David Hennessy spoke to Maeve Murphy and Kellie Shirley, the director and writer/ actress of a new short film that deals with domestic violence.
A new short film taking a look at violence in the home premieres at Beeston Film Festival this week.
The Wolf is a collaboration between award- winning director Maeve Murphy and well known actress/ writer Kellie Shirley.
Maeve Murphy is the writer/ director of such films as Silent Grace which has been named as one of the most important Irish films ever made.
The Irish World featured Maeve and her short film St Pancras Sunrise which also dealt with violence against women.
The Wolf, St Pancras Sunrise and another of Maeve’s shorts Siobhan, which has similar themes, will be displayed together at a festival in Hungary this summer.
The Wolf is also set to play Fastnet Film Festival in Cork next month.
Kellie Shirley is known for playing Carly Wicks in Eastenders 2006- 2012. Her other screen credits include Idris Elba’s In The Long Run and the BAFTA-winning Joe All Alone.
She has also worked across theatre and is currently starring in TWO at Park Theatre in London.
A clip from The Wolf was played on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch when Kellie recently appeared.
Kellie’s mother is Northern Irish and her Irish heritage partly inspired her to write The Wolf.
The story finds Shirley’s Leah making dinner for her son Liam, played her own son Louie Davies.
However when her partner, who we get to know only as titular ‘Wolf’ and is played by James Harkness, comes home drunk, it doesn’t take long for his mood to sour.
The violent explosion is the final straw for Leah and she realises she has get her and her son away.
Maeve and Kellie took time to chat to The Irish World.
What inspired the story?
Kellie: “My mum is from Northern Ireland, from Lisburn so I wanted to have a story that was about somebody who was escaping from their life in London and going back to Northern Ireland.
“That’s always been something I’ve wanted to look at on screen.”
Maeve: “Obviously she contacted me as a Northern Irish filmmaker and so we reworked it, moved towards domestic violence as a topic.
“It was actually going to be a lot longer and the second half of it was going to be in Belfast.
“We just couldn’t make that happen so in the end I remember actually saying to Kellie, ‘I really, really love the escape bit because it’s so strong and it’s so dramatic’.
“Things evolve over discussion in that kind of development period.
“That’s how it went from a piece that was going to be semi- set in Northern Ireland to a piece where there is a Northern Irish mother and she’s escaping to her at the end.
“The escape moment is the the climax of it.
“It’s a really good example of a fantastic collaboration of two people putting their creative energies together and it was actually over a long period of time, a lot of discussion.
“It actually shows what can emerge when people are actually relaxed and there’s no rush going on, there was no deadline and then it just naturally hit the point, ‘Yes, for the funds that we’ve got, for the talent that we’ve got- incredible actors obviously- This is the best way to do it’.
“And you never know. It could always be followed up with her in Belfast but it just felt complete that way.”
What made you think to approach Maeve, Kellie?
Kellie: “I knew that I wanted to work with a female director because, in my 25 year career, I haven’t worked with near enough female directors and I just felt like it was a really female driven story.
“I went, ‘You know what? I really want to work with with a kick-ass female’, and because some of it was going to be set in Northern Ireland, I wanted to work with a brilliant female director who had roots in Northern Ireland to bring as much authenticity as possible to it.
“I’ve been on this thing called BAFTA Elevate and it’s about nurturing working class talent and underrepresented groups progressing in our careers in the industry.
“One of my mentors mentioned Maeve might be a good person to get in touch with.
“Then we met and I was like, ‘Yeah, I really think that we could work together and make something that is meaningful’.”
Maeve: “It just had an incredible synergy.
“I remember we had this day before the shoot where we rehearsed: Me and James and Kellie.
“There was just three of us in this flat and I just thought, ‘This is really going to work’, because there was just this flow.
“We’d all been watching little clips of Nil by Mouth and stuff like that just to get the feel to that British social realist working class drama tradition, but particularly that film.
“There’s many, many, many films.
“There’s the whole Ken Loach school and Andrea Arnold as well but particularly that film because it shows domestic violence which, for some reason, people shy away from a lot.
