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Scotsman
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Director Paul Andrew Williams on returning to EIFF with his intense new film Dragonfly: ‘Brenda Blethyn was up for anything'
Writer/director Paul Andrew Williams is back at the Edinburgh International Film Festival with a quietly gripping film starring Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn. Interview by Alistair Harkness Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Backtrack to the 2006 Edinburgh International Film Festival and director Paul Andrew Williams is hanging out at the National Gallery of Scotland. The occasion is EIFF's 60th anniversary party, a splashy event hosted by Sean Connery. Film industry luminaries Brian De Palma, Steven Soderbergh, Tilda Swinton and Charlize Theron are floating around, socialising amidst the Titians, Rembrandts and Monets. Williams, meanwhile, visiting the festival with his debut gangland thriller London to Brighton, is marvelling at the fact he's there at all. 'It was mind-blowing,' recalls the director now. 'In a way it was like, 'What's going on?' Because we'd come from nowhere.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad On a Zoom call ahead of the EIFF premiere of his new film Dragonfly, Williams isn't exaggerating with this last statement. Made on a shoestring with a cast of unknowns, London to Brighton arrived at that year's event with zero awareness, yet it turned out to be a properly auspicious debut: one that subverted expectations by rooting its genre elements in the raw, social-realist traditions of Mike Leigh and John Cassavetes, but was also shot through with the sort relentless tension you might find in The Terminator (James Cameron is one of Williams's filmmaking heroes). He ended up leaving the festival with a best director award and a raft of five-star reviews, including from this critic (it remains the best debut I've encountered at EIFF). Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn in Dragonfly, written and directed by Paul Andrew Williams | Contributed 'We actually had a little screening of it the other day,' says Williams when I ask how he feels about it now that he's had nearly 20 years' perspective on it. 'You know what's good about it? You never get that freedom again where nobody's waiting for it, nobody's expecting anything of it. You're literally in a position where you're going: 'F*** it; we're all in the same boat; it's everyone's first movie; let's just see what we can do and be as truthful as possible.' It really was a good moment. And I'm very grateful, because it obviously changed my life.' Though he admits he had no idea how to navigate the industry following London to Brighton's reception — 'I had a massive case of imposter syndrome' — he's got no regrets about his subsequent career, which has allowed him to make six movies, write and direct a play in London's West End and direct TV like Broadchurch and the recent Disney+ miniseries Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. Indeed, TV is where he's mostly been working over the last decade, though he did make a forceful return to cinema with 2021's horror-adjacent gangster thriller Bull. Now he's back with Dragonfly, which reconfirms his status as one of the most exciting British filmmakers currently working. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Starring Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn, it's certainly among the best things he's done, an unnerving, quietly terrifying drama about loneliness, connection and prejudice wrapped up in a story about two women finding each other at the right — or perhaps wrong — moment. Blethyn plays Elsie, an older woman who's been living by herself in her bungalow, but has recently had a fall and now has her daily needs attended to by overworked private carers paid for by her absent, guilt-ridden son (Jason Watkins). Riseborough is her mysterious neighbour Colleen, an oddball from the West Country, with off-kilter energy and an enormous, frightening, mixed-breed dog called Sabre. Suspicious of everyone, but especially of the parade of carers doing the bare minimum to help Elsie out, Colleen takes on the job of looking after Elsie herself, insinuating her way into her life and gradually forming a bond that's quite sweet and funny and almost childlike in places, and almost like a romance in others. 'Yeah, I'd call it a romance,' nods Williams. The air of dread never quite subsides, though. As Williams gives us more and more glimpses into Colleen's isolated existence, he demonstrates again that knack for infusing realistic drama with genre elements, deftly navigating plot turns here that take us into psycho-thriller or even horror territory. And in fact, there's a pretty effective jump scare late on that would give Ari Aster a run for his money. 'It does have a jump scare,' laughs Williams. 'It was mad watching it with an audience. I had no idea it would have that effect. But it is all grounded for me in reality. And I think our own preconceptions influence the horror of what's going on, because you see the dog and you're like, 'That dog's gonna rip someone's head off.' Our preconceptions generate fear and I think the same goes for Andrea's character.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It's certainly a remarkable performance from Riseborough. She inhabits Colleen so completely you don't really know what the character is capable of — and yet there's a real vulnerability to her too that Riseborough makes sure to let us see. As for the character's West Country accent, Williams wrote Colleen with that in mind, but didn't specify it in the screenplay and was delighted when Riseborough showed up with the same idea. Make sure you keep up to date with Arts and Culture news from across Scotland by signing up to our free newsletter here. She was, confirms Williams, impressive to watch on set. Ditto Blethyn, who gives real dignity to Elsie as she endures the indignity of ageing with on-the-clock strangers showering her, preparing her meals and taking her to the bathroom. 