By Savina Petkova.
I think in the long take, we observe the rhythm of real life…. if we would cut between different emotional states, it would be artificial.”
It would be reductive to call Roving Woman, the debut feature by Polish filmmaker Michał Chmielewski simply a road movie. That it certainly is, since it follows a protagonist named Sara (an empathetic and exquisite role of actress Lena Góra) through the California deserts in an attempt to break free from an imposed narrative: a woman left to fend for herself. After her boyfriend throws her out of their Los Angeles home – inexplicably – she steals a car and starts driving. Along the way, she meets people, some kinder than others, and life seems to unfold in a way that is novel and exciting for her. We have a character that is ultimately unknowable, but, as an audience, we get to know her intimately. From the inconsistencies of the narrative she recited to strangers, to the deep introspective work she occasionally articulates to no one else but herself in the car, Sara is someone everyone can identify with.
I spoke to Michał at the Sofia International Film Festival, where Roving Woman played in the International Competition, and I was curious to learn more about the intricacies of shooting one’s first feature on the road, what it means to go after the truth in a fiction film, and whether people can actually be together in this world. Our conversation, which spanned over two hours, confirmed my suspicions that a certain kind of kinship can bring artists together, regardless of their background or footing. No wonder Roving Woman was executively produced by Wim Wenders, as it offers both a singular vision by a burgeoning auteur and an inspired addition to a strong lineage of female-focused road cinema, as noted in Alex Ramon’s review of the film. Life is a ride, regardless of if we take the steering wheel or the passenger seat.
For a while now, I’ve wanted to see your film and it didn’t disappoint. In the first few minutes, I was already thinking: “God, okay, this is so good!”
And when did you start liking it?
I can tell you precisely: it’s when Sara rings the bell and has this rant over the intercom, she just bares everything as she repeatedly screams: “Why don’t you answer me?” It’s a performance filled with such neurotic insistence. Can you tell me about your work with Lena Góra to extract this emotional depth in banal moments?
The line was written in the script, but Lena had this freedom of expressing how she felt in the moment and I didn’t expect her to repeat it, she was very in the moment. Even more, she became this character because when she was preparing for the movie, she also went to the desert, for example, sleeping in the car without a phone. So we talked together as co-writers, that the general idea for the movie is that every character you see, they are very close to themselves, their private personality is very close to the character. Lena, John Hawkes, the couple in the RV, all of them. It turns out we were looking for the truth in different ways.
So many things in your film play out in a matter of fact, or even banal, way, but not in the pejorative. There’s simplicity and something very poetic about the freedom that it allows, inviting multiple viewpoints as well. But how do you even start such a project? From a scene? From a concept?
I met Lena in Poland and we formed a two-person film club. [Laughs] And we started watching films together, we started talking about our personal stories. One day, it just clicked that we should, you know, write something together. We felt a very strong need to make the movie that we did. It was so fast, we wrote the script in three or four weeks and we decided to go to LA, where I had some friends and she lived there before. And I just arrived, we gathered some money—it was super low budget, like $11,000 to begin—and then we started shooting.
So how long was it from starting the script to the shoot?
It has to be one or two months! We started shooting in March 2020, just when the pandemic hit. I mean, two days after everything kicked in, California was locked down and we were shooting in the desert. But, thinking of it, I was on the road, shooting my debut feature during the pandemic so I couldn’t have had a better time.
I would never say Roving Woman is a pandemic film.
Exactly. And also the energy, which was in the air, I think had a huge impact on the movie. Not knowing what’s going to happen next, like tomorrow. The future was really unpredictable at that time. Some actors declined to join the project because of COVID, so we hired some actual desert people instead. This pandemic mode and everything around this had an impact on us, I think you could feel it’s not only during the shooting but also in the footage. Even our editor, Przemyslaw Chruscielewski, when he watched the footage for the first time, he told me that he could feel it in the footage, and our co-producer Anna [Lodej] was in charge of not telling us what’s going on in the world. It was better for the film if we didn’t know too much.
We talked about reality as a rough material for fiction.How does that relate to this, then? You think? Obviously, it imprinted itself on the footage. But what about the story?
I think it bends the story. That’s what I like about it the most, that you cannot distinguish what’s real, and what’s fiction.
I know there were improvised moments and hidden cameras involved?
Yes, we used a hidden camera in the scenes when you see Sara in the car, driving in and around the city, asking people to borrow their phone to call her mom, or asking people for directions or asking for some money.
Was this a spontaneous idea, or was it planned?
That’s a good question. I think it appeared in my mind during the shoot because I saw those people, in Twentynine Palms, Landers, those small towns in the desert. where I’ve never been I’ve never been there before. So when we were just driving through the cities, I saw there were some weird interesting people that evidently it would be too complicated to ask for a recording. We had this camera fixed in the car for different scenes, so we could use the camera position for this improv. So we’re just, we spent a few days just riding around in town with the task for Sara, to ask for a phone, for example, and we were hunting for this moment. And it took a lot of time, a lot of takes, because sometimes you have like, perfect character, but the framing is rubbish. The dialogues are great, but you don’t see her, for example… It was a very exciting moment for me as a director, and also, I think for Lena, especially because she was the corruptor but interacted with people who are not aware of the movie. And me and Lukasz Dziedzic, our cinematographer, were in the car hidden in the backseat. We knew there was a real lady who was asked for a phone, it was real, and you don’t know how it’s gonna end. Will she borrow the phone? Or not? Will she be nice? Or will she be aggressive? Because it also happened. Some people didn’t want to, you know, cooperate and were very aggressive. One guy was ready to shoot us, actually, because we were on his property.
