Buttercup Bill is one of those hard-hitting films that stays in your mind long after the end credits have rolled. Like many of the most captivating stories about dark and fated love, it’s romantic and playful and sweet, but equally twisted and somewhat painful to watch. By incorporating old music, and innocent childhood games and memories, it tells a mysterious and compelling story about young lovers, Patrick and Pernilla, whose secrets keep them bound to one another through adolescence and into adulthood, never allowing them to fully move on from their past experiences. Its elements and structure invoke a sense of truly dark nostalgia in viewers, and prompt a reexamination of the oftentimes terrifying complexities of growing up, along with a reconsideration of any bittersweet and/or toxic relationships from the past — the, perhaps, unhealthy ones that you can’t seem to let go of.
The duo behind this beautifully strange Lynchian tale are Remy Bennett and Emilie Richard-Froozan, a couple of fresh-faced, albeit totally bad-assed filmmakers, who culled inspiration from their pasts and bonded over a mutual love for independent cinema. Despite the rather brooding ideas and themes layered throughout Buttercup Bill, the directors are incredibly spirited and sweet, and were generous enough to invite us to a private screening of the film at the Post Factory. They also answered some of our questions about the film.
I saw that Buttercup Bill is the first film to be produced by Blonde To Black Pictures [aka Sadie Frost and Emma Comley], and it’s really refreshing to see an all-girl team. How did you end up working with them?
Yeah, it’s pretty rare! The collaboration started when Emma and Sadie came to see a short film of ours that was screening in London about four years ago. Afterwards, they approached us and asked if we had anything new that we were working on, and said that they were starting a feature film production company. We sent them a draft of our Buttercup Bill script and were lucky enough, and thrilled, to have them decide to come on board as producers, and help get the film made. At the time, it felt like a dream. It was completely life changing to have someone get behind us like that and give us their support.
And it’s going to premiere at the Marfa Film Festival in July? You must be very excited!
Oh man, yeah, we are beyond excited to be showing the film at Marfa. It feels like a perfect fit in so many ways. One of the things that really excited us about screening there was that the setting of Marfa itself reflects something about the nature of the movie. In a way, the mythology of the American West and that whole spirit is something that echoes throughout Buttercup Bill, and for it to be having its premiere in this magical western desert town, where James Dean and Dennis Hopper lived and shot the movie Giant, makes it a dream come true for us.
The film’s premise is pretty unique, how did it come about?
The premise or theme of the film is pretty much doomed and obsessive love. We drew from personal experiences of ours combined with influences from literature and films we’ve loved. One novel in particular that was a huge influence on us was Nabokov’s epic Ada, which chronicles the incestuous love affair of a brother and sister.
What else did you use for inspiration? Aside from that, and the awesomely creepy David Lynch vibes?
So many of the same filmic references are ingrained in both of us and seep into most anything we do, so there is definitely a short hand between us in that sense. One example of a visual reference point that inspired us among a million other things was Nan Goldin’s collection of film stills from the 1983 movie Variety. We were looking at those photos from the very beginning of writing the script all the way through designing our shot lists.
New Orleans has such a beautiful and otherworldly feel to it, and it definitely contributed to the weird and dreamy story you were telling. How did you choose it, and what was it like filming there?
A few years back, we met a group of amazing friends down there who we started staying with on and off, and during those trips we would work on the script…incorporating the people and places around us into the world of the story. Even though the film isn’t specifically set in New Orleans, there is still an undeniable energy and strange magic about the city, which is pretty palpable on screen. We shot in the middle of the summer during a brutal heat wave, and being immersed in that kind of heat created the atmosphere for the film that we were looking for. We always loved how in Streetcar Named Desire or in any of Tennessee Williams’s plays, the weather and specifically the heat of the summer is used as a device to drive the drama towards it’s climax. That kind of sweaty, sweltering southern summer can breed some insanely primal behavior, and that’s what we wanted.
Patrick and Pernilla’s chemistry was so spot-on, it almost seemed unreal. Can you tell us a little bit about the casting process? Was Evan Louison someone you’d known previously and/or worked with before?
We hadn’t met Evan before his audition but the second our casting director showed us his photo, we knew he was the one. There was definitely something witchy about it. When he walked into the room for the first time, it was like it was meant to be.
Speaking of casting, I had no idea that Haley from The Dirty Projectors played the jazz singer. That’s so cool! How did it come about?
Haley is a really close friend and we were psyched she wanted to do the role! She has a gorgeous voice and looks like a film noir Winona Ryder so she was a perfect fit for the part.
What are you currently working on? Can we expect another semi-twisted love story?
A music video that we directed for the band Hurray For The Riff Raff just premiered so we’re really excited about that. We’re working on writing a few different film scripts now, and yeah, there could be another dark love story in there.