With You Won’t Be Alone, Goran Stolevski directed one of last year’s most striking feature debuts, a lyrical meditation on identity and the human experience wrapped in the guise of a European folk-horror film. Arriving less than a year later, Stolevski’s sophomore effort, Of an Age, could scarcely be more different on its face: set in the Melbourne of the late ‘90s, it tells the yearning tale of a teenage boy’s brief first romance with the kind older brother of his dancing partner. Both films, however, are deeply moving and deceptively unclassifiable, and, together, position Stolevski as one of the most exciting young filmmakers working today. In anticipation of the release of Of an Age, we spoke to Stolevski about the film’s origins, the importance of collaborating with a great cast, and the least romantic place on earth.
BOSTON HASSLE: This felt like a very personal film. Could you talk a little bit about how the idea came to you, and how it was developed?
GORAN STOLEVSKI: It was during one of the COVID lockdowns, actually. To try and preserve what was left of my sanity, I started writing obsessively. I would try to write a short story each day, whether that story was a paragraph, or a page, or three pages– the point was just to write a story. And on the fourth day of that exercise– I was aiming to do it for 30 days, so I had 30 stories– I got distracted. I was reading a book of short stories by a writer called Lauren Groff. And in this story, there was a boy in high school– in a very different context, it was something Irish with zombies– but it was the first party he’d ever gone to, and he was about 17, 18 at the time. And I got to this particular sentence where that was revealed, and even though I loved the story, I could not get to the next sentence. As soon as I would read that sentence again, memories would flood back from my own high school years, which are the years I usually think about the least, because that was a time in my life when I was very absent. For me, life was gonna happen after high school, it wasn’t happening during it. So, suddenly, I was in this kind of writerly context of coming up with the story. And normally I don’t write from my own life, but memories gave way to certain personalities and energies, and suddenly there’s these two guys sitting in a car, and they’re talking, and as the words are flooding out of their mouths, I’m struggling to type them all out as fast as I can. And in that one night, probably 60% of the dialogue in the film came out– not in a very orderly way, but that’s where it came from. And now it’s a movie!
BH: I saw You Won’t Be Alone last year when it showed at the Boston Underground Film Festival, and have been very much looking forward to what your follow-up would be. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I did not expect the follow-up to that film to be this film. They’re so at least superficially different that I find myself going back to that film and reconsidering some of its themes. Do you see the two films as thematically related at all?
GS: I mean, emotionally related– you could call this film You Won’t Be Alone! (laughs) I’ve written 13 features. Writing something is, for me, an intensely physical process where you become very connected to this world of feelings that somehow only exists for you, but it’s very real to you. I don’t really look for thematic patterns in my work consciously. I think they’ll emerge inevitably anyway, but I look for that feeling of something that makes me (think that) it’ll be worth spending all the months, and then years, of my life trying to fine tune this particular feeling, to transfer it to someone else. I wrote Of an Age in between the day we had to cancel the shoot for You Won’t Be Alone because of COVID and a few months later (when) it was reinstated. So it was during that period, and that meant it was the most recent script I wrote. The most recent one is always the one you’re most attached to in the moment, so when I had an opportunity to apply for funding for the next film, that was the one that I was obsessed with. And this happened before You Won’t Be Alone was even finished, before Sundance, before anything.
I was very confused that anybody else other than me would be interested in this story! I thought it was so idiosyncratic to me and my personality that I was like, “Oh, God!” But we tested it with a few people who were very different from me, and they cried when they read it, so I was like, “Okay, so I’m not just projecting things! There’s something here.” Because I don’t want to make films just for myself. I want to connect to people. I want me, as I am, to connect to someone else without having to compromise either me or them. That’s how this one was made. I think, with the next one, people will have the same sort of “What the hell is this?” reaction compared to the first two. (laughs) I think it’s a little bit closer to Of an Age. But I’m driven by the feeling and the connection more than anything else.
BH: One of my favorite parts of the film is when they’re in the car, and they’re listening to the Happy Together soundtrack. The film definitely felt inspired, or at least of a piece in a way, with some of Wong Kar-wai’s films. Was that a conscious inspiration? Or were there any other filmmakers who influenced you on this film?
