April’s relationship is on the rocks. Her husband, the co-owner of a vintage clothing store, has been having an affair, and it has just come to light. In an act of revenge, she torches some of their goods and slips into an affair with playboy Randall, little knowing that he is far more dangerous than he already seems.
As a maniacally structured rumination on obsession, Fashionista reunites writer/director Simon Rumley with actress Amanda Fuller, the star of his 2010 thriller Red White & Blue. In fact, he was so impressed with her turn in that feature that she became something of a muse for his latest thriller, which is now being touted as their ticket out of festival-friendly genre filmmaking.
“Fashionista started its life as a different film, with a male lead,” says Rumley, speaking from the UK where he’s deep into the editing process for crime thriller Once Upon A Time In London. “What I’d written I wasn’t happy with. It wasn’t great. So I had this sort of brainwave, like, ‘Fuck it, why don’t I just write something for Amanda? Do something closer to my heart?’
“I know what she can do, so I pushed the character knowing she can do all this stuff – the emotional stuff, vulnerable stuff, sexy stuff. We shot it in three weeks, so it was a pretty intense period for her, but she was fantastic and I hope to work with her many times in the future.”
Rumley is of the impression that good help is hard to come by, and so loyalty is a defining element of his approach to his ten-feature-deep career.
“There’s so many things that can go wrong in making a film, and actors are one of them,” he says. “Cinematographers are another, editors are another. Every process of filmmaking can go wrong, so when you find people who are great, I tend to hold on to them. For example, my DP [the prolific Milton Kam] – Once Upon A Time In London was our ninth film together. And Amanda, she was pretty fearless in Red White & Blue. It was a tough psychological and emotional film, pretty raw; the subject matter was pretty harsh. It was not easy finding someone in America to do that role.
“It’s kinda crazy she hasn’t had more recognition, really, because her role in Red White & Blue was stunning, and her role in Fashionista is equally stunning, I would say.”
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The critics agree. Fashionista’s chronology-shattering sensory overload has garnered comparisons to Rumley’s icons and contemporaries, raising him (and his team) to the level of creatives like Nicolas Roeg and Nicolas Winding Refn. The comparisons to NWR’s The Neon Demon are the most natural, given that film’s focus on a young woman’s crumbling psychological state under the neon lights of America, and its focus on expression through couture.
“I think Neon Demon was less of a script, to be honest,” says Rumley. “As [Refn]’s gone on, some of the scripts he’s written himself feel more like mood pieces, really. Neon Demon was more an investigation of a state of mind or a state of being and a mood piece; less plot-driven cinema than an exploration of an emotional state. Anyone going into that film expecting a hardcore narrative like Drive was going to be disappointed. But it’s got lots of great imagery. Pretty hot girls in it, too, if you like that sort of thing.
“This film is a lot more narrative-driven – it’s non-linear, it jumps all over the place, so it’s still quite challenging in many respects, but I’d say it’s more obviously about a woman’s journey and what she goes through. It’s not about fame either … this is more about obsession, the peccadilloes of life. It’s garnered a few comparisons to Neon Demon; someone else called it a kind of demented Brian De Palma-type film, which I have to say, I quite liked.”
Fashionista is playing at Event Cinemas George Street on Thursday June 8 and Dendy Newtown on Wednesday June 14 as part of Sydney Film Festival 2017.
