Lucile Hadžihalilović on her mesmeric fantasy Earwig: “There’s a ritual, mystical element in going to the cinema”

The phone call is the first conversation to break the silence in Earwig, but we’ve already keyed our hearing into more ambient noises – the ticking of a clock and the creaking of floorboards – just as we’ve noticed the way light gleams on the apartment’s displays of glassware but fails to penetrate the corners of any of the rooms. It’s a dusty world, denied of daylight, and mystery surrounds Mia: is this an innocent tale of secluded childhood, something like The Secret Garden? Or is it an imprisonment situation, closer to the sinister, fastidious setup of the kidnapper in John Fowles’ novel The Collector?

This is the third full-length feature from Hadžihalilović and each one feels like a wander off the path. Innocence (2004) was set at a girls’ school in the forest where the pupils arrive via coffin. In Evolution (2015) we found ourselves at a remote seaside medical facility where young boys submit to surgical cures. In each case, a fugue-state dream logic pervades. Children obediently go through rituals that prepare them for who knows what.

In this terrain, names like Lynch and Cronenberg are signposts that only take us so far. Soon we’re lost again. It’s Hadžihalilović land.

‘Where’s that?’ you might ask. It’s somewhere in Europe. The old Europe of fairytales and Kafka and Freud and Wedekind. What’s new about Earwig, which Hadžihalilović raced to complete before Brexit put some of the film’s funding out of reach, is that it’s now a Europe with a British accent. In adapting Brian Catling’s 2019 novella, she’s retained (if made more ambiguous) the continental setting but has also ventured her first film in English. 

As Earwig scuttles into cinemas, we spoke to Hadžihalilović about her recurring obsessions, some unexpected influences and why her film demands darkness.

Certainly. There’s many elements that were very familiar that really resonated for me. But also very different things that I would’ve never been able to imagine myself. The combination was very exciting.

I should know by now, but I don’t. I’m very attracted to fairytales, and that seems to fit pretty well with coming-of-age stories. With Earwig, even if it’s not the story of a girl, but a story of the man, this man is not exactly a totally mature adult person. It’s not a coming of age for him, but it’s a kind of evolution.

I’m attracted to fantasy and imaginary worlds because I think they help me to get deeper into feelings. To try to catch some more unconscious elements.

In the book, there’s a lot more about the past of the main character, especially when he is a soldier at war. When we did the adaptation with Geoff Cox, we thought that it would be too many elements. We wanted to focus on the story with [Albert’s] dead wife and the child, and then Mia, this girl he has to care for. The book is very rich. There are lots of details, images, ideas, sounds. We just do some of them.

When I read the book, for me it had something to do with Kafka or Robert Walser, so I imagined more central Europe. I would have liked to shoot it in Budapest, for instance, or Vienna. It just happened that for various reasons, it was easier to film it in Belgium. 

The story happens in Liège specifically. But in the book, there is a reason why, and it has to do with the past of some characters. Since we were not making any mention of this past, it didn’t matter if we changed it, though anyone who knows Belgium will recognise the feeling of some elements, even if we tried not to show specifically Belgian buildings.

First of all, in this case, he brought the novel to me. He’s a friend of Brian Catling, and Brian gave him his book to read before it was even published. I think Geoff has a deep sense of his characters. He’s also very interested in the gothic or neo-gothic elements. He knows how to play with that without being too obvious about it.

I don’t think that the audience’s interest is specifically linked to dialogue. Sometimes dialogue brings more obvious meanings or interpretations or explanations. It’s a way to say, well, this is exactly what you are supposed to understand. But I think tension can also come from silence, from pace, especially a slow pace. Of course, you have to have a focused audience. But I think that’s what the pleasure is: when you go to the cinema to focus on something; where you have to find your own path for your own interpretation. [In Earwig], we try to give enough hints, enough elements for viewers to understand what is important to understand.

It’s great to have the audience trying to focus and to pay attention to details and to the light, to the sounds, to little actions.

Oh, I love that film, and have known it for a long time. I’ve seen it many times, but I haven’t thought of it specifically with this film. I don’t see the obvious similarities…

I hadn’t thought of that, but now I see what you mean. There is a bit of medical care or experimentation… yeah, that’s true.

There were, but not in terms of stories, more in terms of how we could shoot this film. One was Jeanne Dielman (1975), the Chantal Akerman film, because of all these ordinary actions that Delphine Seyrig carries out in the film and that our protagonist, Albert, also carries out: ordinary domestic rituals. We were thinking about that very much, the fact there were repetitions and variations on repetitions, and the way to stretch the time.

The other one was The Embryo Hunts in Secret (1966) by Koji Wakamatsu. It’s a Japanese film from the 60s about a man who kidnaps a woman and keeps her in an empty apartment with no furniture. He’s very violent and humiliates her. But then the tables turn. It was a reference point in terms of framing. It’s in CinemaScope, and the way they use the foreground and lighting and angles is amazing.

In fact, the person I talked with was Warren Ellis [the film’s music producer]. I was not thinking of music, really, but more of musical textures, and I thought that Warren could have done that. Before we even started shooting, he sent me a few pieces he’d done. The one that worked best was one he’d done with Augustin Viard, because it has an out-of-time feeling. It was done on an instrument called an ondes martenot. We realised it was very interesting to repeat the same piece throughout the film, so that it brought a sense of obsession and a hypnotic aspect. 

We had shot half of it when we had to stop because of a lockdown. That was quite a surprise; because we were so much into our preparation, we didn’t realise how bad things had got. It gave me a bit more time to think about the film, but it was important that we didn’t lose too much time, because the girl was going to grow up and that would be a problem. The other major issue was Brexit. We had some money that we could have as long as the film would be European. So we had to finish shooting before Brexit happened. The two things at the same time made it very complicated.

I think there are elements of horror in the film. But usually when you say horror films, you are thinking of some kind of action, some kind of obvious violence. That is not what Earwig is. I prefer not to be put in that box because then the audience might think, this is not what we wanted to see.

Yes, I do. And especially with Peter Strickland. For me, he is a kind of cousin in cinema. I really like his films and feel that we have something in common. It’s not such a surprise that Andy produced both his films and this one.

I was very happy to work with Andy, because he’s very at ease with genre and he’s not anxious about being too weird. The contrary, I think.

In the case of Earwig, it went quicker, it was easier, but it was thanks really to England. I think this film would have been difficult to produce in France, inside the arthouse film system, because that works with commissions and you have to have a consensus from these people to get money. It was very, very difficult to produce Evolution, my second film, which was a kind of genre film, but not a commercial one.

Andy liked Evolution and proposed I work with him if I had a project in English. It happened that I read this book from Catling. And then the BFI told me that they liked my film and that the door was open for me if I wanted to bring them a project.

So I said let’s try to do it in English. There’s not much dialogue in the film; I hope I can manage that. Covid meant it all took a bit longer to happen. But it was easier than for Evolution. I hope now, things are going to accelerate.

Yes, of course. The experience in the cinema is stronger than when you watch a film at home, even if you have a very good screen. It’s about being in a specific place where you can see a film, a bit like a cult, like going to the church. There is a ritual and a mystical element in going to the cinema that seems to vanish a bit.

In France, we are still quite lucky. In Paris, we still have many theatres, and people still go to the theatres, even if there seems to be less than before Covid. But there are many countries where theatres have disappeared.

Earwig, backed by the BFI Film Fund, is in cinemas from 10 June 2022.

Lucile Hadžihalilović will take part in a post-screening Q&A at BFI Southbank on 13 June.