Improvisation offers the actors emotional freedom….”
There’s this scene where Sara says “Please don’t shoot me”, was that inspired by that event?
No, that was the real thing. But it was fine in the end.
The film portrays people who are otherwise marginalized in a new light, free of stereotypes. There’s so much freedom for all these characters to express themselves. How do you make it so, given that it’s only your debut feature?
What I was continuously learning about during the shoot, is firstly, the pace of the movie. I’ve made shorts before, where the pace is different, the cuts come faster. For Roving Woman, when I thought a scene should be like 30 seconds long, I was counting to 30, three times. Because the time behind a camera has a different sense to it.. And when you watch the footage, it is also different. And when you put it in the movie, it’s also different. So I allowed myself, and also the actors to just be, to have this time. Because on a regular set there’s huge pressure, since every hour is like, very expensive. And we were lucky, we didn’t have a budget. We had a small crew of eight people.
And the world was kind of falling apart.
Exactly, so we could actually, we allowed ourselves to have time. And I think it’s also the reason why it’s so natural, I mean, and also the improvisation I told you about, which offers the actors emotional freedom.
I want to know what’s important for you in the long take. Do you feel like there’s some specific creative potential to letting time run? Does that translate necessarily to the length of the scene, or does it have to do with just time flowing and actors having the space to inhabit the characters for longer?
I think in the long take, we observe the rhythm of real life. Because if you cut, it’s unnatural. Of course, we have to cut because we want to have storytelling and we want to have a flow which is very important for me. I can cut out the most expensive stuff, if it impedes on the flow. I think the most important long take in the movies is when Sara steals the car, it gives a sense of truthfulness to observe the whole process on her face when she steals a car, because if we would cut between different emotional states, it would be kind of artificial. So the spectrum of emotions through this two-minute scene is what made it
Now you’re saying this, cuts are not natural for the way life unfolds. But they are natural for the filmmaking process. So a lot of actors come in, knowing that there’s going to be a cut, and the scene ends, as shown in the script, everyone reconfigures…
I can imagine that if we had a huge crew waiting for us, asking “Do you have this take?”, it would have been different though. As for the way the film looks, we didn’t have money for camera movements, dollies, steadicam and so on. We were in a position that we could just drive with the camera on, through the desert. There’s Lena, me and the cinematographer, a kind of real freedom that comes with the factuality of a low budget of course. Some people asked me what I would do, if I had like 10 or 20 or 100 times more money for his movie, and you know, I wouldn’t change anything, because it was supposed to be like this, to be made like this.
At one point, Sara picks up a hitchhiker who says he lives in an invisible house and that he’s a film producer…
He’s the real guy, Chris Hanley who produced Spring Breakers and American Psycho and he really lives in this invisible house! Lena knew him already and funnily enough, he’s the one who brought karaoke as a concept from Japan! He’s playing himself in the movie: he doesn’t have a driving license, his house is in the Joshua Tree deserts. His lines are his, and that’s why they’re so abstract. My favorite line in the film is something he says: “Nobody’s really together in this life, it’s just like different degrees of aloneness.”
And what about the recordings Sara listens to in the car?
They are recorded and written by John Hawkes. He wrote the song “This Is The Song”, which is like this most important song in the past, but he never performed it before. And we asked him to record some monologues for Mimi, and he played this song he wrote in the past, for a person who doesn’t exist – “This is the song I wrote for you just in case. You know, you came along”. It fit so well! We couldn’t believe it. We had some miracles in this movie. I think the whole crew and the cast, even Wim Wenders, also Connie Converse, one of our inspirations, we are kind of from the same tribe.
Do you think the film would be any different if it didn’t mention Connie Converse?
I love the mood her music and presence brings to the movie and she could be one of the characters in the movie. I love her music. I love her mystery. I believe there is her spirit in the movie. It would work without the mention of her, because the film is not about her. Sara is not Connie Converse because Sara was kicked out and Connie decided to disappear.
That’s the thing about Sarah’s journey. There’s this moment when she talks to herself in the car, speaks out in a way that she hasn’t before.
You know, so I did it. When I was in a relationship years ago. I had like I was driving on the highway and started talking to myself, I was saying some honest things, which were very hidden and very deep. Inside and I had to articulate them because I couldn’t stand not articulating them anymore. It’s kind of like therapy, where you say some obvious things, but for the first time you say them out loud, it makes a difference.
Savina Petkova is a Bulgarian film critic and programmer based in London with a PhD in Film Studies. She has published in Cineuropa, Variety, Sight and Sound, MUBI Notebook, Little White Lies, BBC Culture, among others. Savina is also a commissioning editor for Talking Shorts, a programmer for Cambridge Film Festival and Sofia Film Festival, and a mentor for emerging critics at short film festivals under the European Network for Film Discourse (The END).