FILM INTERVIEW: VINCENZO NATALI

The Director Discusses Motives & Controversy Around 'Splice'

By: Izumi Hasegawa

May 28, 2010

Having a successful career as a storyboard artist, Vincenzo Natali takes controversial risks in writing and directing Splice -- a sci-fi thriller starring Adrien Brody. The director sat down with Buzzine to talk about creating the story of this unique movie and why he chose to push the envelope with the racy sex scene...

Izumi Hasegawa: How has the reaction to the film surprised you? I was completely unnerved from the minute-go because there wasn’t a moment where you could relax…

Vincenzo Natali: It was immensely gratifying. This film really is my baby. I’ve been working on it for over a decade, and I feel very close to it. Much like a parent likes to show photos of their kids to unwilling observers, I really enjoy exposing the film to an audience. It’s very exciting. I’m sure some people hate the movie, but I feel consistently there is a strong reaction to the film, which was always the intent. In fact, I just did an eight-city tour with the movie, and did Q&As at each location, and I was consistently impressed by the intelligence of the questions that came from the audience, and I felt like the best part of this whole thing is that people really understand the movie. They’re seeing that it’s more than just a creature film.

IH: I was really struck by how you took the parenting/having a child issues between Sarah [Polley] and Adrien [Brody]‘s characters and kept extrapolating from that in their behaviors as Dren grew up, I thought that was really astute and added great psychological depth. Do you have kids?

VN: This is my only kid thus far. A lot of my fears about becoming a parent are clearly part of this movie, and strangely, now that I’ve made the film, I feel like I’m ready to have a child. You’d think the opposite is true. In a way, it really does feel like my first child, because even though it’s my fourth feature film, I don’t think there’s any film I’ve made that I’ve invested more in, that I’ve felt more passionately about. To push the metaphor even further, it really has been a case of wanting to make a film that, while it’s about the science, is very much rooted in the human condition. And while I half-jokingly called it my family film, it’s really not a joke at all because, if Splice offers anything to the genre, it’s hopefully pushing the creature/horror/science-fiction genre in a particular direction – in the direction of examining the relationship between the creature and the creators in great detail. In that regard, I really am the proud parent of it because I think the actors are just so great, and they really elevate the material and offer something that has a few insights.

IH: Why did you choose to work with Sarah Polley? Did you know each other prior to this project?

VN: No, I might have been introduced to Sarah very briefly once, but I really only knew her as an actor and a writer/director. She was always at the top of my list because she just exudes intelligence, and I felt that Elsa was such a complex character and such a flamboyant character, and Sarah has that quality of keeping everything on the inside. It just seemed like that would be a good combination, and I have to confess that Sarah told me, after she read the script, that there was no other role she wanted to play more in her career than Elsa. I think it’s because she responded to all the things that are going on with Elsa. It was a dream scenario. Adrien was also at the top of my list, and I don’t think there are many actors out there who could take on these parts. First of all, you have to believe they’re brilliant geneticists; secondly, they had to be actors you could identify with, even when they’re doing very transgressive, morally questionable things, and I think Sarah and Adrien have that quality as well; and finally, most importantly, they had to be actors that were prepared to do this stuff, and a lot of performers of their stature wouldn’t. I think it’s a dangerous movie, but that actually seemed to be what drew them to it.

IH: As the movie progresses, it seems to go from psychological to sexual. Was that your intention? Were you trying to see how far you could push the genre?

VN: The sex in the movie is the raison d’etre for me to make the film, but not just to be shocking. I felt this is very much organic to the subject matter for two reasons: One, because the notion of falling in love with something that’s more than human — that is a human/animal chimera. It’s a notion that’s been with us for thousands of years. It can be found in every mythology across the globe. And now, here we are at a stage in our technological development where maybe variations of these things can actually exist, so I was fascinated by what would happen if you really created a Dren. The second reason is: when you do create something like Dren, inevitably, sex is going to come into the picture because that’s the prime directive of any species — to procreate. So it just seemed necessary, and had the sex not been part of the equation, I just wouldn’t have been interested in the film. In fact, I think that’s why it took ten years to make this movie. I took the script to every studio, but I think it was a little bit frightening for Hollywood, and in fact, I had to go to France, where they had no problem with the sex. They thought it was a plus; they thought it was wildly commercial! It was only in that unique way that we could make the film.

IH: I know you were trying to push the envelope, but was there anything you thought might have been too far?

VN: I tried to be tasteful. Some pretty shocking things happen in the film. I hope it’s not gratuitous in the way it depicts those things. Actually, as horror films go, it’s not terribly violent either. I actually hope this is a movie women enjoy because it’s a mother/daughter story. Sarah’s character, Elsa, is the protagonist. It’s an emotional horror film. I intuitively felt this might be something women would respond to.

IH: When I was watching the movie, I was actually thinking about Greek tragedies rolled into a movie for the new era. Were those themes important for you?

