‘God’s Own Country’ Director Francis Lee On ‘Pretty Woman,’ Brexit And This ‘Super Exciting’ Era Of Queer Cinema

I like how you exclude filmmaking from “real work”
[Laughs] Well, it’s not really, is it? One of the things I did when I gave up acting was get a job in a scrapyard because it was manual. And that felt very comfortable to me. So I wanted to represent that body of people very truthfully, I didn’t want to come at it from a perspective of privilege and…I’m trying really hard not to use the word “class”!

You’re British, that’s going to be impossible to avoid.
Well, yes. So I didn’t want to come at it from a middle-class perspective. I wanted to come at it from my perspective. It was about depicting the people I’ve grown up with and known all my life.

There is an irony there, though, right? That the people who will see the film, will mostly be of that urban, educated, middle class set…
Yes, I was just discussing this recently. The thing is, if you make a film, let’s say, to make a political point. Generally all the people you want to see that film won’t see it.

The ones whose minds you might want to change are exactly the ones who’ll stay away.
So in terms of me making this film, I’d like to think that the people who are going to see it because they’ve heard about it or because they’re just the kind of people who would go to this kind of film, for them, something might filter through. A very slight shift in their perspective on that world.

Speaking of politics, that’s the second divide within the film — there’s the rift between insider and outsider, British and foreign. And we’re staring down the barrel of a contentious election [this interview happened the day before the last UK election] in which Brexit and immigration issues are key.
It’s super interesting. Like all these things, it was a complete accident. I always knew I wanted that character to be an outsider and to bring a different perspective. And to be challenging in that way. And in the scrapyard — the mythical scrapyard! — I was working with a Romanian guy who had come to the U.K. to earn money, to make a new life for him and his wife.

And I was naive, because I was shocked about his experience of coming to the U.K.: the xenophobia, the difficulty finding work. In Bucharest he was a white-collar worker in a manager’s job in an office, and the only work he could get in the U.K. was sweeping up in a scrapyard? All of these things started to feel very uncomfortable to me. I felt embarrassed and ashamed, and I wanted to highlight that experience in some way.

But I wrote this film in 2013  before any pledge of Brexit and blah blah blah. And even then when it happened, naively again, because I was focusing on the work rather than the world, I didn’t really think about Brexit in terms of this film until the actual vote. I was in the edit and me and Chris [Wyatt], the editor, had just done a pass on the film. And we watched the results being announced, and we both were shocked. And suddenly we needed to think what we were saying with the film in a new light. And had it — overnight — become a period piece?

Did anything change as a result of the vote? Was Gheorghe, like a really terrible person in the first pass and then Brexit happens and you make him a really nice guy?
[Laughs] No, no, nothing like that. The only big editing change — the only thing we shot that never made it into the edit — was slightly more verbalized xenophobia, casual xenophobia.

So there’s actually less explicit immigration-issue subtext than there was originally?
Well, as a filmmaker I’m not a huge fan of dialogue and certainly not of any kind of exposition. I believe cinema is visual, and we should tell stories visually. So the script already had very little dialogue in it and in the edit that got less. We stripped it out, because all of the actors were so brilliant at conveying [the intention] non-verbally.

From a very early age I was obsessed with stills photography and telling stories through pictures. And so for me it was very much about telling the story visually and making that as layered as possible, getting those subtleties, those looks, getting the boys to a place were they could embody those characters.

Also, I hate improvisation around dialogue. So they could never improvise dialogue around what was written, but they could improvise anything through action. And if there’s no dialogue, they’re free to move or change or explore [as the mood takes them].

The performances do feel stunningly natural and unforced.
Well, Alec [Secareanu] is such a focussed, brilliant actor — I’m just a fanboy. And I’m not big into, as a director, doing lots of takes within the one set up, but most of the film is just one take for Alec because it was all he needed.

And tell me about Josh’s magical ugly duckling transformation. 
Josh is an extraordinary actor. If you meet him, he’s the sweetest, most middle-class, jolly, funny, polite boy from Cheltenham you could ever wish to meet. But he’s also an utterly transformative actor, so we built that character over many months like we did with Alec, and he totally transforms himself. I know Josh really well now, and there’s not one part of him in that character that’s recognizable. He doesn’t look the same, he doesn’t walk the same, he doesn’t talk the same.

His transformation is a journey through the third and final divide that I find so fascinating in the film: the divide between feeling unlovable and feeling lovable. Because that’s the switch that Johnny has to flip before he can even embark on a love story, really. 
Yes, for me it was absolutely about having to find something lovable in yourself. You have to, before you can make yourself open to somebody to form a relationship. And I find all of that very scary and difficult and so it for me it was working through that emotion, and working through that rawness.

The difficulty I had with Johnny was that he’s he’s not very articulate. I thought, God, so in “An Officer and a Gentleman” he turns up and he picks her up and I’m like, Oh God, that would be amazing, but I’m not quite sure if I can work that in. And then I was like, in “Working Girl” he turns up and again, there’s that moment… but they talk about it. In “Pretty Woman” — these are all my favorite films! — it’s the same.

But I have this really inarticulate character who had in some way to tell the other person that he wanted to be with him. And it’s very hard to craft that dialogue and to maintain the character, to not suddenly have Johnny being really expressive and open, yet still deliver that emotional punch at the end.

Believe me, it may be understated, and it may not have “Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong” playing in the background, but the punch lands. 
Oh, thank you. It means so much.

“God’s Own Country” will be landing its emotional punches throughout the festival season prior to opening in the U.S. in the fall. See it, however you can — it’s one of the absolute best films of the year.