When Dutch fashion model Rianne Van Rompaey was looking to explore the fissure between her personal and professional lives through film, a mutual friend matched her sensibilities with those of director David Findlay, and the pair came together to make Faces. In this deeply collaborative short Findlay, a filmmaker who’s no stranger to DN’s pages, takes us on an unsettling, fractured trek through Van Rompaey’s disconcertingly tangible subconscious, housed within an elegantly sumptuous fashion infused 8 minute short. We see Van Rompaey, who plays herself, fight against a domineering mother, the frenetic energy of a crew waiting for their tardy star, demands from a fraught friendship and Findlay’s assured filmmaking absorbs us into each and every second. Faces’ dreamlike quality deftly submerges its audience within the naked truth of Van Rompaey’s feelings and battles between the personas she, and by extension, all of us have to put out to the world. We spoke to Findlay about the instant connection he found in Van Rompaey’s vision, playing with the porous boundary between score and sound design and how he wanted to represent the surreal landscape of another’s subconscious.
Where did this captivating exploration of self come from?
The initial idea came from Rianne Van Rompaey, the star of the film who plays herself. She had this feeling for a long time that she was embodying different personas between her professional life and her personal life and so on. A mutual friend of ours connected us, and we really bonded. From her initial themes, I just ran with it and created something a bit more surreal and absurd than she was envisioning, but which still had the core elements she was wanting to express. It took many, many calls between Rianne and I. Ultimately, it’s a trip into the subconscious of a woman who is completely haunted by her mother and terrified by the idea of her best friend getting married – all while trying to find her footing and her professional self. Rianne and I never shied away from challenging one another’s ideas, even if it got momentarily uncomfortable; we always came out the other end with something stronger that didn’t even feel like a compromise.
I love the mother who plays more than just an overbearing matriarch.
Rianne was always going to be at the centre of it. And then for her mother, who is also the journalist, stage manager, her manager and the taxi driver, my brilliant EP at Solab, Nicolas Tiry, pointed me in Astrid Whettnall’s direction. It was just love at first sight, for both Rianne and I. An incredible talent who looks like she could be Rianne’s mother – she was game to get her hands dirty and fully dive in with us.
Ultimately, it’s a trip into the subconscious of a woman who is completely haunted by her mother and terrified by the idea of her best friend getting married – all while trying to find her footing and her professional self.
I find your seeming ease in tapping into the human psyche so captivating. Was there anything which particularly drew you to the making of this piece and visualising Rianne’s vision?
It was Rianne who drew me to the project, plain and simple. I didn’t know what to expect when we got on our first call and found this incredibly motivated, passionate, well-articulated person with such a burning desire to create something unique. I didn’t have to think twice. I knew this was someone I could make something great with and have fun with along the way.
I needed someone with very sharp sensibilities who could add a very anxiety-inducing but still refined and elegant layer to the film.
I know from previous DN interviews that music is a huge part of the filmmaking process for you and it is so central to Rianne’s spiralling state of mind in Faces
I had been aware of Kalaisan Kalaichelvan’s brilliant work for a while now. I had a pretty good idea of what the music should evoke, but it wasn’t until I saw it all come together on screen, Rianne, Astrid, in these beautiful clothes in that setting that it all clicked. I needed someone with very sharp sensibilities who could add a very anxiety-inducing but still refined and elegant layer to the film. Kalaisan and I had so many long calls fine-tuning the piece and I’m just thrilled with it.
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That knocking made me jump even when I had already seen it – I wish I could see it in a cinema with a full sound system.
That’s all Mitchell Allen’s brilliant sound design genius. Mitch has exclusively designed sound for my films for almost ten years at this point. He is a voracious cinephile and his tastes are perfectly congruent to mine. He challenges me and always approaches the work from a conceptual place. We are both incredibly meticulous but he is to be credited not only with patience to stand me but with most of the sound related motifs and ideas. Another fun aspect here was to collaborate – Mitch, Kalaisan and I – pushing the elasticity of what is score and what is sound, and to marry it all seamlessly and interestingly.
You have balanced the absurd with a lush fashion film looking short, what were your methods for building that opulent yet surreal world?
I must say I knew that would always be built into the film. between the casting, the beautiful clothes from Khaite, paired with that beautiful ornate setting, I knew we’d get something that feels fashion-y, if you will. And that was the fun part for me, to pair it with something absurd and surreal – with elements of dark humour – all while highly sophisticated and elegant.
I want to know how you filmed that hallway scene with mother and daughter where the pacing and dialogue meld together so seamlessly.
I love that scene. I think it may be my favourite of the whole film… It was so challenging and fun to do, all at once. And that’s always my ideal. It was just the sum of a great collaboration between all departments, from Antoine Cormier’s beautiful cinematography to the amazing work of Astrid and Rianne along with Amy Gardner’s movement coaching. Technically, it was a matter of pacing it just right so that the walk and talk would lead them to stop right in front of that door in the space, which magically I had written just the right length of dialogue!
The deadpan performances are so unnerving, is this accurate to who Rianne is and how did you work on the delivery?
Not all all! That’s just a testament to Rianne and Astrid’s talents. I was interested in this sort of delivery between a daughter and her mother to highlight the lack of warmth between them. It was also just another wink at the fact that we are in a space that is a bit between dream and reality, sort of in Rianne’s subconscious because no one actually speaks like that in real life.
It’s about staying true to what you envisioned when you were first writing, as well as remaining open to what comes your way.
How did you choose what to mirror and how to not play into that too much as the film hits just the right mark of absurd before it falls into silly.
That’s right it was all just about dosing – most of directing is actually this. Finding the mark, not too much, not too little. Always keeping a finger on the pulse of where we are at and where this thing we are creating is headed. So it’s just about listening to your intuition. It’s about staying true to what you envisioned when you were first writing, as well as remaining open to what comes your way on the day!
You play into very female-centric themes, worries and fears, do you attribute this to working closely with Rianne?
For sure. Rianne and I really made this film together. I think as a writer and director I can be sensitive enough to put myself in the skin of these characters, but it’s true, my experience can only take me so far. Just like with everything it was a constant and ever-evolving dialogue between her and I when it came to what we were saying and how we wanted to say it.
You are prolific in playing with form, genre and tone – what is next for you David?
I’m still chipping away at my second feature film script. It’s the feature version of my last short Lay Me by the Shore. Aiming to shoot that over the summer 2025!
