ABOUT RAY directed by Gaby Dellal, written by Nikole Beckwith from a story by Dellal, with Elle Fanning, Naomi Watts and Susan Sarandon. An eOne release. 87 minutes.
About Ray director Gaby Dellal and her co-star have one thing in common. They’re both seriously under the weather as they talk about the film. Dellal is suffering from a debilitating migraine, and Susan Sarandon has come down with something close to pneumonia, thanks to, as she puts it, swallowing nearly the entire desert while attending the Burning Man festival.
But though they’re both enthusiastic about the story of a teenager (Elle Fanning) desperate to transition from female to male, their ideas about what the film is about are very different.
Clad in a close-fitting slate-grey dress and sipping ginger tea, Sarandon expresses – in full paragraphs – her pleasure at being part a film that sheds light on the transgender exper-ience.
“When I talk to people who express fear about trans people, I always tell them to think about having more crayons in the box,” she says in a raspy voice. “We used to have only five primary colours now we have so many more. Sure, there’s masculine and feminism extremes, but there’s so many more possibilities in between.”
Dellal sees the film in another way, focusing on the relationships among the family members: Ray, his conflicted mother (Naomi Watts) and his lesbian grandmother (Sarandon).
“I was interested in three generations of women, and then I came across a great big macho guy who told me his daughter had announced that he wanted to become his son.”
As a passionate storyteller, she went on the research trail, visiting LGBT centres to get more information.
“But I didn’t make the film because I wanted to give this community a voice. I come at it from a mother-daughter perspective. It’s really about the modern-day challenges of a mother and her daughter [sic], the different dramas we have to face. As a parent, all I want is for my kid to be happy, and I was interested in how you have to adapt.
“I was quite emphatic that I was not making an issue film. I wanted to make a family film in which thecharacter that transforms them and all of us is the youngest one. I believed it was not going to be known as a transgender film, because in my world three years ago no one was talking about that issue.
But – and Dellal does acknowledge this – people are talking about it now, especially Sarandon. Throughout our interview, she keeps coming back to the trans theme, dismayed that so many people, including the character she plays, confuse gender with sexuality.
“My line as the lesbian grandmother is, ‘Why can’t she just be a lesbian?’ and, of course, that’s not the same thing. I just hope the film opens up an important discussion,” she says.
When I tell her that Dellal doesn’t have the same intention, calling it a film about family, Sarandon rolls her eyes.
“Really? It’s called About Ray, isn’t it?”
Gaby Dellal on why the family elements interests her:
Dellal on working with women:
Read our review of About Ray here.
susanc@nowtoronto | @susangcole
