Gifts in the obstacle: Nina Conti and Shenoah Allen on “Sunlight” | Interviews

Nina Conti is a real ventriloquist and actor. In her first narrative feature film, she plays a woman who spends almost the whole film inside the type of monkey costume that a team mascot could wear. It is also closely like the puppet that Conti uses in its live performance. Shenoah Allen, co-screen of Conti, plays Roy, a man who is rescued by Monkey (as the character is called) after a suicide attempt, and who ends up crossing the desert with Monkey, with conversations and adventures.

In an interview Rogerebert.comConti and Shenoah discussed improvisation for (and as) their characters and why the stories on travel are so significant.

Watching this film made me think about how a film is a form of ventriloques, with characters saying the dialogue created by the writers.

Shenoah Allen: We have lived in this world for so long, and we have developed a lot of scenes and the script by improvising together. We have really learned these characters and you start to be able to hear the characters in your head; Either you say it spontaneously on your feet or when you write as characters. So, in a way, I don’t know who was the ventriloquist – Us or the characters.

Nina Conti: Yes, in a way, we provided voices for the characters, or they were doing the job for us. I think it’s the second.

The conversations that the two characters had seemed so spontaneous, a lot of riffing from front to back, that it seemed improvised. How did this evolve from what you wrote?

NC: From the start, Shenoah came to my house early in the morning. We would go to a cafe at the corner of the street called home, which was the place where a large part of the magic occurred. He may sometimes be there at 6 am until 9 years old, then he came with scenes. And then we would read them and worked them. We filled them on my laptop. I would be in a complete monkey costume. We have really entered this makeup land every day.

It was always like a method to perfect a scene would be to do it vaguely, to find what seemed real. And it continued to the shooting. Even if we had a script. In the van, no one will stop one of us if we turn off the script. We are just going to follow him. And it was a large barometer of truth. Because it is difficult to improvise the false. It is as if you suddenly walk through trial.

One of the most durable themes for movies or even any story is a trip. Why does it resonate so powerfully?

Sa: I assume only because when you are traveling, you always want to know what concerns you the next turn, which is a really delicate thing when it comes to writing a script. With a trip, you have a destination. For so long, we did not do it; It was right: “Okay, we wake up in the desert, we are going somewhere, we don’t know where we are going”, and that seemed good for the characters just to live in the present of the unknown. But the trip ended up needing to be a little clearer so that people take the bait. Even if it was abstract as “we are going to the lake”, it has always provided UM this old structure of the history of the quest.

I love the way the two characters really have nothing but the truth for each other. There is no claim. And they connect immediately. This creates such intimacy in their conversations. They are referring to it. And they appreciate it in each other.

NC: Having this spokesperson [in the monkey mask] During all this time, this barrier to reality, actually makes it tell the truth. I always find that it is difficult to be myself, and I took the picturesque path towards this by this little character. You feel much less responsible when you are in the character, and therefore my character is of character, and the gloves are extinct. It is a really confused metaphor – the mask is on!

HAS: It’s really funny when the characters just say what they think. And that has also provided a lot of challenges because you think: “Very well, let’s build this and the scene will have this natural escalation which brings us to history.” But when you are dealing with the monkey who immediately says exactly what we expect at the end of the scene as the first line of the scene, we write from there. Instead of going from A to B, the monkey begins with B.

There is a very significant change at some point in the film where we see literally, if not through the eyes of Monkey, through the holes of Monkey’s eyes.

NC: It seemed to be the way to disappear completely. She remained in more and more. Her commitment to the monkey became somewhat superstitious at that time, because she prefers it to herself. But then she sort of succeeded in the point of no return. And it was also … a very practical way to shoot the car accident with a small budget.

He had to be unbearably hot in the monkey costume.

NC: Yes, and it was sometimes dangerous, I’m sure. It was such an obstacle in itself. And to remove the head to review the images on an instructor always seemed, for a short filming, you know, where every minute counted, it always seemed that it would be a waste of time. Instead of checking the blow, we would just make another one. And so, what we got there was like more hours of performance, which I am grateful because if we stopped, we would not have done the one who came afterwards. There were gifts in the obstacle throughout the way.