Queer cinema has been an important presence at the Provincetown International Film Festival since it began in 1999. Several past Filmmaker on the Edge award winners, such as Christine Vachon and Todd Haynes, and a trio of provocateurs — John Cameron Mitchell, Luca Guadagnino, and Bruce LaBruce — have created indelible LGBTQ characters and stories. But no past honoree has devoted himself so profoundly to exploring the issues of love, sex, and intimacy among gay men as Andrew Haigh, this year’s Filmmaker on the Edge, who will sit down for a conversation with the festival’s own John Waters at Provincetown Town Hall on Saturday.
Haigh is best known these days for the much praised drama All of Us Strangers, which was released last winter. He adapted the screenplay from a novel by Taichi Yamada. But it feels extraordinarily personal, as its main character, played by Andrew Scott, is a television writer trying to imagine coming out to his parents, who were killed in an accident when he was a young boy. It’s a mysterious and beautifully dreamlike story involving conversations with ghosts (his parents, played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) in his childhood home and, in the present, in his mostly deserted apartment building with a neighbor (Paul Mescal) who is interested in him romantically.
Like most of Haigh’s films, All of Us Strangers is about the loneliness of adults living in or out of relationships. “It’s definitely a theme I keep coming back to,” Haigh says. “I think loneliness affects a lot of people. It certainly affects a lot of queer people. We’ve experienced what that feels like growing up in a world where you don’t entirely fit in. That’s a perfect way to create the feeling of loneliness.
“But actually, my films are about how characters try to work through loneliness. They’ve had enough of loneliness. They’re trying to survive it; they’re trying to figure out what it’s about and move forward. My films aren’t about people being depressed. They’re about people taking the next step forward to make things feel better in their lives. Which, I suppose, is the quest of all of us: how to get through the day and make it a little better than the day before.”
All of Us Strangers harks back strongly to Haigh’s 2011 film Weekend, which is about a gay man in his late 20s (Tom Cullen) who works as a lifeguard at a Nottingham public pool, meets up with an artist (Chris New), and spends the next couple of days getting to know him. Weekend was Haigh’s second feature, but it became an international art-house sensation and transformed him into a filmmaker to watch. It’s shot in an almost documentary style, and it’s an intensely close and detailed look at a gay bar hookup with the potential of turning into a romance. It’s a revelatory film that’s still as powerful and accessible as it was when it was released.
Talking about Weekend, Haigh, now 51 with a partner and two daughters, becomes aware of the context in which it was made. “I’m really glad that people still respond to that film,” he says. “It’s been more than 12 years, and so much has changed fundamentally — in terms of queer representation, and what it’s like for us living our everyday lives as queer people. I recently watched a bit of Weekend, and I realized that it’s such a time capsule of how I felt back then. I imagine that a younger audience might feel it’s dated. But at the time it was very pertinent to me. And I think that’s what I’ve always tried to do, especially with queer subject matter — to do what feels right to me, interesting to me, rather than thinking I need to have a message for the queer community.”
Haigh doesn’t only deal with queer subjects, of course. His 2015 film 45 Years, which he adapted from a short story by David Constantine, looks at a married man and woman whose bond of trust is suddenly broken as they’re about to celebrate their 45th anniversary. The film stars Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay and deals with the repercussions that occur when the body of the husband’s old girlfriend is found frozen in the Swiss Alps, reviving memories and feelings and making the wife question how much love actually exists between them. Rampling was nominated for an Oscar for her performance.
Like All of Us Strangers, 45 Years deals with the corrosive influence of the past. “What I’m trying to say in both of those films,” Haigh says, “is not that the past can necessarily destroy us. It’s just there, under the surface. And our ability to be stable in our lives can be thrown off balance so easily. I feel that we live in a world where we try to ignore the past: ‘This is me, I’m in the present, and I’m going to strive forward.’ But that’s not how our lives work. They’re informed by what has happened to us.”
Haigh has created two series for television: Looking, which had a two-year run (2014-2016) on HBO, followed the amorous adventures of three gay men living in San Francisco (played by Frankie J. Alvarez, Jonathan Goff, and Murray Bartlett) and The North Water, a 2021 arctic whaling drama for the BBC and AMC here in the States. He says that working for the small screen took some adjustment for him. So does the current trend toward replacing theatergoing with streaming.
“Cinema is a place to go see nuance, to have real engagement with the audience,” he says. “When I make a film, the idea that it wouldn’t be shown in the cinema is devastating to me. I can’t imagine it just turning up on a streaming site, then vanishing somewhere within that site. I saw somebody the other night watching a movie on his phone! At least watch it on a big TV! I’m at my happiest when I’m watching movies in a cinema.”
Haigh is tremendously excited about coming to Provincetown. “I’ve never been, and I’ve always, always wanted to go. Even in Weekend, [Chris New] has got a T-shirt that says ‘Provincetown’ on it. My partner and I are coming, and I can’t wait.” And then there’s his upcoming interview with John Waters at town hall. “I’m both excited and a little bit terrified,” Haigh says. “John Waters will always be a magical figure in the life of cinema.”
Say Haigh
The event: A conversation with John Waters and Filmmaker on the Edge Andrew Haigh at the Provincetown Film Festival
The time: Saturday, June 15, 5 p.m.
The place: Provincetown Town Hall, 260 Commercial St.
The cost: $30, free with some passes, at provincetownfilm.org
