Berlinale interview: ‘Honey Bunch’ – Deconstructing love in darkness

Violation directors and now partners in real life Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli bring their sophomore feature Honey Bunch to this year’s Berlinale.

After their gory and relentlessly scarring feature debut, the Canadian filmmakers deliberately tone down the gore and have love on the mind. Not that Honey Bunch is a rom com by any means. Darkness prevails.

Set in the 70s, the film stars Grace Glowicki as Diana, a young woman trying to piece together her fragmented memories after being in coma. Her attentive husband, Homer, played by Ben Petrie, drives her to a remote clinic which specialises in cutting-edge treatments to restore memory. However, as the medical therapy progresses, Diana experiences haunting visions and finds herself becoming suspicious of Homer’s true intentions. She must confront the possibility that her recovery may threaten to unravel a sinister truth about her marriage.

Honey Bunch also stars Jason Isaacs and Kate Dickie, and the film is a retro-futurist retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice, which creepily and tenderly deconstructs common ideas of love. Most of all, it asks the question: How far would you go to be with “The One”? If such a thing exists.

We sat down with Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli to talk about the limits of devotion, what commitment truly means, and how 70s films like Don’t Look Now shaped their vision for their terrific second film together. Oh, and the joys of taxidermy.

Euronews Culture: Your previous film, Violation, was a powerful and incredibly dark film about trauma and sexual abuse, and what struck me with Honey Bunch is that while it deals with a certain form of abuse, this is a love story – almost the flip-side to Violation.

Dusty Mancinelli: You’re right, and without spoiling anything, Honey Bunch was born out of the fact that Violation was so dark.

Madeleine Sims-Fewer: Both these films are extremely personal to us. Violation dealt with some of our own traumas and we wanted to make something that was again personal with Honey Bunch. But also something that people would want to watch again! Because Violation is not one you watch again – and rightly so. It’s a tough film and we understand when people come out of it and say “We loved it, but we’d never watch it again.” It leaves you kind of depleted, and we wanted to do something for our next film that that showed who we are again, but that we also do have a sense of humour! (Laughs) We didn’t just want to be the trauma filmmakers but wanted to explore a different part of ourselves.

DM: We ended up becoming a couple and we wanted to explore our past relationships and breakups – why they didn’t work and the idea of love and devotion.

MS-F: And what devotion and committing to someone really means. It’s easy to make a commitment at the beginning, and then you start to realize what that truly means – to go through all the ups and downs with someone. It can be quite horrifying at times.

DM: Like this idea of the one true love of your life – that’s just not a real thing for us, and what we’ve learned as we’ve gotten older is that love ebbs and flows, and it’s about renewing your commitment to the one you love in those down points of relationships. And accepting your partner for who they were, who they are, and who they’re going to be.

The film deals with this theme of commitment but through grief – it asks that very universal question: What would I do if I lost you?

DM: There is a selfishness there. Not being able to let go of the person that you love is very selfish and very challenging. It’s something I think a lot of people can relate to and that’s why Homer’s journey becomes very interesting. Eventually he does learn how to let go, but it takes him on a very twisted journey.

MS-F: Also, when you’re with someone for a really long time, you change over the course of your life. You become several different people. And if that person next to you isn’t with you on that ride, and they expect you to be the person you were right at the beginning – there’s a metaphor in there with the character of Diana… But we won’t spoil things too much for your readers!

I loved the dialogue in this film, specifically the back-and-fourths in the car between the central couple. As a filmmaking couple and a couple in real life, how much of those conversations are ones you both had together?

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DM: That’s the only way we know how to write anything – we draw from our own personal experiences. Funnily enough, I’m more Diana than Homer!

MS-F: I’m definitely more Homer! Sometimes when we’re writing dialogue, I’d turn a little recorder on and then improvise a scene. I would be Homer and Dusty would be Diana.

DM: Ultimately they’re conversations we’ve had about our own relationship, about our own ideas in love.

MS-F: And then Ben and Grace, who play Homer and Diana, are also a couple. They’re married in real life, and that was really important to us because you have to buy into their relationship, to buy into that connection.

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DM: There’s this moment in the film, a dinner scene early on… And he’s looking at her with so much love. And that’s just real love you’re seeing there on screen. It’s hard to act that.