'Brenda was up for anything. She went from being in Vera, being the star of this very lucrative and popular show, to sitting in a dressing gown and nightie in the back room of a bungalow with an oil heater and a mirror. And that was it.' Though Williams started writing Dragonfly during Covid as a way of figuring out if it was ever going to be possible to make a film again, the conversations about isolation and community that emerged during lockdown fed into the film. It's not an issue movie, but he hopes it'll open up a broader conversation about our roles in society. 'Elsie is based on my nan and has elements of my mum; Colleen has lots of elements of things that have happened to me that I relate to very clearly,' he says. 'But I just wanted to sort of write this thing where it's just these two people getting on, and then we subvert that and question our preconceptions about who these people are. I think there are people in this we could all do with paying attention to a bit more without judging.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Dragonfly' Review: Andrea Riseborough And Brenda Blethyn Give Wings To Paul Andrew Williams' Poignant Neighborhood Drama
Paul Andrew Williams's feature debut was called London to Brighton (2006), but the British director has never been much interested in capital cities. His latest, Dragonfly, is another example of this, being a dark, low-key drama about the ways in which the unnoticed lives of suburban people can make surprising headlines. In a direct way, it's a sister piece to his provocative 2010 home invasion film Cherry Tree Lane, in which—pre-empting Adolescence—a middle-class couple's humdrum live is turned upside down when they are inexplicably attacked by violent teenage rebels without any apparent cause. In reality, though—and despite the blood spilt both onscreen and off—it turns out to be more like the film Williams made in 2012. Called Song for Marion, it starred Terence Stamp as an emotionally shut-down widower who joins a choir to pay homage to his late wife (Vanessa Redgrave). It wasn't a commercial success, and Dragonfly may not be either, but the new film makes better use of that film's ingredients: themes of loneliness, regret, bereavement, self-worth and family. And like Song for Marion, it has quite the cast: two Oscar nominees playing just outside their age range and beyond their comfort zones. More from Deadline Editors Guild Protests Against Nonfiction Producer Story Syndicate At Tribeca Premiere Of OceanGate Submersible Documentary 'Titan' As Tribeca Kicks Off, Toppers Weigh In On Their Growing Festival & Standing Up To Donald Trump Banijay Appoints Factual Drama Chief There's little to no vanity here in the central pairing of Brenda Blethyn, as the elderly widow Elsie, and Andrea Riseborough, as her unemployed neighbor Colleen, and the two very different actors' styles work perfectly together. The film's opening ten minutes sets up the two women's lives with a poignant economy: living in back-to-back bungalows, they lead eerily similar lives, like ghosts. Elsie had a life once and misses it bitterly now, but Colleen never had a life at all. 'So weird,' says Colleen, quite intuitively, when she first visits Elsie's home. 'It's exactly like mine, just the other way round.' Colleen has lived next door to Elsie for some 13 years before the story starts, and it's not quite immediately clear why she should suddenly pop round to offer her services—does Elsie want anything from the shop? But Colleen has been watching the procession of carers that visit Elsie from day to day, and she sees a woman who deserves more than the clock-watching agency nurses who come to give her showers she doesn't need and food that isn't doing her any good at all. There is, as they say, a gap in the market, and Colleen moves fast to fill it, something Elsie appreciates and which helps the once dowdy woman blossom. Compared even to the slow-burn of Williams' last film Bull (2021), the film takes baby steps to reveal itself as a genre film, but the score by Raffertie is ahead of the action at every turn. Nothing will ever really be revealed or explained by the end, but Williams' script sets up so many fascinating ways in which these two very different women — the relatively posh Elsie and the definitely struggling-class Colleen — strike a chord. And key to that is the introduction of Elsie's son John (Jason Watkins). Middle-aged and yet still pathetically upwardly mobile, John is the harbinger here, and his nasty bourgeois values, coming between Elsie and Colleen, turn out to the be the meat in the sandwich. Instead of Chekhov's gun in this scenario we have a dog, and Colleen's inability to control her 'mentalist' crossbreed Sabre does not go well for either of them, leading to a very violent denouement. But Williams' film is not so much concerned with the tension of getting to that and more about the understanding; Andrea Riseborough is just so good at this, bringing the A-game she brought to 2022's To Leslie, but this time with a more jarring child-like innocence, reflected in her pasty, wan complexion. The same goes for Brenda Blethyn, so effortlessly affecting as a wife and mother reduced to becoming a client to the welfare state, a degradation that Colleen just can't begin to tolerate. Williams' films often end with a question mark, and that doesn't always satisfy. With Dragonfly, however, the questions posed are moral and timely, and they will hang around in your head long after as you think about women like Colleen and Elsie and the things in their lives that are missing. It's a mother of a story. Title: DragonflyFestival: Tribeca (International Narrative Competition)Director/screenwriter: Paul Andrew WilliamsCast: Andrea Riseborough, Brenda Blethyn, Jason WatkinsUS Sales: AMP InternationalRunning time: 1 hr 38 mins Best of Deadline Broadway's 2024-2025 Season: All Of Deadline's Reviews Sundance Film Festival U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize Winners Through The Years Deadline Studio At Sundance Film Festival Photo Gallery: Dylan O'Brien, Ayo Edebiri, Jennifer Lopez, Lily Gladstone, Benedict Cumberbatch & More
