remember Keep your eyes openStanley Kubrick’s exploration of marriage and relationships starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise? sure!
Now, get ready fantasy novellaadapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s famous erotic short story that inspired Keep your eyes open The Oldenburg Film Festival opens on Wednesday.
The play is directed by German director Florian Frerichs (last supper), Ray Nikolay Kinski (Vikings: Valhalla, air master) and Lauryn Price (Phoenix, american crime story) As a respectable upper-middle-class couple, they are drawn into a secret world of erotic fantasies. The film also stars Detlef Barker, Bruno Aaron and Nora Eisley, with guest appearances by Sharon Brauner and Sharon Kovacs. Produced by Warnuts Entertainment and Studio Babelsberg and presented by Apollo Film, the film will be released in German theaters in early 2025.
Before hitting the red carpet at Oldenburg, Frerichs and Kinski took some time to chat with THR About the film, which depicts erotic themes and sexual tension in the #MeToo era, and how the filming process compared to Me Too’s lengthy production process Keep your eyes open.
Schnitzler wrote his novella fantasy novella (dream story), tells the story of a man’s wife in 1926 who admits to having had a sexual fantasy about another man.
Florian Frerichs That’s actually the gist of it when I read it again years after I read it in school. i saw Keep your eyes openmaybe around 1999, and then forgot about it. When I was in Budapest promoting my first feature film, last supperI actually watched it again during the film festival. I thought, “Oh, right, this is Keep your eyes open is based on. But it still feels modern. I feel like maybe this could actually be done in another way, a way that hasn’t been done before, since there are so many layers of explanation provided to the reader.
I find this interesting because all the other movies have a different approach, each one is individual. I think we’re supplementing that in our own way. It basically deals with the human condition. I am also a married man. My wife, my girlfriend at the time, and I had been together for 20 years. We met in high school. And all this is definitely not unfamiliar to us. We know that these things, under different circumstances, must have been the same 100 years ago, 500 years ago, and they will still be the same 100 years later.
Nikolay Kinski This is absolutely timeless. I first met Schnitzler and fantasy novella Was filming a biopic in Vienna [Klimt] About Gustav Klimt I played [Egon] Schiller and John Malkovich. At that time I was not familiar with fantasy novellabut it’s also loosely based on it. This is a rather loose interpretation. But I fell in love with Vienna, and for me that was the first thing that sparked my curiosity about it. I’ve seen Keep your eyes openI learned fantasy novella Be the inspiration and put the pieces together.
Ultimately, I think it’s timeless because it’s close not just to the human condition, but to our inner lives and the tension between our inner and outer lives and the duality of life, which is, at this point, very specific land, in fantasy and reality, dreams and waking life, desire and repression, the kind of tension we carry within ourselves. It is done in a modern way. It leads the way in truly capturing this fundamental conflict and truth that lies within all of us. We learn and evolve through confrontation, self-exploration, and basically shining light into darkness. That’s the essence of storytelling, taking a journey. This journey requires confrontation and pain. All of these things need to be overcome to get from point A to point B.
In this day and age we try to do a lot in our conscious waking life, in terms of self-improvement and awareness. We do everything from meditation to self-help and more. However, dreams remain an unexplorable part of our subconscious. Finding the connection between the conscious and subconscious mind is very exciting. That’s what attracted me to this project, and what makes the experience of actually connecting the dots so fascinating.
You mentioned desire. How challenging is it for actors and directors to express desire and bring it to the movie screen without too much exposition?
Frerichs That’s why I wanted Nikolai to play this role, because he’s a very thoughtful actor and a very thoughtful person in his private life. He has this elemental layer inside him. He knew how to express great feelings without making a big show of it. I think this is a problem that a lot of German films, or European films in general, face – writers, directors and some actors think big expressions mean big emotions. But the only time he showed strong emotion [in the film]When he started crying, it was even more heartbreaking because before he was just playing with his eyes. If you look closely, you can see a twinkle in his eye, and then, it hits him. It makes it stronger.
So Nikolai is very much an actor who can bring out the psychology of the character without having to do too much. This is very, very subtle. If you do it in a very expressive way, it won’t work. Because if he’s a very expressive guy, he won’t mind if his wife fantasizes about other men. He can get the next girl and have fun, you know? But he was reflecting on these things, and it really moved him from the inside, and you could feel it. So Nico is perfect for this role.
