KIERAN EVANS | INTERVIEW
We get our fill of abbreviations as BAFTA nominee Keiran Evans talks about his love-and-S&M film Kelly + Victor.
“We all had it in our heads. When you see a lot of film scripts about sex many of them say ‘and then they fuck’. One of the rules was that, when we wrote the script, it was very much vividly detailed so that everyone knew what was going to happen because ‘and then they fuck’ can mean anything.” This is how director Kieran Evans described the process of adapting Niall Griffiths’ dark novel Kelly + Victor for the big screen. The story tells the tale of Kelly and Victor, who are leading dull and separate lives until they are brought together in a Liverpool night club. Soon the two lovers enter into the most passionate and exhilarating relationships of their lives, but as their sex becomes more and more intense the fun they had been having experimenting with sadomasochism starts to become something much darker. With sex such a vital part of the book Kieron was determined to keep it that way. “There is nothing worse than a sex scene where a woman’s wearing a bra, that doesn’t happen,” Evans explains. “When we did the sex scene, everyone who got the script was in no doubt about what that sex was going to look like. That sorted out the men from the boys, the girls from the women. “We would have readings with actors and actress and they would ask ‘is this actually how it’s going to be done in the scene?’ and we said ‘Yes’. Then they would either say ‘okay’ or they would go white and blank and ask if there was any way to work around it – we’d say ‘No’.” “Agents would also ask to tone it down but we categorically said no. I’m a really very stubborn kind of guy who won’t give up,” states Evans, “that’s part of being a director: being a stubborn bastard.” Such stubbornness paid off in the end as, nearly 10 years after first deciding to make the film, Keiran has been nominated for the Outstanding Debut award at this year’s BAFTAs: “I was lying in bed when I found out. I knew I was on a long list but the nominations came through and my phone just started buzzing. Then all hell broke loose for a day.” The decade-long slog didn’t come easy, as finding the funding for a film that was both raw and risqué made the creation of Kelly + Victor an uphill struggle.
“that’s part of being a director: being a stubborn bastard.”
“The award nomination is quite a testament as it’s not just me being nominated, it’s for all the other people who have believed in it along the way. Everybody from the film’s producer Janine Marmot, to friends and family and Film Agency Wales and the Irish Film Board – who put their money where their mouth is. All those people who persevered when it would have been easier to step away. “It is really about the fact that these films can be made and can connect and we shouldn’t follow the idea that everything needs to be profitable”. Though the sexual encounters between the central characters form the centrepiece of the film, they are far from the be all and end all as it also explores the emptiness and lost feeling felt by Britain’s forgotten generation: “Some people are saying it’s a romance, it’s a very strange romance!” Jokes Evans “Someone described it as the ‘Romeo And Juliet for broken Britain’, which I quite like. Most people get together quite romantically, with flowers and all sorts, and this was a love story told at 120mph. Starting at the extreme end of things. “A surprising amount of people just get very moved by it. I get lots of emails of people saying they’re still thinking about the film five days later. They’re still thinking about the characters and what they go through. “What people relate to is that feeling of when you lose touch with the world – when you’ve got nothing left and in a dead end job. You’ve lost all sense of the world and the drugs aren’t working anymore, the drink isn’t working anymore. What makes you feel again? What makes you reconnect with the world, or reconnect with another person? “I hate doing Q&As for Kelly + Victor – not because I don’t want to talk about my work, but with this film there are so many silences. A lot of people are stunned. There are just people crying or walking out and it’s like a form of torture for them to have to talk through it again.” Despite, or perhaps because of, the profound shock felt by some watching Kelly + Victor, it has become an instant favourite with many audience members. Only time will tell if this is enough to secure Evans a win at this year’s BAFTA ceremony, but he is at least certain that his choices and convictions, controversial at the time, have paid off and he has created a film that is both disturbing and beautiful. photo MIKKO KANANOJA The British Academy Film Awards, BBC One, Sun 16 Feb. Info: 0207 7340022 / www.bafta.org