GS: Well, while I was writing it, the conscious part was how to make a romantic film in the least romantic place in the world, which is suburban Melbourne in 1999– like, it’s anti-romance, it’s where romance goes to die– but somehow to make something that’s romantic, and transporting, and intoxicating. To me, Wong Kar-wai wasn’t an influence in the sense of trying to do that style so much– ironically, I think You Won’t Be Alone is probably a lot more shaped by Wong Kar-wai’s style, but it’s amazing how that one ever came up. But it was more that Wong Kar-wai is, in terms of contemporary cinema, the peak of romance. That’s the most intensely I’ve ever experienced love through someone else’s mind and body. And also knowing, what are the queer films that were out at that period? I wanted to connect it to the period, but also, it was an acknowledgment of me aiming for something that’s essentially unattainable– romance as intense as Wong Kar-wai’s in a setting that is the opposite of it! And like I said, 65% of the dialogue came out in a stream, I wasn’t thinking things through very professionally when I was writing it. Even when we were looking for funding and development, everyone always said, “Obviously, you won’t be able to get the soundtrack from Happy Together.” I was like, “Oh, no, obviously. Just give me the money and we’ll get to that part later.” Thankfully, that worked out, because it was never my intention to take that out!
But I think, insofar as I had a conscious reference point during the writing of it, it was Before Sunrise. I was 10 when I watched it, and that was the first time I experienced romance in a cinematic way. At the time I thought that’s what my life was gonna be like, of course. You know, doesn’t everyone just meet Julie Delpy on a train in Vienna? (laughs) So I was conscious of that. But in terms of style, I don’t really think of other work consciously, because it always comes from the feeling you’re trying to capture, and how best to convey that using cinematic tools. And then other people get to point out what my influences are more than I do, and are probably much more correct about it than I ever could be. (laughs)
BH: One of the things I loved about the film was the rapport that the cast had, which seemed very natural. Did the actors shape the tone of the film at all as you were making it?
GS: Of course. It happens to me with every film, in the sense that quite often the person who gets cast is very different from what was written, but they’re cast for a reason. There’s something about them, their energy, their soul, that you want to know more. I want to connect with this person. And with these kids– I keep calling them kids, but they’re all adults– especially the main trio, I want that soul to be preserved in a movie for what it is. I don’t want to shape it away from what it is. There’s something pure about it. I always try to adapt the character to an actor rather than the other way around as much as possible. And it’s not about capacity or skills, or whatever. When Elias Anton’s audition tape first came through, initially, I was like, “He’s nothing like what was written, or what the character is. I guess it’s not going to work… But this is clearly the most exciting set of eyes I’ve ever seen, so he has to be in the movie somehow!” And I was only gradually realizing, wait a minute, try and shape this movie around this energy and this set of eyes. And what happens then? What’s that movie like? And that version of the movie was a lot more moving and thrilling to me, and more important than the movie I wrote, frankly. I encouraged them to improvise as much as possible. I then deleted a lot of it. (laughs) But you’d be surprised at how much of it stays in, because the rapport builds, and suddenly they become the characters, the characters become them, and the things that come out unrehearsed or unconscious, even just moments of feeling in between what’s being spoken, which are often more important than what’s being said. It becomes its own organic process. I’ve always felt, with You Won’t Be Alone as much as this, the film directs you after a while, and it’s your job to listen, to listen to everyone in front of you and everything in front of you.
BH: You alluded earlier to your next project being different from these last two. Is there anything you can say about that, or what viewers might be able to expect?
GS: Oh, sure. That movie’s set in present day Macedonia. It’s set in this house, an old, stately house, where a bunch of rambunctious queer people live– like an informal safe house. It’s a very diverse crowd of people, and there’s children as well, so it’s kind of like an unconventional family. Someone has a terminal illness, and it threatens a lot of things, the cocoon that has been set up. In a very homophobic society, you kind of have to build up your own cocoon, and build up your own family. And when that is undone, how to kind of put it back together, and realizing it’s always going to be undone, and you have to keep putting it back together. And that’s what life is.
Of an Age
2023
dir. Goran Stolevski
99 min.
Of an Age opens Friday, 2/17 @ Kendall Square Cinema