VN: I didn’t go into the film with that agenda. The story just seemed to naturally lead to that. That was just the logical conclusion. But once we arrived there, there was no question in my mind that we were making a Freudian horror film, and I was just so lucky to be able to do it in the independent world because I think it was the only way it could happen. Hopefully, for an audience, one of the thrills in watching the movie is seeing that maybe the film would go there but assuming that it can’t because it’s a mainstream movie, but then it does.

*SPOILER ALERT*

IH: I thought the role-reversal and the gender transition of the monster were quite unexpected.

VN: To me, the most disturbing scene in the film is not any of the sex scenes — it’s the scene where Elsa ties Dren down and cuts off her clothes and basically turns her back into an experiment. To me, that’s the most frightening aspect of the human psyche — the ability to dehumanize each other. In terms of the gender roles, that’s hopefully how this film is taking the Frankenstein myth and pushing it into a 21st century context. The film clearly owes a debt to Mary Shelley and to the James Whale Frankenstein films. I think, by entering into the sexual zone, the gender reversal zone, we’re hopefully entering new terrain.

IH: Do you see any David Cronenberg influences in this film, or do you hope you don’t get compared to him too much?

VN: I don’t mind the comparison at all. Once you enter the world of bio-horror, that’s trademarked David Cronenberg. I freely admit it, and I think he’s a brilliant filmmaker, but I never felt intimidated. I’ve met him a number of times. He’s such a lovely man, so brilliant, and he’s very supportive of me and he’s done some very nice things for me. I think credit should be given where credit is due. At the same time, I never felt intimidated by it because this is a very personal story for me. Let’s face it, we’re both from Toronto, and I think there’s something to be said. People keep coming up to me saying the film feels like a Canadian movie, and it’s not a conscious thing — it just comes from growing up in the same place.

IH: It seems you made a very bold choice in incorporating the role-reversal and themes about gender because there is a large segment of the population that rejects anything that smacks of the Adam and Eve myth — that it was the woman’s fault.

VN: I think the movie is ambiguous enough where it can be embraced by both the left and the right, by feminists or…well, not misogynists per se, but maybe they would, I don’t know. It’s funny, I always thought of it as being very…not feminist, but I felt it portrayed women as very powerful and leading the story. I couldn’t help but think about Macbeth. I was thinking Elsa is Lady Macbeth; she’s the ambitious one, she’s driving things. She’s more male than Clive, really.

IH: Is this from personal experience?

VN: I have to confess that I played Lady Macbeth. I was in an all boys’ school. In fact, David Hewlett – this probably shouldn’t get out – but David Hewlett, a long time collaborator, who plays Barlow in the movie, played Macbeth, and I was Lady Macbeth in twelfth grade.

IH: Do you have a position on medicine, on science? Are there things we’re not supposed to chase?

VN: I almost think you have to take that question off the table because I think we’re just going to do it. It’s human nature. We’ve changed our environment, as a species — we’ve always done that. Now that the technology exists, I’m sure we’re gonna start changing ourselves, so we’re just going to go there. The question is, how do you do that responsibly? I’m sure you heard that Craig Venter, who is a very famous geneticist, announced a couple of days ago that he created the first synthetic life form. It’s amazing, and he was actually somebody that my co-writers and I used as a reference for Clive and Elsa because he’s kind of the first rock and roll geneticist, and a very interesting man who almost sort of took over the Human Genome Project and finished it in record time. I think we’re headed down that road, and it’s just about how you apply the technology. I think what frightens me most is the commodification of this type of technology. When someone starts patenting parts of the human genome, I have a moral issue with that, and I’m more frightened of what big money will do with this technology than I am with the individual scientists.

IH: What was the process of creating the image of Delphine [Cheneac]?

VN: Delphine is just magical. She just has an extraordinary personality. She was the very first person who walked in for the Dren auditions in Paris, and I just knew it was her right from the beginning. I think it’s because Delphine has that kind of androgynous beauty. I was looking for somebody who walked the line between male and female and who could be childlike on one hand, and yet could be quite frightening at the same time. If you connect with Dren, if you like Dren in the movie, it’s entirely because of Delphine. She really is the one who gives Dren her persona and identity. In fact, we cast her early enough in the process that we were able to reverse engineer aspects of Delphine into the earlier stages, so the way she moves and everything is all the creation of Delphine in it, and she informed the entire design.

IH: I see some Japanese influence in the production design. Is it because your wife is Japanese?

VN: Not because my wife is Japanese but because I love the Japanese culture very much, and I felt that Clive and Elsa would too. Japan exists a little bit in the future, in a sense, and is more comfortable with new technology. Possibly a little because of the Buddhist or Shintoist background, I think the Japanese, as a society, are just more comfortable with living with robots or doing this kind of work. It seemed to me that Clive and Elsa would relate to that. It also happened that my wife knew a lot of great artists in Japan, so they contributed a lot of things you see in the movie.

Warner Bros. Pictures' 'Splice' was released on June 4, 2010 and is now on DVD via Warner Home Video.