“It also shows the complexity.
“The beauty of Kellie’s writing, great dialogue and characters is that it shows how those situations come from a kind of intimacy of people living in people’s lives.
“It was important to me that we showed even that little moment at the top of the film that there were times that they did get on and he did make her laugh because then you could understand a bit why she was still there.
“It’s so complex that terrain because it goes to a peak and then it comes down again with an apology and ‘I will never do it again’ and reparations, and then it builds up again.
“I just really felt James Harkness and obviously Kellie were just being really fearless in portraying a truthfulness.
“The leaving is so empowering to watch because I know that it’s the most dangerous time as well for women in those situations but also I just think for an audience it’s just really lovely to think there’s some hope.”
Kellie: “There is hope in domestic abuse and we really wanted to highlight that.
“We didn’t want to have something that was all doom and gloom.
“The real picture is that women can hopefully get help and flee a situation.
“One of my friends worked in a female refuge and another of my friends is yoga instructor and she goes around different female refuges in London just giving some holistic service to women who have experienced what the character of Leah has.
“That was part of it (where the idea came from).
“We read this article and it was about football and how when England lose, even when England win actually, the amount of domestic abuse cases spike.
“We kind of wanted to tap into that.
“That is a real thing that’s happening and it’s a pandemic in itself, why is that?
“James is a working class actor.
“He’s come from The Gorbals.
“You couldn’t get more of a working class actor, who’s got real lived in experience, to play that kind of role.
“As well so using inspiration from Nil by Mouth and Andrea Arnold’s Wasp, it does come from a real place.”
Maeve: “It’s always just that thing of allowing those influences to influence and then making it your own, taking it the next step forward.”
Was the young actor your son, Kellie? I didn’t realise..
“Yeah, he is.
“Louie is the most unstagey kid you could possibly meet.
“I had to go, ‘Louie. If you do this for me, I will take you to the Lego shop. I promise you’.”
Maeve: “He kept calling me the teacher.
“And it was just a lovely group of people.
“For me it was such a pleasure actually to see something that had been worked through and talked through and then actually getting done.
“And now we’re just at this point where it’s about to go out into the world.
“Next week at Beeston is our premiere which is very, very exciting and we’re nominated for Best Performance there which is fantastic.
“Then we have Fastnet in West Cork which is brilliant.
“Then it shows in La Femme International Film Festival in Budapest in June.
“But we’ve also had a little snippet on Channel Four as well.
“It’s lovely.”
In the film we see Leah get to her final straw, don’t we? When she gets a call from the school who are concerned about her son’s safety, she realises he isn’t actually safe where he is. That makes her realise she has to get away, isn’t that right?
Kellie: “Yeah, definitely.
“My husband works as a teacher in a state school in London and he’s told me some quite harrowing stories.
“In fact he did tell me this story where this little girl called her stepfather ‘The Wolf’ and that’s something that was in my head when I was writing it, and the importance of safeguarding within schools.
“Teachers are more than just teachers because they’ve got to keep their eye out for all sorts of things.
“There’s 4 million kids living in poverty in the UK and with poverty comes all these issues like alcoholism and violence because people are just at their wit’s end and they’re all linked.
“That’s what I wanted to draw on, and being a mum and seeing firsthand within the school set up some children that are really struggling and suffering and using the food banks and the breakfast clubs in the morning and parents really finding it difficult.
“I think it (the reason Leah leaves) is that realisation that the school can step in and escalate the situation.
“She could lose her son and that would be the absolute worst thing.”
Maeve: “We both know in that situation when the woman leaves really is the most dangerous time but from the point of view of dramatists, we see a woman find her agency.
“This is a woman who’s just got enough strength to think, ‘No’ and picks up the phone to her mum who she doesn’t have a perfect relationship with but still it’s somewhere to go and it’s somewhere away, way away. It’s not like streets away, it’s to Belfast and so there’s a chance because of that distance that it won’t be so easy to track her down.
“But there’s a real tension that’s packed into that: Is he going to get her before they get on the bike?
“It just boils it right down to something just so real.
