Seeing Double with Australian Filmmaker Lucy Knox

It’s so special to me that you’ve programmed An Act of Love with Cría cuervos . . . because that was a reference: the ideas about loss of innocence and how children are left to themselves in this adult world. Paul Rowe, who edited the film, and I actually played “Porque te vas” [a song in Cría cuervos . . .] a lot when we got tired of editing.

Where I grew up, in the outer suburbs in Australia, we had a roller rink, and I remember being about eleven or twelve and spending a lot of time there, taking lessons. There were older kids there, around sixteen and seventeen years old—that age when there’s no real public space for you to be anymore. In the afternoons they’d dim the lights, turn the music up, and make it seem like a disco, so the teenagers felt that they were at a nightclub even while there were also young kids around learning with their parents.

That kind of awkward, stagnant space appeals to me—places that are a bit dreamy but also a bit tragic. It was important to create that kind of place where worlds intersect, so the twins could believably come into contact with the other characters in the film. When we went to recce those roller rinks they were still the same as when I was young: hot chips on the ground, young couples hanging out, a melting pot of energies. When we first walked in they were playing the NeverEnding Story soundtrack from the speakers, so it just felt right.

That’s good to hear. “Sorrento Moon” is the name of the song. Sorrento is this sort of beach town for rich people in Melbourne, and I’ve always thought the lyrics were maybe about a first love down at the beach. I liked the idea of a single parent singing it and having it mean something to them about their own romantic past, and maybe playing it a lot at home or in the car so the kids inadvertently learn it—and then it becomes something they all know, that means something new to them as a unit. I’m interested in how young girls often sing these pop songs about falling in love, way before they’re old enough to have had those experiences themselves. And we wanted the viewer to feel for June in that moment. She’s having these quite complex inner conflicts, and the scenario of being trapped in the car with your family and treated like a kid is a bit tragic and funny. 

This film is screening at a few more film festivals, and I’m making a short film later this year about a toxic relationship between a mother and daughter. I’m also writing a feature based on a short documentary I made, about a man who falsifies connections to celebrities.