Interview: Lone Scherfig - Lone star rising

Published on Tuesday 27 October 2009 17:57

I'M SITTING with film director Lone Scherfig, and an elegant tower of pretty little sandwiches and cakes on a three-tiered stand has stopped our conversation in its tracks. But Scherfig has a good excuse for her short attention span – although she doesn't look tired, it's the day after the opening party at the London Film Festival for her latest film, An Education, so it'd be reasonable that she's had a little less sleep than usual.

I, on the other hand, am simply a sucker for a cake stand. We both ooh and aah about the crustless delicacies, just as ten minutes before Scherfig had been cooing over the dark grey skies and Edinburgh's architecture. It turns out Scherfig loves Scotland. The Danish filmmaker shot Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself in Glasgow back in 2000 and she has also been on the jury at the Edinburgh International Film Festival a couple of times. If she gets her way, she'll be back here in Edinburgh to work. "I'm so happy here," she beams, deliberating over the sandwiches. "It's such a beautiful city. One of the most beautiful in the world, I think."

If there's an ebullience about Scherfig, who could blame her? There is a distinct feeling that she is about to ride the crest of a very large wave with An Education, the Nick Hornby-scripted coming-of-age story based on Lynn Barber's acerbic and gloriously unsentimental memoir of the same name. Both of Scherfig's previous features, Italian For Beginners (2000) and Wilbur… (2002) were well received – but they were arthouse, indie flicks, the first made under the rules of Dogme, of which Scherfig was an exponent.

An Education is something quite different and set to be much, much bigger.

The film only opens here on Friday, but already there's the unmistakable sound of Oscar buzz. From Best Picture to Best Actress (for Carey Mulligan), Best Supporting Actor (Peter Sarsgaard) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Nick Hornby), as well as commendation for Scherfig's direction, the film is being tipped for gongs. None of this is a done deal, of course, it's just speculation. But it's been so persistent, and the film is so likeable and funny, that kind of recognition wouldn't be surprising. Does Scherfig pay attention to it, I wonder?

"No," she smiles, "but, of course, I can't help hearing it. I just try to be really happy that my name is even connected to those lists. I'm in really good company – some of those other directors are amazing. But it makes the biggest difference for Carey (Mulligan] because it means that she gets better scripts and if she gets better scripts she'll become a better actress."

Mulligan had to be good as Jenny because the entire dramatic arc of the film rests upon her. She delivers a perfectly balanced performance as a 16-year-old schoolgirl living in drab suburban Twickenham, being hothoused for Oxford, and longing instead to smoke Gauloises and float around the Left Bank just like Juliet Greco whose records she listens to in her bedroom. Mulligan, who was 22 when the film was shot, convinces as a teenager desperate to escape the confines of a life that's as grey as her school pinafore, but is too young to understand the dangers that the dashing but dubious David (Sarsgaard] presents as he seduces her with the glamour of the about-to-swing Sixties.

"It is a strange little pocket in time when people are still shaken by the war but at the same time, the Beatles and the Stones are in their recording studios, psychedelia is about to happen," says Scherfig. "There's still this odd, underground, bohemian group that David belongs to. They are people who don't have an education but have a really fascinating life. That's what Jenny falls in love with."

For David, the allure is different: it's Jenny's potential, the opportunity that she will have through education that he finds irresistible. It's another of the film's triumphs that the character of David is allowed to be more than a sleazy, lecherous liar. According to Scherfig, that complexity (a perfect vehicle for Sarsgaard's air of amiable threat) is something that both she and Sarsgaard felt was vital for the piece as a whole.

"Both Peter and I thought that the film wouldn't be exciting if we didn't defend David and like him," she says. "If you ask Peter, he says that it's not the age gap that is important to David, it's about being young and wanting to live the life and be the person that you can be with an education. Peter added a vulnerability to the character that's not necessarily in the script but is something that he saw."

Scherfig says that Hornby's script left space for both the actors and her, as director, to put their own stamp on the project. It's one of the reasons why the characters, no matter how brief their role, seem so convincingly well-formed, whether it's Olivia Williams as the genuine but slightly thwarted teacher or Sally Hawkins's appearance as proof that David has lied to Jenny from the moment they met.

"(The script] is quite minimalist," she says, "so there is space for everyone. I think Nick is really musical and that's part of the reason he writes really good dialogue. But I think he's also someone who works much more with his ears than with his eyes, so that left room for me as well. It means it can be more organic. It makes the actors better because if they are less locked then they can work with their minds and their bodies in a larger space and that makes the performance more comfortable."

With Alfred Molina's performance as Jenny's father, Jack, a man trapped in one age and terrified of the next, and Rosamund Pike's deliciously ditzy and hilarious turn as the girlfriend of David's best friend, the film is full of the kind of nuanced and moving character acting that British films so often promise and yet hardly ever deliver. Scherfig has coaxed her cast into delivering funny, understated performances.

"A really interesting aspect of my job on this film was to make sure that all of these different approaches to acting suited one another and that everyone ended up playing in the same film and stylistically hitting the same level and pitch," says Scherfig. "Peter (Sarsgaard) is without vanity, always researching, layering, always surprising, whereas someone like Alfred Molina is much more technical, specific and humble. Rosamund Pike is so good. She had never done a comedy role before so she brought lots of layers to her work which made it much more unpredictable, which I really like. It was really great for me, a lot of fun."

Here Scherfig's phone rings – and it turns out it's good news from the film company. Scherfig is pleased, of course, but it's a reminder of the industry chugging away beneath the artistic endeavours and the fact that, like most artforms, the global economic situation has had an impact on even films that seem to have had a gilded beginning.

"The world has changed quite drastically from when we shot the film," Scherfig says. She explains that shooting on An Education finished a year and a half ago. The film was then picked up for Sundance where it snagged the Best Audience gong and was nominated for the Grand Jury prize. On the back of that, it was sold to distributors. Scherfig knows they were lucky with the timing.

"Straight after that it was almost as if people stopped buying films. It was a hard year in Cannes, then in Toronto too. For this sort of film it's really important for us to get American distribution, not just because we want people to see it, but so that people don't lose money on it."

It's a very real pressure, she says, and although she doesn't like spending other people's money, her job is to spend it wisely. "As a director you risk your entire career every time. Every job can be your last. That's a pressure. But you just have to stop thinking about it because if you don't you can't shoot."

So what comes next? "I don't know." She laughs. "I'm just hoping that some of my other projects will be financed. I have an old project that I'd love to do here. I can't fly over this landscape without immediately thinking how can we rework it to get it financed and make it work here? Hopefully something will fall into place."

Scherfig must realise how incongruous it is, with chat of Oscars and the kind of buzz that exists around An Education, that she seems so unsure, but she also understands her industry. "The times are hard. I'm talking about it today because I met so many people at the party last night. Normally as a director you meet people and they are already five films on and you are still stuck in the same project, but this time it was almost the other way around. It was sad." She pours another cup of tea and the ebullience returns. "But there have got to be films," she says. "People can't not go to the cinema."

&#149 An Education is in cinemas from Friday.