EIFF 2010: Love, Death and Bird-Watching

Pelican Blood, Karl Golden’s follow up to the ultra-low-budget but critically acclaimed The Honeymooners, is the tale of a young, self-harming, bird-watching obsessive who has plans to end his life once he’s ticked off five hundred birds in his book. That’s the plot, on paper at least. After his initial foray into rom-com territory, the quietly spoken director was on a search for something a bit different, and he found it in Cris Cole’s screenplay, adapted from the little known cult novel of the same name by Cris Freddi.

“It was unconventional,” Golden says, as he reflects on his reasons for making the film. “That, in itself, was wonderful, but fundamentally it was a love story and that’s currently what I’m most interested in – why people fall in love, how they stay in love and in relationships. They’re so destructive and yet so euphoric at the same time. I felt there was an opportunity to put a relationship in a bell jar and the intimacy, sexuality and sheer intensity of that relationship was just something I really wanted to be a part of.”

Pelican Blood, which as a title is only briefly alluded to, follows Nikko (Harry Treadaway, previously seen in Fish Tank) after the reappearance of his ex-girlfriend. It is their relationship that Golden refers to, and it is just as he describes it: a passionate but ultimately doomed love. Casting the two lead roles was a hugely important task, but luckily Golden, with the help of casting director Gail Stevens (who also worked on Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire), found the right people. “I was very drawn to Harry,” says Golden. “I knew his work and liked the fact that he feels, to me, like a very here-and-now actor – he’s very contemporary. He has a great screen presence, which was very natural. He seems cool and charismatic but has a vulnerability to him, and that’s what makes him unique.” Then came the task of finding someone to fill the role of Stevie, Nikko’s love. “Stevie was a very difficult character to cast. Her role is a very thankless one – she basically plays the passionate but ultimately destructive side of a relationship. It’s hard for young actors to portray that; you’re expecting them to have all that charisma, romance and sexuality as well as a kind of trapped pain in the midst, something cracked beneath the surface.”

Step forward Emma Booth. A relative unknown in Britain, she is a former model and currently a huge star thanks to a role in the Australian television phenomenon, Underbelly. In contrast to Golden, Booth is hyper, excitable and swears constantly. She has spent ten days meditating and drinking juice, has had half an hour’s sleep and it seems the sugar in her latte has gone to her head.

“I read the script, and it was so fucking powerful, I was like, holy shit!” she says in response to what drew her to the project. “It’s a beautiful film and Stevie is so powerful in her morals and who she is as a person. What she’s willing to give up for the sake of someone else – you can only aspire to be like that. I read the story and was just like, I need to play her. I even got a tattoo for her!” Sure enough, there’s a tastefully intricate ‘Birdy’ on her wrist. “I was so in awe of her as a character. When I finished playing her I mourned the role, and her, so deeply. I’ve never done that before”.

“Me and Harry hit it off straight away”, Booth confirms. Golden reiterates this: “With these two it was almost instantaneous – they had this strange chemistry and weird intensity. You can’t fake that, you can’t rehearse it, and they had it the whole way through the shoot”.

Clearly, the dynamic between director and his two leads is one that worked. With the delicate subject matter at the centre of the story, it was crucial that the right tone be achieved. “It’s a very sensitive topic,” agrees Golden. “I thought it would be disrespectful to make something that was morally judgmental in any way. We made some very specific choices because it’s a film that’s uncompromising – in many ways people may find it controversial, but so far it seems people understand, by the end of the film, how sacred life is”.

It would appear that Golden has achieved what he set out to do. Despite initially struggling to gain funding (“on paper, it doesn’t seem like a mainstream film”), his hard work, and the work of all involved, has been rewarded with Pelican Blood receiving a nomination for the Michael Powell Award for Best New Film at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. The outcome of the award has yet to be unveiled, but Golden is simply proud of the film he has produced, while the sheer fact that Booth has a permanent reminder of her character etched on her body indicates the true passion and love this film was made with.