colors. The three girls are gonna be lost in that. The audience’s focus is not gonna be on the right thing. The focus is gonna be on the toys in the background. The colors and it’s gonna be ugly. I didn’t want that.

Also, the dialogue in French is extremely important in that film. [Screenwriter Catherine Léger’s] biggest strength is dialogue. I wanted that dialogue to be on what came out first for the French audience here. I thought if I do it in black and white, that’s where the dialogue is gonna come forward and the image is gonna strike back a bit. That’s why one of the reasons also I did it in black and white. I wanted the focus to be on the girls and not on the toys.

Also, because we had very little money. The store was made into a toy depot instead of a Toy R Us, which meant that we could work with all the boxes on the shelves and the toys being just as a display and patched up this way. In black and white it got to be easier to do than in color. To tell you frankly, I wanted also, to have a bit of poetry infused in the film. In the sense that I wanted to be told as a fable and I wanted something that would go through time and that girls could relate to.

LRM Online: Yes. In this case, these were teenage kids. I’m 38, but in a way, there was a face of my life. I was like wow, I can totally relate to this. Where was this when I was young?

Lorain: That’s it. That’s it. I think that the way the story is told contributes to that in some fashion. The fact that it’s in black and white, there’s no time frame for it. It can be anywhere in time. I think that that’s what the point was all about. It gives it a certain beauty, a certain mystery to it even though it’s fun and it’s very modern. I think that the kids could relate to that, to the black and white. Much more than the adults, right?

LRM Online: Right. Well, I loved it. There’s a line that, if I’m not mistaken, Megan says about how … It says, in quotes, “They brainwash us from birth to like pink, flowers, and love.” When in reality, reality is not like that.

Lorain: You think so?

LRM Online: Yeah. In reality, life is not pink, flowers, and love. It’s a lot more.

Lorain: Not life, but it’s the surrounding of life. I mean maybe it’s lost a bit in translation, but the thing is that big companies, because that’s what Megan refers to all the time, they’re making all this fuss about love and romance and princesses and being dressed in pink and all of that. Everything is built around girls to be in the princess-like world. So does Disney, so does all the surrounding around girls is done that way. We’re not thought to go and play hockey, we’re thought to dress up as princesses and wait for a charming prince. That’s what we’re brought up as. That’s what the education around us and the big companies are surrounding us with is the idea of playing with perfume and make up and being dressed in pink. To be a silent partner in some ways in the education and to be waiting to exist in the eye of guys to have a life. That’s what Megan is claiming is that we shouldn’t be doing that.

LRM Online: Right, I like that. Not giving any spoilers, but I really like Charlotte’s comeback in the group in the scene where it’s the Christmas party. Since everything, all the chaos happened during the Halloween party. How did that scene get itself worked out? How did that, when it came to filming?

Lorain: They’re looking for a way to get her back in and to smooth things out and to test as well the guys and the girls and the party. And not to pretend that things didn’t happen either. So they come up with this idea, which is bit silly, but at the same time it stops the drama of the whole thing. That’s what it does. It gives them a little moment where they can reconcile with one another. Guys and girls in particular, Charlotte, with all the whole surrounding. So she comes up with something quite huge, which is this bomb, she’s pregnant and guess what guys? One of you is the father. She just one minute afterwards, she says no, no it’s a joke. It’s kind of a relief for all of them. It’s like things could of get worse, guys. That’s what’s she’s telling them. Things could have been getting out of hand, but it didn’t happen that way. Let’s move on. That’s what she’s saying basically. That’s what they all saying.

LRM Online: I loved it. It was very strong-

Lorain: That’s what they agreed to.

LRM Online: It was a strong comeback.

Lorain: It’s transposed, you know? It’s easier to say it that way. It’s funnier and it’s cuter than making amends, which she doesn’t need to excuse herself. She doesn’t have to do that. She is responsible, but what I’m saying is that she doesn’t have to excuse herself for having explored sexuality on the same levels as the guys do. She just went too far because she punishes herself first by judging herself so harshly that when she does this business of trying to raise money for funding women’s cancer disease, or whatever, it’s just an excuse because she feels guilty about her own self. That’s all there is to it, basically. That she’s the one responsible for punishing herself. No one does. She’s the harshest one of them all and that’s very feminine in some ways.

LRM Online: Yeah. Well to finalize, Sophie, is there something you can share with us that you’re working on right now?

Lorain: I’m working on other things, but nothing precise. I’m working on movies and television series, but I’m doing all kinds of stuff. Nothing precise, I’m on about five or six projects.

LRM Online: Oh, wow. That’s great. Multitasker. Okay. Well, much of luck and especially with Slut in a Good Way.

Lorain: Thanks very much.

Slut in a Good Way is playing in select theaters!

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