THE MAKING OF 'DELPHYNE'

Last summer I shot my first theatrical, scripted narrative 'Delphyne' set in rural Suffolk. The script is stylised in a theatrical form, taking the works of Russian writer Ludmilla Petrushevskaya as a background. The tone draws on Petrushevskaya’s depictions of intense female-driven, claustrophobic family relationships particularly between generations of women who pull at each other in close quarters. There is a fairy-tale element to the progress of the film, akin to the works of Petrushevskaya, and relating to my own Russian heritage and sense of displacement. I wanted to echo that in the nature of rural Suffolk and tie in a local folk atmosphere and elements of tradition, creating a strange bridge between Russian culture and rural England in the film; through the folk music, costume, focus on nature and element of ‘period’ where the setting appears timeless, caught between present day and an undefinable past. Through this lack of definable period/era to the film, I wanted to express how the issues around female bodily shame persist through the ages, and that the depiction of female physicality and sexuality still sits within an archaic framework.