[This interview includes SPOILERS for the film Share.]
Pippa Bianco talks with Screen Rant about her Sundance hit Share, bringing the film to HBO, and what it means to tell a story like this when the idea of privacy is changing so rapidly. Bianco, who also directed the sixth episode of the premium cabler’s newest teen drama, Euphoria, expanded the feature film from her 2015 short film of the same name that starred Taissa Farmiga and The Wire’s Andre Royo. In expanding the short to a feature-length movie, she brought in Rhianna Barreto (Hanna) to play Mandy, a young woman who discovers a disturbing video recalling a sexually-charged incident she has no memory of.
Barreto is joined by Charlie Plummer (Lean on Pete, Looking For Alaska) as Mandy’s friend Dylan, as well as Poorna Jagannathan (Better Call Saul) and J.C. MacKenzie (The OA) as her mother and father. The film charts the disorienting circumstances of Mandy’s lost night, while contending with the stigmatization she faces as a result of seeking information and justice from those responsible for making the video. The result is a remarkably intimate and harrowing film that deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as possible.
Ahead of the film’s premiere on HBO, Bianco spoke with Screen Rant about the journey of making the film, as well as the important ideas she feels the film communicates. Take a look at the full interview with Pippa Bianco below:
What goes into the process of expanding your short film into a feature? And can you describe the experience of taking the film to its premiere at Sundance and then all the way through to its upcoming premiere on HBO?
Oh sure, sure. You know, I actually had the idea for the feature before the short, and then I, you know, had to convince people to give me millions of dollars. So I figured a short was a better way to explore - to show people what I wanted to do and also explore the story and me as a filmmaker. I knew how I wanted the film to start and I knew how it would end. I guess that's what I sort of had, is the two bookends for me. The first image and the last image. And those things actually didn't change over time. But what happened in-between them definitely did.
From there, we were very fortunate that the short ended up going to Cannes and winning a prize there, which created a whole world of opportunity I didn't have before and people were interested in reading the script and supporting the next thing. I then went into a year or so of writing and re-writing before we took it out to financiers. And in that time I did a residency at Yaddo, which was a huge part of the writing for me and a beautiful place that I would recommend to any writer. My time there was really invaluable. And then I also went through the Sundance labs project, which was another life-changing kind of experience. We secured financing in-between the writer's and director's lab, and then began the process of looking for cast and re-writing.
We had a major delay when, after we found Rhianna and were set up and ready to go, her third visa appeal was denied and we realized she wouldn't be able to come to America at all. So we either had to re-cast or figure out another solution, and we decided to move the film to Canada which was wonderful in the end. It was a really supportive place to make the film. I had to finish the film actually in Cape Town for some personal reasons. Someone in my family was quite ill, so I had to finish the film in kind of a disjointed way from down there. And so we submitted to Sundance while I was living in Cape Town.
Because I was so far removed, I didn't think that we would get entered. I didn't really think about it at all, and it was kind of a shock when we got the news that we would be going [to Sundance], and really humbled. And then it was, what I think it is for most filmmakers, a frantic sprint to get through the mix and color in time for the festival, which we did.
HBO came on board right before the festival. They approached A24 and myself with a plan for what they thought the film was and what resources they could give to the film that we would never have had otherwise. And that was really cool, so we all partnered together.
We also submitted to Cannes and were fortunate enough to go and play there. We were so lucky with the way the film was welcomed there, and totally shocked by the awards in particular. To win those two awards was totally shocking.
How you would describe the film. Is it kind of a cautionary tale? Do you see it as a coming of age tale, a socially conscious film for the digital age?
The films that inspired me were... I thought a lot about the Dardenne brothers and Anna Gaye, and also particularly Lee Chang Dong's poetry in Secret Sunshine. And especially for the Dardenne brothers, The Sun, which is very much a mystery even though it's keeping with their body of work, in terms of being a more minimalist, realist, social drama. So, I think those are the family of films that I aspire to be like, though I'm not sure what the genre heading would be. Aesthetically I thought of it as, "What would Mandy's nightmare look like?" And how to , certainly aesthetically, visualize it in certain places as a horror or a thriller. But again at the end of the day, I think while there is mystery and some aspects that are suspenseful or thrilling that it is hopefully just a portrait of a human being making incredibly difficult personal choices and navigating a crisis.
Much of the film centers on the stigmatization that Mandy faces as a result of being a victim of an assault. Can you tell me about your approach to the notion of victim-blaming and how it impacts and changes the perception around a situation like this? How did you want to explore that with your film?
I think that's the interesting thing about the climate in which I made the short and the climate in which I made the feature. There were certainly still some people who read the script and were like, 'Well wouldn't it make a little bit more sense if she hadn't been drinking so much?' And I was really deeply disturbed by that, because I was like, 'Well, no, it doesn't make any difference actually.' If she's behaving the way human teenagers behave, why would that make any difference in the kind of empathy the audience would or wouldn't have for her? And I do think that audiences are better than that.
I do think that there's often a temptation to infantilize the audience. I mean I kind of think that everybody actually is an expert when it comes to filmmaking and character behavior. You know what I mean? We spend our whole lives trying to make very small inferences about other people's experiences or beliefs by looking at their behavior and the way they think and the way they look, and the ellipses between what they say and what they don't say. So, I think that humans are incredibly perceptive when it comes to being bullshit detectors. I think that audiences are really, really sophisticated in terms of the way they judge human behavior. So I don't see why there would be a need to oversimplify things to appeal to an audience, I think that that is not serving them.
But, by and large, I think I didn't actually need to have that conversation so much about victim blaming or not empathizing with Mandy's character because of the way she behaves. I think what was more interesting is the side of that issue that applies to how we think people should behave once this has happened and what we expect of survivors as advocates and activists and justice-seekers. And that people in the current climate have a certain set of expectations about what is the right way to move through a situation like this in your own life. And that that set of expectations causes a great deal of pain for people for whom this is their lived experience.
I think it's really tempting to assume that there is a right way to behave in these situations and you know exactly how you would. And in this instance it's obviously a more complicated picture than that and was certainly one of my aims in making the film, to try and humanize and dignify someone making the choice is right for them, whatever that choice may be. Whether that is to come forward and bear the burdens of others as an advocate and an activist, or whether that is to just make whatever choices you need to make to get out of bed everyday. In either scenario, I think those are heroic and profound choices, and I don't think a person is any less brave if they choose anonymity over public advocacy.
Moving more toward the end of the film, Share keeps the idea of catharsis at arms length. Can you tell me a little bit about your approach to that sort of storytelling and why it was important to do so in this regard?
To me, I do find catharsis in the end of the movie. I just don't think it's the kind we prepare American audiences for very often. I think that she has been very clear as a character about what it is that she wants in the film, from the very first time she has to articulate it. Which is she wants to know what happens, and she wants the privacy to figure out how she feels about it and what choice she wants to make next. So, I think she's been very clear about that throughout the film and that hasn't really been something that the people around her, who are very supportive, actually, in terms of her parents, or her friends, or law enforcement, that hasn't been something they can hear or appreciate really.
I think of the ending as sort of optimistic in the sense that she is the kind of person who really, she has the same conversation with her parents at the beginning of the film when they first figure out what happened to her and at the end of the film when she says she's really ready to move forward in a different way. To me I think that's very optimistic that she has the clarity and the agency to articulate herself that way and to make very difficult personal choices that may be unpopular and may be loaded. I wanted to make this movie to dignify the choice that most people make.
The men and women in my life who are survivors or who have experienced something like what Mandy has experienced have, overwhelmingly, chosen their privacy and their anonymity in a public way or a legal recourse way. I don't think that's any less heroic or any less valid, or that there's any shame whatsoever in making that choice. It also hopefully calls to attention what we think an audience wants or expects, or how we like to consume these narratives. It's really important to me that when Mandy deletes that video, that is the cut. She is now directing the film. She is done with people watching the video, we're done with watching this story, and she has that kind of control and agency to end the film in that way. I think that was really important to me, to interrogate what you as a viewer think you're entitled to of someone else's experience.
In what ways were you hoping to use the film to analyze and depict the internet's obsession with other people's private moments and how things like what happened to Mandy seem to take on a life of their own, as part of a much larger fallout of an initial experience?
I think that filmmaking is inherently voyeuristic. No matter how empathetic or ethical you are as a filmmaker, you are appropriating experience to create entertainment. And that is fundamentally voyeuristic and exploitative. I think the only way to deal with that problem as a filmmaker is to acknowledge it. I don't really believe in the fantasy that there are some films that are just truth and transparent and objective reality and that you can have full empathy for someone else by watching. I think that the most honest answer is to highlight that paradox and that problem, and interrogate it with the work itself.
And also to hold yourself accountable as a filmmaker. An audience is accountable as viewers in terms of how they participate in the consumption of those images. Especially in the consumption of images of violence or other people's pain. And the way in which that's not actually not a passive form of participation, that that is active. So yes, that is certainly something I want to engage with in the film.
Share premieres Saturday, July 27 @10pm on HBO.
Photos Courtesy of HBO