Räuberinnen / Robber Girls / Filles Brigandes
"Making of" - 8 little video interviews!
From the last swiss shooting days, 2008-05-07 in Zürich, Villa Pathumba:
--- PART-2 ---
(partly shortened, all english translated by Sanna, german original here)
(DEUTSCH: Mitschrift vom gesamten deutschen Originaltext der Interviews ist als Kommentar angehängt, HIER clicken dann runterscrollen) Carla Lia Monti (director and writer):
I come from the fine arts, have always had the same topics, since 10-20 years, and it's a continuing development. There's not one idea that occured just so (snap!). Well, from the first idea, in my mind, up to this shooting day, there have passed about 5½-6 years now. It's got nothing at all to do with history or such, I don't pretend any historical claims here. The costumes are about 300-400 years now, altogether, but they don't fit together in the least. The point is just that I'm creating an own cosmos, an own world, where the characters inside fonction with a naturalness.
Well, what it's about, I'm making some sort of fable, where you gain some distance. That one doesn't just recognize himself one-to-one, just like in a fable where there are animals, the sly fox, the dumb donkey, in which you recognize the neighbor or other people, and that's why I've created an own cosmos, to gain a certain distance.
And I have a wonderful crew, I've wonderful actors, we have a great mood on the set, which can't be taken for granted normally, and so we've been able to create pictures where there's a jewel in every picture, where you notice there's a love there, for this design, and in the movie you can feel it.
Enzo Brandner (camera):
The basic idea is that it's just a rather high gloss concept, optically, and regarding content complete trash. From these contrasts the movie shall also live. From balancing the thin line between esthetics, bloodiness, and also comic elements. That's also how the actors were selected, e.g. two cabaret artists, who in a way, even when playing a raping scene, it's all simply drawn into a comic direction again. (..tech talk..) The movie is shot very lively, and has huge dynamics, there are wide total shots, und there are many close-ups. So those TV-medium-shots, we actually omit those almost completely.
Nils Althaus (leading actor, "Josef", Emily's lover):
I've made a lot with the music, I also wrote the lyrics, that is my lyrics, which I'm singing. Just quite simplistic pop-lyrics, coming right from the heart, that's what he shall sing. The robber girls, that's some kind of pot, of all the yearnings that a woman can have, but which she never fulfills. All those women come into this pot, and together do all the things they've always wanted to do, well, shoot around, rape men, rob out, cut genitals...
Some other robber girls from her gang find me, and take me into their cave, and then I'm actually abused, as a living inflatable doll, get infused vi@gra, and then... every robber girl wants her turn as well...
And then Emily arrives, and then is... So, we're finding each other again, but of course then she's disappointed, that I 'supposedly' had betrayed her, with other women. Without that being my own fault there, but that of the robber girls.
This complete craziness that's simply something that I loved, that someone simply takes the freedom to say, the bard I make the bard now, and the evil robber I make ONLY the evil robber, just really taking this freedom, that's something I admire! That's why I've accepted. All the staging is so over the top, that I've really.. I've never seen anything like this on the big screen.
Nina Bühlmann (leading actress, "Emily", poor daughter turned robber)
(....) Carla had again a detailed idea of how she wanted Emily to be, but as said before, there's also a lot of myself in her. On one hand I'm the rather fine girl, who sometimes is afraid, and doesn't always quite know where to go and what to do, but who on the other hand also has that boyish side, or the powerful, to just smash into, or to take a pumpgun and shoot around. It's just those two sides that were most important to her. On one hand the natural girl, and on the other the strong woman, the same with Emily.
I don't even know if she does this really consciously, but she has that way of giving to women those roles that in everyday life usually get assigned to men. Like my character, Emily, who suddenly becomes a heroine and rescues people, goes searching for my lover, what usually is done the classic way by the guy. And the other women roles as well often are actually men roles, and also, that you suddenly mutate into a robber, that's not necessarily exactly how you know women. And that's great, it makes... That's really the fun in it, to just show the strong woman for a change. That's great.
Alexandra Prusa (actress, "evil mother")
(....) I really had problems to develop that character. In fact that was rather difficult for me. It was first planned to start in autumn, and at the time I was still working with the musiciens, since no one knew yet if the "evil ones" would also be allowed to sing. So I created some lyrics myself, which then... have me accompanied in a sense, well I've (written)... "I had emotions and have it unlearned, I could see and have it unlearned, I could feel, I have it unlearned, I don't know anymore, where's it gone?" Well, if you read Uehlebeck (?), or so the quite modern urban person, well he's sometimes not far off from this character study that I'm now *trying* here!
Especially the scene that I shot today, that's... There I thought, this is perhaps the only really emotional... the only time when she's showing an emotion for a moment. Just herself alone of course. But what's beautiful, what I find enchanting, and that you really have to see in this movie: Carla is a great paintress! I think. And her picture language is gorgeous, and I think that will contribute just as much as the story. There we can really look forward to something very colorful, very rich.
Hans-Peter Ulli (actor, "evil bishop")
(...) In his greed, wanting more and more, he knows no limits. (...) It's actually the permanent search for happiness and satisfaction, mentally, but that doesn't work and so he takes it through all those physical things. And this makes this character exciting to me, to have a look what's that about, being a hedonist? The opportunity to tell this through a fairy tale puts that thing into some meta-level, which allows us, as actors, and also the director, to do things that you otherwise couldn't do. But I think otherwise this would just be half a p*rn, or a brutalo-movie, being so endlessly awfully boring that I'd say forget it. But through that fairy-tale design you have of course every chance to exaggerate without limit, over the top, distort things, and we hope the viewer will make in his mind the connection to today's reality. And if we reach this, then we've got exactly what we want.
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