“It always gets to me watching it that bit when she’s got her bag and she’s holding Liam’s hand and they’re getting on the bike.
“There’s something so vulnerable but also something so strong in that.
“I think the way that you do it Kellie is really, really beautiful because you capture both things which is really, really hard to do.
“I think it’s hitting the genre of a thriller slightly with a very, very real subject and not in any way compromising on the realness of the subject but also allowing a little bit of tension to come through as well.”
The film also shows how quickly these things can escalate or explode. The Wolf comes home in a seemingly good mood but this mood quickly sours. Although he comes home happily drunk, the alcohol means he gets out of control quickly..
Maeve: ““I think he’s got a short fuse.
“He’s alright up until that point.
“That’s the Jekyll and Hyde thing.
“His fuse is so quick that it’s just something that she says annoys him.
“She won’t respond to his kisses in the kitchen and that is the trigger for him and then the rage which is so close to the surface and could be triggered so quickly, flashes.
“It just (blows up) and to the point then it spills into the living room and really that’s where it’s the issue of male strength because that’s what we’re talking about here.
“He is literally stronger than both the child and Leah and that is quite a terrifying moment.”
Kellie mentioned football already. That is one thing that affects his mood but it could be anything…
Maeve: “He’s got this internal narrative that she’s taking the piss and she’s not contributing enough financially.
“Kellie was saying how money often comes into these things too when people are stretched from the point of view of money, how everything can become taut.
“The difference is when there is this pattern or this dynamic which has meant that there is an explosion of violence and in that situation men will be more strong.
“It’s a very, very scary situation so it’s just putting it out there and creating a drama where we’re so pleased for Leah.”
You mention a man’s strength there. I think the age of the boy is really key. If he was a lot younger, he wouldn’t really understand all of what was going on and if he was older, I’m sure he would react to the aggression but as an older child/ younger teenager, he understands it all too well but is powerless to protect his mother..
“Kellie: “That’s exactly what it is.
“And you think, ‘What is Liam going to become?’ Because he’s been conditioned.
“It’s such a delicate age around that time.
“Maeve and I were talking about that brilliant Louis Theroux documentary The Manosphere, how it’s so prevalent at the moment with social media and that kind of macho man thing.
“It couldn’t be more relevant to what we’re showing and what young boys are seeing and what they’re going to become.
“And all that b*****ks about being a man, just rubbish.
“We wanted to look into that.”
Maeve: “It is that thing of, what does it mean to be a man?
“And for some reason that whole manosphere thing has tapped into that sort of insecurity.
“It’s great to empower men but to empower men by putting down women is not great. It’s awful and it’s kind of scary.
“There’s been a silence around violence against women for decades and actually it’s been opened up as, ‘No, we’re not going on. We’re not yapping on, we’re not moaning on. This is something that has to be faced’.
“It’s really, really serious.
“If the government is saying there’s an epidemic, that’s pretty serious.
“But then on the other hand, this other issue is just festering under the surface and that documentary just made me think there’s all this going on underneath the surface that young boys and teenagers are watching and any kind of insecurity that they’re feeling, it’s feeding into.
“You see that stare that the young boy gives The Wolf when he comes in but he can’t do any more than that because he is still a boy.
“But there’s just that moment where they have that look and for me that look’s possession: The Wolf saying, ‘She’s mine’ and we sense that Liam doesn’t like him but he’s still a boy.”
The initial idea was a longer form and Leah making it to Belfast, would you like to explore the story further?
Kellie: “Yeah, absolutely.”
Maeve: “We’ll just have to wait but it’s starting well and it would be great if it was a little pilot for a BBC drama or short series or something like that and just sort of open those conversations really.”
Kellie: “We’ve got lots of material, that’s for sure.”
The Wolf premieres at Beeston Film Festival on Friday 24 April. For more information, click here.
It also screens at Fastnet Film Festival in Cork 20- 24 May. For more information, click here.
It also features alongside Maeve Murphy’s other films Siobhan and St Pancras Sunrise, all on the subject of violence against women, at La Femme International Film Festival in Budapest in June.
