During the BFI Flare Film Festival, Popped’s own Christopher Mills had the chance to speak with Lakeview writer-director Tara Thorne about the film, its queerness and being able to premiere the film at the BFI Flare Film Festival. Lakeview follows Darcy (Lesley Smith), a bisexual woman, who is divorcing her husband. Her close friends all arrive at her parents’ lakeside house, ready to see her through this major life development. However, everyone is distracted by their own dramas, relationships and personal milestones. Plus, Darcy’s ex-lover Dax (Hilary Adams) is about to arrive. Lakeview is a funny and honest portrait of queer women’s friendships and loves.
You can check out Chris’ full interview with Tara below:
How does it feel to have ‘Lakeview’ be a part of the BFI Film Festival?
Oh, it’s so exciting. We missed the mark with our first film on BFI flare. We didn’t get in and I was so sad, but we wouldn’t have been able to go. So I’m sort of thinking it was supposed to happen this way because it was a COVID time, and I didn’t know how excited everyone was there for it because there are so many festivals, and there’s so much to do in London. There’s a lot. So when you go in and you see “Sold Out”, “Sold Out”, “Sold Out”, including us, and no one knows who we are. I think it’s very exciting and it’s sort of like nerve-wracking to imagine being in an audience that’s full and interested, so we’re very stoked to be coming over.
From your last film ‘Compulsus’ to making this film, what were the differences between making the two?
It’s sort of night and day. So Compulsus was made under a program called Talent To Watch, which is a Canadian funding program – it’s a micro-budget, so it was specifically written to fit a certain budget, which was $200,000 in the end, and we shot it in 15 days in between Covid lockdowns. So we were fully masked, and rapid tests didn’t exist yet. If anyone had gotten sick, it would have ruined everything, like there was no time to get back. There was no money to shut down. Luckily, it all went fine. But what happened was, right after we finished shooting, we went into a lockdown so the editor couldn’t work on it because she’s a working mom and she had her kids at home. So I had all this creative energy that I was expecting to go into post, and it had nowhere to go.
So I just started writing Lakeview because I had worked with these actors, but not for very long, and was just starting to get into a relationship with them and starting to get into a good flow, and I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if they could do something that was funny? So I just started writing this ensemble. We got funded in 2022, and the budget was closer to $1 million this time. So a lot more money and seven more shooting days. There are 22 days versus 15. It’s immeasurable the amount you learn from the first thing to take to the second thing, it’s just like you can’t even really quantify it.
As a filmmaker, does directing become easier for you personally when you’re writing your own films?
I think so, because when I’m writing the script, I think about how I’ll direct it. So there’s a lot of direction in the scripts, which maybe you wouldn’t do if you’re just writing it on spec. So I feel like I’ve already thought about a lot of it, before we even get to the shooting part – and the actors have read it too. So there are less conversations happening day of because I think that’s sort of a waste of time. Obviously, if you need to talk about something in the moment, I’m happy to do that. But what’s my motivation? You know, “Where are we?” and “What’s going on?” Like they’re all things that should have been worked out before we stepped on set. So I definitely put a lot of looks and feelings and how characters map in the scripts themselves.
How different is this final product from the first ever draft of ‘Lakeview’?
It got really sad as drafts went on, and then when we got funded, our funder said, “You need to put more jokes in here”. So, it kind of dipped and then came back up. So the first half was quite funny – but then it pretty much settles on sad for the back half, which I think is a nice balance. I’m happy with it. I did have to be convinced by our editor, Amy [Mielke], who is a comedian by practice. She had cut it like a comedy, and I really pushed back on it. I was like, “No, we need more space… We need more silence… We need more awkwardness”. Then we sent it out for notes and everyone was like, “The pacing is weird, there’s too much space,” and I was like, “Amy, you were right”, and she didn’t gloat – so that was nice.
Is there anything you can say about the rom-com that you’re working on at the moment?
I mean, it’s all fake until it’s real. That’s how I always feel about movies. Like, I could tell you six things, and they might happen or they might not. Something I’m in development on – it’s called Joe and Frankie and it’s like a 90s studio comedy that Nora Ephron would have directed, except it’s with two women.
When we’re looking at LGBTQ movies, you want to see the same people represented not just on screen, but behind the camera as well. How was that experience for you with ‘Lakeview’?
For both films, we intentionally tried to fill all our key positions with women and non-binary folks whenever possible. Queers, is a bit harder because we’re in Halifax, which is quite a gay place, but it’s a small place, so queer is sort of like a bonus thing, But certainly women were prioritized, and I would say, I think we’re like at 90% women, on the shoot, there are like 4 or 5 guys – all really nice guys, but they’re definitely in the minority, and there are no men on screen at all. I mean, even in the background, like in the background note I put that in – like, no men. We’re pretending they don’t exist for this story in this, in this fictional world, men just don’t exist.
There’s one line and telefilm made me put it in, which is like, “Was Darcy married to a man or a woman?” – and I said, a man, and they’re like, “Well, people need to know that” and I was like, do they really? But she says “he” early on and that’s it. That’s the one pronoun.
Check out a trailer for Lakeview below: