An interview with Aoife McArdle, director of Kissing Candice
After the European premiere of „Kissing Candice“ we met with the lovely director Aoife McArdle for a short Interview. We quite enjoyed the few minutes talking to her learning more about her personal background and her intentions to do this movie.
freie Generation Reporter: What was your inspiration to do this movie?
Aoife McArdle: I really wanted to make an Irish youth movie because I think that a lot of countries have their youth movie but Ireland doesn’t. Although it’s an Irish youth movie essentially it’s an universal story about what it’s like to be young. I wanted to try and really emerse the audience, and show them how it feels like to be a young person with all the madness and fears, dreams and fantasies and dangers of being young. I wanted to pull the audience into how that really feels rather than sit back and look at it from afar. So, that was basically the idea behind the film. The story was inspired by my own youth, my friend’s youth, my family, by the place I’ve come from, dark stories I’ve heard and researched.
fGR: Where do you come from exactly?
McArdle: I come from the area where the film is set, which is right on the border between the North and the South. Both of my parents are from there, so I spent a lot of my childhood there. And then I spent some of it in the North of Ireland as well -so, between those two areas. The travels was a big part of my outbringing and everyone’s outbringing but it was a small part too because we were too busy being a young person, so that was the backdrop.
fGR: Did you built characters around people you knew from your childhood?
McArdle: Absolutely! I mean Candice is probably a combination of one of my best friends, my sister and me. I think there is just about a bit of all of us in her. So, definitely she is an invention of those people. And then there is Jacob, inspired by different first loves of mine, as well. I think you have to be your story’s personal, so it has that immediate quality to it.
fGR:The World premiere already was in Toronto. How different was it this time at the European premiere?
McArdle: I think that it was really exciting and wonderful. We had a great reception and a packed audience and so on but for me, as a filmmaker, the European audience is more my audience. All my favorite filmmakers, apart from a couple, are like German, Italien and French. So, we just happened to finish the movie at that time I mean I enjoyed Toronto but for me Berlin is more about personal achievement because I really love this festival.
fGR: Are you going to watch other movies at the Berlinale?
McArdle: Definitely! I already saw Cobain yesterday, which I really enjoyed. 22nd of July today, which was so heavy and fantastic as well. I’m gonna go watch Transit and Profile. I’ve got a big schedule of films I’m going to watch and I’m staying till Friday, so I can see everything. My favorite thing is watching films and my second favorite is doing them.
fGR: When did you know that Ann and Ryan were the perfect fit for your lead characters?
McArdle: I mean there was a huge search for both of them. I must have met every female actress and young street cast actors, theater actors, film actors. I actually met Ann quite early on, and she stayed in my mind because she just had these certain parts of the character completely in herself. And then I went through everyone I could meet and I came back to her and I was like “no, she’s the girl“. Then we rehearsed, and she just really became the character. I mean, no one is going to have all the qualities that you have in your head, but then once you rehearse and work together, you make that character work. She is a wonderfully talented actress, too, so that helps.
fGR: We really fell in love with your music. We thought that it really suited the scenes. Did you choose it all by yourself?
McArdle: Yeah, I mean when it came to the tracks like the actual artist tracks, I mean there is John Hoppkins in there whom we have collaborated with. Then there is a lot of my favorites like Nancy Sinatra. And then a collaborator of mine through other work, John Clark. Actually, this is the first score he has done, so the score in between the tracks was by him. He is a young composer. So, we worked on it together and that kind of created that heavy melo-drama of being a kid, and you know the madness of it through the music.
fGR: How long did it take to do the whole movie?
McArdle: Well, this is the thing, we had a very short shoot because we didn’t have a big budget, so we had to shoot really fast. It wasn’t actually two years ago it was a year and a half ago that we shot it, but then I spent a year just working really hard on the visual world of it to make it what it was in my head. We couldn’t capture all that with the lense or fully in camera because we didn’t have the amount of money. There was a lot of lighting and great art direction, and we did as much as we could. In the end we had to work very heavily on it in post to make it as cohesive as it ended up being.
fGR: What did the fishing scene symbolize?
McArdle: Again, I think that it’s just that sort of brutality of the area really. I mean all the animals in there are very vulnerable. Fishes, for instance, are very vulnerable creatures like she is . This creature (meaning the fish) just sort of gets pommeled by someone who is bigger and more powerful. The way these teenagers are is so intense, and you have these experiences that are quite startling. So, it’s one of those moments. Really sort of an awakening mental brutality of the world.
Thank you for this interview.
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