Kinski I’m attracted to ambiguity. I find things become more interesting when you have to think and investigate. It’s much more fun to think about something than to show it. I always try to live in the moment and live in the moment. I guess that’s what happened to me. That would be great if it works.
In today’s television shows and movies, it’s common to have intimacy coordinators and counselors. How does this work in Germany?
Kinski It has become part of the culture. In fact, I think, if done well, it can be very freeing because it’s clear so you can focus on your work within that framework. The sex scenes are always super awkward. It’s always a huge challenge to make something sexy that wasn’t sexy in the making. Aside from the embarrassment of having an entire film crew [there] And everything that’s going on, you always feel awkward trying to figure out how much further we can go. so there is [is a] Pragmatic enough to have an intimacy coordinator. The Germans may be more pragmatic. You have markers so you can touch here, touch there. In a way, it’s very unsexy. But in another sense, it’s helpful.
It helps to set rules and then you can work within those rules. It feels like this might solve some other problems. This is important because desires and these things are an important part of our experience. I noticed that in Venice, for example, there are also a lot of pornographic films.
I was going to ask you about the return of porn movies…
Kinski For good reasons and for good reasons, the #MeToo movement and all, there has been a reckoning. With that comes a certain fear of taboo. Sex is a little taboo. I think there might be a desire now to re-explore this with new approaches – as you said with the intimacy coordinator – and with a new awareness. I welcome this. I think this is great.
Frerichs We’ve been showing the film to friends and we’ve been getting some notes as well. I explicitly asked this question, so I can tell you: people over 40 think, well, it’s a little soft as far as sex scenes go. But people under 25 are like, “Oh my gosh, this is so perverted. How far have you come? This is really interesting. I don’t know, there was this transition ten years ago. If you look at the latest James Bond movies, you’ll find there isn’t much sex anymore.
Kinski Ultimately, I think what’s interesting is that the movie isn’t explicit in a sense, but I think it does potentially open a door to your mind if you let it. In the best sense, hopefully it gets people thinking about what’s allowed, and their own sexuality, their own desires, inhibitions, and all these things that have taboo tensions. So it might be interesting for younger generations who are growing up in a culture that might be a little confusing. But I don’t know, I guess it depends [social] boundary. I think the younger generation is quiet, but I think things are evolving.
There are many stories about the time of filming Keep your eyes open Accepted all its challenges. How was the shooting effect? fantasy novella Compare?
Frerichs I think they had exactly 400 days and we only had 28 days.laugh.) But, of course, I had invested six years of my life into it. This is a very low-budget movie. And when the budget is insufficient, if you want to make a movie with good production values, you need to invest time. Money you don’t have, you need to invest in time. So I’m doing a lot of different things at the same time. But when we’re on set, we’re very, very organized. We know exactly what the editor needs and that’s what we get. We rarely do additional shoots. I already know what editing requires. I think there are a lot of other movies out there that you could edit and make another movie out of that material. I think this version is the only version. I don’t think you can really rearrange it because we shot it with editing in mind. As a low-budget filmmaker, I’m used to more stressful situations, so this was very relaxing for me. We are fully prepared. And the actors were very well prepared. They know their lines, that’s their main job. I’ve had different experiences. What a headache. Because I’m not the kind of director who wants to do 40 different shots with little variation. For me, it takes five or six takes, and then usually the first or last one.
Kinski To me, it feels like I’m filming all the time. I shoot every day. I think I was involved in 99% of the scenes. So I was actually shooting non-stop, with no breaks at all. It became extremely surreal. One of the great things about this film is the opportunity to learn about a new story, a new person, a new aspect of something that interests you personally, and in this case, delve into the subconscious and dream world through the characters.
But there’s this overlap between a full day of shooting and a lot of nighttime shooting and then going home and sleeping. I really started dreaming about being this character. During that time, I was also interested in lucid dreaming and doing all this reading, from Carl Jung to all things dreaming and lucid dreaming. I’m a lucid dreamer in a sense – taking your conscious mind into your subconscious and vice versa, and then dreaming like the character, dreaming like myself, and then bringing it back to the shoot. So it becomes this perpetual motion machine and everything comes together. So it was a major intellectual struggle, but I think it was good for the film.
What are the main differences between the approaches you take fantasy novella And other film treatments of Schnitzler’s novella?
Frerichs I love the conflict with which Schnitzler wrote this book. Everything is left to the reader to interpret whether this is a dream or reality. Is it his dream, her dream, or, most interestingly, a mix of dream and reality? I tried to capture that spirit, which to me is one of the most important parts of the film.