MS-F: We had lots of conversations with them, too, about relationships and about these kinds of topics. There were still moments of improvisation and spontaneity in the moment, but we had a chance to kind of workshop it all.

You’re also working with two British acting legends here – Jason Isaacs and Kate Dickey – how did that collaboration come about?

MS-F: I saw Red Road when I was in drama school, and it was my favourite performance that I’d ever seen. So Kate was always someone that we were hoping to work with. We managed to get her the script and I think she really liked that the character was someone who she hadn’t played before. She plays a lot of villainous characters…

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Her character’s relationship with her husband is very moving – of the three main relationships in the movie, that was maybe the one that touched me the most.

MS-F: Oh that’s good. All three relationships are all quite distinct. I’m really glad that we stuck to our guns with that, because there were times when there was a bit of pressure to remove part of the relationship that moved you.

DM: What I like about it is that each relationship allows different audiences to connect with the relationship that, for whatever reason, speaks to them the most. And you seem to have connected more with that one – which may say something about you…

I haven’t explored that yet, but I will get around to it. I wanted to ask you about the visuals in this film, which are very retro. And naturally so, since the film is set in the 70s. But there’s this greenish hue that bathes the film and contributes to this Daphne du Maurier atmosphere. Can you tell me more about this vintage aesthetic?

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DM: We’re huge fans of films from the 70s, and setting the film in that era was really exciting to us. We wanted the film to feel like it was actually made in that time, so we did a lot of testing and found actual lenses from that period. So we were shooting with the lenses used in Taxi Driver, Barry Lyndon – using those actual tools from the era.

MS-F: That was really exciting for us. To restrict how we filmed it.

DM: And to use restrictions in terms of technology, as well as camera movements. In fact, there’s a drone shot in the move and it’s too smooth. So we added some shake to it, because back in the 70s you could only film those shots from a helicopter. We need to add this kind of roughness to it.

MS-F: There’s also something about films in the 70s – Don’t Look Now, Wicker Man… Back then it would have been called horror, but now, they wouldn’t be called horror. They’d be psychological thrillers. We wanted to make a film like that where it’s kind of genre-less in a way, or genre mash-up that doesn’t have to sit firmly in the horror category. For example, Don’t Look Now has that well of deep grief and it’s really about exploring this relationship. It’s got some very sweet moving scenes as well as scenes that unsettle you and scare you.

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I’m trying to skirt around the twists and reveals, but the film also has a science-fiction aspect to it – a technology which doesn’t fit in the 70s setting – and it reminded me of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone… Specifically one visual which called back the episode The Masks…

DM: Nice reference. I can see why, but Eyes Without A Face and The Elephant Man were both references for us.

MS-F: And the visual you’re referring to – we wanted there to be a sweetness to that character…

That character is both heartbreaking and pivotal, as she reframes perceptions. You toy with sympathies in a lot in this film, because film history has always taught us to suspect the husband but what initially seems manipulative or shady is in fact the desperate act of a doting man…

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DM: We knew we wanted to make a genre film but at the same time turn some tropes on their head. We wanted to take the things you expect and use it against you in a way. To misdirect the audience and it helps us recontextualise characters, something we’re very interested in doing in all of our work. And you can actually watch the film now for a second time and completely read it differently and see it differently because you’re not bringing any of your own baggage to interpreting why Homer is crying on other side of the bed, for example. Is something horrific going to happen? What has he done? You realize: Oh, he’s actually grieving.

MS-F: Good answer! (Laughs)

Finally, considering the film does delve into what a couple would be willing to do to show or push the limits of their love, what would be your limits? The eternal ice cream headache – or would you go to the same extremes as Homer – that shall not be spoiled?

DM: Oh my god, let me tell you – Madeleine was like: “When you die, can I taxidermy you?” (Laughs)

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Genius! In a pose?

MS-F: Definitely in a pose! (Laughs)

DM: I said no, that’s too creepy. And she’s like: “Well, can I turn you into a jacket?” You want to wear me? That’s disgusting! So we’ve landed on: She can eat a little bit of me. I’m dead, so I don’t care. But she must do it quickly before the cops find out!

And what about you, Madeleine?

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MS-F: There’s no limit. Dusty, you can taxidermy me if you want!

Honey Bunch premiers at the 75th Berlin Film Festival in the Berlinale Special section.