In the crumbling dreamscape of Blackpool’s forgotten glory, Olivier Richomme’s short Mush materialises as an unsettling hallucination, a surrealist meditation on monstrosity that transforms English seaside banality into something profoundly unnerving. Richomme’s vision deliberately fractures conventional narrative, creating a disorienting tapestry of sensory experiences which only pull us deeper into his protagonist’s fractured perception of reality. By structuring Mush as a series of disconnected vignettes rather than following narrative convention, Richomme’s snapshots of quintessential British seaside life create a viewing experience more akin to a dream, where meaning emerges from mood and feeling rather than plot. Mush offers no easy answers instead, it invites repeated viewings to unravel its disquietingly alluring tapestry. It creates a reality where the conventional tools of storytelling no longer apply, leaving viewers beautifully bewildered in its hypnotic wake. DN is delighted to premiere Mush today, and we invited Richomme to recall the first alluring draw he felt to the town which inspired his short, how he built an uneasy, mysterious, restless ambience without any direct violence or altercations and working with actor Bryony Miller, who masterfully embodies the captivating lead.
Blackpool isn’t necessarily somewhere that immediately strikes me as inspirational for such a dreamlike reverie.
The concept of the film took a fair amount of gestation before I ended up with something I was happy with. I knew I wanted to make a film in Blackpool from the start. There is something about this town that has attracted me from the moment I came to the UK, and the more I got under the skin of the city and the more people I met, the more I knew it was the perfect backdrop for an eerie and surreal film. I knew the locations I wanted to shoot before I knew what my story was. I’ve been walking up and down the Blackpool pier with a camera for years, taking portraits and chatting to people, and I have always felt this intense feeling, a mix of fascination and dread.
Everyone I met had a story to tell filled with nostalgia and pride but there is an inherent sadness and pain behind everyone’s eyes. So I drew on all that experience to come up with a story that conjured up my feelings about the place. And it’s this bittersweet, unsettled feeling that brought to life the idea of a confused monster, an unwilling beast, stuck in a seaside town, trying to fit in despite its lust for blood and flesh. I spent a lot of time with our location manager, Jacob Dowdle, knocking on doors and trying to get access to the locations we were looking for. There were so many stories around that, so many mad places stuck in time. Blackpool really is an incredible place when you start knocking on doors.
What came out of that time with people was often a surreal feeling of a place suspended in time, a kind of fevered dream full of loss and isolation.
How did your years of photography and conversations in the town shape the film and lead you to this surreal story?
I think there’s something fascinating about UK seaside towns. I was aware of Martin Parr’s book The Last Resort when I first came to this country, and was very quickly drawn to the small corners of the South Coast around Brighton and Margate. But when I moved up North and discovered Blackpool, it was a bit of a love at first sight kind of story. It’s the English version of Coney Island. A place with a glorious past that has fallen into decay. I think it’s also misunderstood as most people think it’s a bit of a shithole but it’s full of brilliantly mad characters with amazing stories to tell. Often about how good Blackpool used to be back in the day! What came out of that time with people was often a surreal feeling of a place suspended in time, a kind of fevered dream full of loss and isolation. And so I felt like placing a character that is lost and confused, a victim of its own dark and monstrous makeup, inside the surreal and dreamlike world of a nameless seaside town was the perfect mix.
What drew you to the more grotesque, horror-fuelled aspects of the story?
Once I knew that, I developed the character further into this runaway, man-eating sort of monster. But I’m much more interested in what isn’t said in this film. I have an idea of who my character is but I don’t really want to say too much, as I think the film’s intent is much more about its atmosphere and what the viewer makes of it.
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How did you use the juxtaposition of the mundane (mountains of chips, an apprentice waiter listing breakfast choices) with the surreal to convey the desired unsettling feeling in your audience?
The drive for the whole film was to create unease and horror without any gore or violence, so each conversation is awkward and unresolved. And I used food as a tool to create grotesque moments that intentionally make the viewer feel queasy and uncomfortable. There’s also something about the perspective of the main character. To her, nothing of the real world makes sense. She’s trying to fit in but it’s all completely absurd to her. I wanted the freak to be the real world and not her, so choices of cast, locations, props, colours and tone were all an attempt to present the world through her eyes. Confusing, absurd, misunderstood.
Working closely with my cinematographer James Killeen to really craft a specific look to the film was also very important. We spent a long time in each location prior to the shoot trying to be as economical as possible with each shot and creating a very unique look for each scene.
