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Pink Wall
Pink Wall is the directorial debut of Aberystwyth-born, Cardiff-raised actor Tom Cullen. It’s a relationship drama told in six scenes over six years, with a scattershot narrative reflective of Blue Valentine, starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. Working with an ultra-small budget and shot over only nine days, it’s a remarkable success of low-key Welsh filmmaking.
For Cullen, performances were key. “It is very much an actor-led piece. Because it’s a relationship drama, the film will live and die in the performances and I knew that the performances had to be incredibly authentic. Luckily my cast [Jay Duplass and Tatiana Maslany] is absolutely world class, but because I am also an actor, I wanted to create a process that I knew that I would want to work in as an actor.
“I developed a semi-improvised process where I had a theme, but the actors used that more as a road map, and so basically what they would do is follow the theme, but the way in which they said the lines was entirely up to them. Because it was so low-budget, I couldn’t really afford actors, other than my two leads. So my mum is in it and my stepdad plays a weed dealer in it – he’s actually a councillor for school kids.”
The initial edit of the film was linear, but Cullen felt it looked a lot like Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight, and that inspired the decision to move the film’s chronology “I felt like I’d seen this film before, so I went away and really thought about what I wanted my film to say and be. I really wanted the audience to feel like they had felt and witnessed the relationship, rather than a linear story.
“I wanted this film to be experiential. When we reflect back on experiences, especially relationships, memory is not linear. What we do is we juxtapose the moments in order to fulfil our emotional landscape. Hopefully that creates a film that prompts a discussion and reflection of our own experiences in relationships.”
Pink Wall is released Fri Dec 13 via Pinpoint Pictures.
words FEDOR TOT