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Dragonfly' Review: Andrea Riseborough And Brenda Blethyn Give Wings To Paul Andrew Williams' Poignant Neighborhood Drama
Paul Andrew Williams's feature debut was called London to Brighton (2006), but the British director has never been much interested in capital cities. His latest, Dragonfly, is another example of this, being a dark, low-key drama about the ways in which the unnoticed lives of suburban people can make surprising headlines. In a direct way, it's a sister piece to his provocative 2010 home invasion film Cherry Tree Lane, in which—pre-empting Adolescence—a middle-class couple's humdrum live is turned upside down when they are inexplicably attacked by violent teenage rebels without any apparent cause. In reality, though—and despite the blood spilt both onscreen and off—it turns out to be more like the film Williams made in 2012. Called Song for Marion, it starred Terence Stamp as an emotionally shut-down widower who joins a choir to pay homage to his late wife (Vanessa Redgrave). It wasn't a commercial success, and Dragonfly may not be either, but the new film makes better use of that film's ingredients: themes of loneliness, regret, bereavement, self-worth and family. And like Song for Marion, it has quite the cast: two Oscar nominees playing just outside their age range and beyond their comfort zones. More from Deadline Editors Guild Protests Against Nonfiction Producer Story Syndicate At Tribeca Premiere Of OceanGate Submersible Documentary 'Titan' As Tribeca Kicks Off, Toppers Weigh In On Their Growing Festival & Standing Up To Donald Trump Banijay Appoints Factual Drama Chief There's little to no vanity here in the central pairing of Brenda Blethyn, as the elderly widow Elsie, and Andrea Riseborough, as her unemployed neighbor Colleen, and the two very different actors' styles work perfectly together. The film's opening ten minutes sets up the two women's lives with a poignant economy: living in back-to-back bungalows, they lead eerily similar lives, like ghosts. Elsie had a life once and misses it bitterly now, but Colleen never had a life at all. 'So weird,' says Colleen, quite intuitively, when she first visits Elsie's home. 'It's exactly like mine, just the other way round.' Colleen has lived next door to Elsie for some 13 years before the story starts, and it's not quite immediately clear why she should suddenly pop round to offer her services—does Elsie want anything from the shop? But Colleen has been watching the procession of carers that visit Elsie from day to day, and she sees a woman who deserves more than the clock-watching agency nurses who come to give her showers she doesn't need and food that isn't doing her any good at all. There is, as they say, a gap in the market, and Colleen moves fast to fill it, something Elsie appreciates and which helps the once dowdy woman blossom. Compared even to the slow-burn of Williams' last film Bull (2021), the film takes baby steps to reveal itself as a genre film, but the score by Raffertie is ahead of the action at every turn. Nothing will ever really be revealed or explained by the end, but Williams' script sets up so many fascinating ways in which these two very different women — the relatively posh Elsie and the definitely struggling-class Colleen — strike a chord. And key to that is the introduction of Elsie's son John (Jason Watkins). Middle-aged and yet still pathetically upwardly mobile, John is the harbinger here, and his nasty bourgeois values, coming between Elsie and Colleen, turn out to the be the meat in the sandwich. Instead of Chekhov's gun in this scenario we have a dog, and Colleen's inability to control her 'mentalist' crossbreed Sabre does not go well for either of them, leading to a very violent denouement. But Williams' film is not so much concerned with the tension of getting to that and more about the understanding; Andrea Riseborough is just so good at this, bringing the A-game she brought to 2022's To Leslie, but this time with a more jarring child-like innocence, reflected in her pasty, wan complexion. The same goes for Brenda Blethyn, so effortlessly affecting as a wife and mother reduced to becoming a client to the welfare state, a degradation that Colleen just can't begin to tolerate. Williams' films often end with a question mark, and that doesn't always satisfy. With Dragonfly, however, the questions posed are moral and timely, and they will hang around in your head long after as you think about women like Colleen and Elsie and the things in their lives that are missing. It's a mother of a story. Title: DragonflyFestival: Tribeca (International Narrative Competition)Director/screenwriter: Paul Andrew WilliamsCast: Andrea Riseborough, Brenda Blethyn, Jason WatkinsUS Sales: AMP InternationalRunning time: 1 hr 38 mins Best of Deadline Broadway's 2024-2025 Season: All Of Deadline's Reviews Sundance Film Festival U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize Winners Through The Years Deadline Studio At Sundance Film Festival Photo Gallery: Dylan O'Brien, Ayo Edebiri, Jennifer Lopez, Lily Gladstone, Benedict Cumberbatch & More