What specific qualities did you see in Bryony Miller that convinced you she could embody this unique character?
I enlisted the help of an incredible casting director, Claire Bleasdale, who was instrumental in finding Bryony Miller as the central cast for the film. Bryony’s understanding of the character and her performance brought to life the subtleties I was looking for. The approach to storytelling is purposely mysterious and unclear but Bryony was able to tell a lot with very little and really captured the emotions I wanted to express. And beyond that, the rest of the cast was quite literally found around the streets of Blackpool which I was particularly keen to do. All the people I had met along the way had formed my impression of the place and I really wanted to bring that to the screen.
Because so much is left unsaid and there is almost no dialogue from her, it’s a much more visceral and physical performance.
Her character fascinates me – how did you direct her to convey complex emotions with sparse dialogue, no explicit storytelling and minimal movement?
I think Bryony understood the role from the start. She has an incredible presence and an ability to say a lot while doing very little. From our initial conversations I could see she understood the film deeply and while shooting, I really didn’t have to guide her very much at all. She brought her own version of the character and it completely matched what I wanted from her. Even when it meant eating copious amounts of dried-up cold chips or laying half naked on wet blocks of concrete in the freezing cold. Because so much is left unsaid and there is almost no dialogue from her, it’s a much more visceral and physical performance, and I’m unbelievably grateful to have been able to work with such a talented artist. It could be that her version of the character is different to mine but that really doesn’t matter to me.
Now we have to talk about that incredible dance scene, it’s so brilliant!
Thanks! Again, I can’t take too much credit for the dance. This was Bryony’s take on the character. The intention is that she’s trying to look normal, to do what humans do but also driven by emotions and feelings she doesn’t quite understand. So it needed to be awkward and uncertain and clumsy. I think she nailed it.
On that scene it’s worth mentioning Bobby’s dance too. I found Bobby in the streets of Blackpool and he mentioned he could be interested in joining. Then through all sorts of reasons, I lost his number. We had someone else in mind for the part who didn’t own a phone and was supposed to meet us in a pub that morning but he never showed. I then found Bobby’s number through some small miracle as we were about to shoot the scene. I called him and he was literally down the road. He thought it was a scam and that I was trying to con him into coming to this random Catholic club. But when he came in and saw all the lights and cameras and crew he realised it was all real. He had never been in front of a camera in his life and what you see on screen happened within half an hour of him arriving on set. He was thrown in at the deep end to say the least but I think the awkwardness and unease of his performance is absolutely perfect.
Did you have a particular approach to post production to hone in on the tone you had in mind?
Once it came to the edit, it became clear to me that I had to refrain from traditional storytelling and make the storyline as unclear and confused as our central character. So we ended up with something that’s almost suspended in time and a series of vignettes rather than a linear or logical storyline. It took a lot of stripping away and being rigorous in our approach to end up with something I was happy with.
We created the folly from scratch and this brought exactly the sort of surreal atmosphere I wanted.
The final touch was the sound design which was completely built from scratch and really pushed the surreal character of the piece and helped detach the story from any form of relatable reality. I worked closely and at length with sound designer Marco Battimelli to strike the right balance and create the perfect soundscape. Working with Marco came quite late in the process. I had the film fully cut but I felt that it lacked something and I didn’t quite have the atmosphere I wanted. So we created the folly from scratch and this brought exactly the sort of surreal atmosphere I wanted. Again, I wanted the horror and violence to be insinuated rather than in your face and the overall intention around sound design followed that philosophy. It was a real collaborative process and having Marco bring his own take on the atmosphere of the film really pushed it further.
I’m going to leave the ending for everyone to decipher but I would love to know about audience reactions during your festival run to this.
I think overall people were definitely perplexed and left with more questions than answers! And certainly a few gasps during the chip scene! I grew up with the films of David Lynch and Dario Argento and I think this film shouldn’t be read with the conventional tools of storytelling. It’s more of an experience borne out of moments that appeared in my head rather than the need to tell a specific story. I’ve always loved the quote of Steven Soderbergh at the start of Schizopolis where he walks on stage and says: “In the event that you find certain sequences or ideas confusing, please bear in mind that this is your fault, not ours. You will need to see this picture again and again until you understand everything.”
What can we expect next from you?
I’ve written a new film and am currently trying to bring it to life. It’s a much more narrative thing with sex and violence and isolation at its core, so it’ll be pretty dark! I’m really excited about it and will hopefully be shooting it in the coming weeks.
