SXSW 2024 Interview- Natatorium’s Helena Stefansdottir Talks Defying Gender Norms And Making Uncomfortable Movies Beautiful

Some movies hit you hard because, as bizarre or horrific as they might be, they ring true. There is a nugget of truth that forces you to acknowledge how scary the world can be. Helena Stefansdottir’s Natatorium, making its North American debut at SXSW, is one of those movies. She has such an adept touch when it comes to making the abnormal normal. This emerging star has a singular vision that comes through in her feature debut. She was kind enough to talk with me about Natatorium, the mechanics of some of her incredible scenes, her influences, and her writing of female characters.

Tracy Palmer- Thank you love your movie. Love it. I didn’t know exactly what to expect going into it, which made it even better. It’s an amazing movie. First thing. Tell me, how did this movie come about? Where did the idea come from?

Helena Stefansdottir– When I had, I had scripts of short films that I thought should be maybe a bigger movie when I was developing it. Looking further into it, I noticed it was about siblings who fall in love, like half-siblings who become attracted to each other. And then I suddenly saw this image of a family where everything is quite dysfunctional on the surface, but it’s a beautiful environment, and everybody wants to be happy and celebrate something and stuff like that. Yeah. And then somehow, gradually, I started to add characters, and yeah. And then I read the story about where the main character has this drowning addiction, and I just became so fascinated by it that I gave it to one of my characters. Then the grandmother came about and, little by little, like that.

TP- And the pool has such a prominent role, obviously. Where did you find that set?

HS- I just found that in a town in Iceland, Reykjavik, but of course, it’s dressed, you know, Yeah. The pool itself is all white and, you know, not at all like this. Yeah. So there’s dressing. So with black cloth inside the pool itself, and then we painted all the walls.

TP- It’s amazing. It’s like a black hole.

HS– But I think it’s always at the center, and the dresser was who created that, really. Because if you would have seen the pool at the real location, then it’s nothing like that. Yeah, like blue in the bottom and white walls.

TP- Amazing. And did you start out to make a deeply scary movie? Or did it just happen organically? Because it’s, I mean, on the surface, it’s a family drama, but it is very scary.

HS– Yeah, no, I think it just happened. It was not deliberate at all. But then when somebody told me, oh, you know what, Helena, this is a thriller. And then I realized, yeah, maybe this, and I was very happy with it. I was like, Yeah, that’s great. Let’s move further in that direction. I think, you know, like, family issues like that. They are quite scary. But we just get so used to them when we’re involved you don’t see it. Yeah, we don’t want to see it. Yeah.

TP- The characters, I find it very interesting that the three main characters are three women. And they
are all the ones that have all the power; they have the power to leave, and they have the power to fight and complain. The mother obviously has some powers of her own. And it’s the men who are vulnerable. I love that. Tell me. Was that just something that happened? Or is that something that you tried to ingrain in this story and maybe other stories?

HS– It comes kind of naturally for me to write female characters. I haven’t ever written a male character, not like a huge role. Because I don’t know, I don’t have the experience of being a man. So it just hasn’t been my thing. Somehow, it hasn’t occurred to me. But when I realized, when people started asking questions about the script, like, Why does the father not leave? Why doesn’t the boyfriend save the girl? People started to ask me questions that I think they would not ask if they were women. Like, where’s the father of the girl?

Nobody would ask that. Or why doesn’t the girl save the boyfriend? Then I started to find it extremely interesting as if it was reversing the roles that we are used to seeing in our daily lives, the gender roles. And I think I want to explore that more in my next project,

TP- Which is really interesting because they’re not the victims. It’s the men who are completely passive, and for whatever reason, they just give up all control to everybody around them. And it’s bizarre, but it works so well. And I think it’s more real, like in real life. Women are not just all running around being passive all the time.

HS– It’s just what is portrayed in film and literature and everywhere.

TP- So the goldfish, I feel like every scene with a fishbowl shot, I am captivated by them. And I feel like it’s a symbol for what’s going on in that pool in that house. Specifically, as the goldfish go along, things are very dire for the goldfish in the end. Was that intentional? Is that symbolism?

HS– Yeah, for me, the fishbowl is like, it’s the miniature of the house. It’s the claustrophobic
space where you can’t leave, and you can’t even breathe, and then you die somehow. Either
you’re within yourself, or you literally die. Yeah, so it was deliberate. Also, I had in the beginning, the fishbowl was clear, and then at the end, it’s very kind of dirty and green with a lot of vegetation, so there’s even less space for the fish. Yeah, so yeah, it was deliberate. And the three fish, of course, or I don’t know if you say they symbolize, they represent the three siblings of the house, you know?

TP- And that dinner party scene, it feels like the camerawork is predatory. Like it is stalking everybody.
around that table as they all talk around their issues. Tell me how you conceived that and if it was intentional to make us feel that way. I mean, we feel it emotionally as we’re watching the movie.

HS– Yeah, I, I actually had to fight for the shot that goes around in circles. But I really, really wanted it. So I didn’t give up. And my God, it was quite tricky, technically, to execute. But I am so pleased with it. It just works the way I wanted it to work, really.

TP- Oh, yeah. It’s very powerful. The other scene that really struck me was just before when the
brother and sister were blowing up balloons for this bizarre farce of a dinner party. And the
sounds are weird. The way the scene looks is weird. It’s funny. But it’s funny only because it’s just
so I don’t. It’s so macabre. It’s just so weird. Is that what you were going for? To make us
feel like something is very wrong here.

HS– Yes, I appreciate that. I’m glad you noticed because I had to be very firm on that in the editing room and in the sound studio. This is what I wanted, like the scene when they’re blowing their balloons is quite long. The shot is long. And I really wanted it to be long. And some people who came with to me to give me feedback. They were like, Oh, this is weird. It’s too long. And I was like, yes, it’s weird. I wanted that. Because when they’re blowing up the balloons for their mother, for me, portrays they’re trapped. They’re trapped, and when they breathe, they just have to breathe into a balloon that somehow they’re not free. And I felt that the symbolism of blowing into the balloon was really strong.

And actually, that idea came from script doctors. Why don’t you have them blow into balloons? That’s very powerful in this context. Yeah. Yeah. Love that. Yeah. Yeah. And then the sound, I mean, we tried a lot of stuff. This was what I wanted in the beginning. And then we tried a lot of stuff. We came back to this. And also, the father is, so he doesn’t know what to do with himself, and I wanted that feeling to come out is like, you know, he’s in total embarrassment, or doesn’t know what to do with himself.

TP- He just sort of bumbles around and looks uncomfortable, and, like, it’s just weird. He sometimes even looks a little bit scared, but he doesn’t do anything about it. He just kind of shuffles around. It’s very cool. So tell me about your influences. And, like what gets you excited as a filmmaker?

HS– It’s mainly people. You know, I’m very fascinated by weird behavior and something that we
find weird, but not in a negative way. But, like, when people were doing some behavior or
physical movement or way of talking that is uncomfortable for normal people, you know, the normal society rules. I’m very inspired by that. And everything that’s like a syndrome, or dysfunctional behavior or something. Sounds very weird. Yeah, I’m fascinated by that. And I read a lot about that kind of dysfunction and syndromes and deviant human behavior, really, both fiction and also research, and I know a lot about different things like that. So I’m very inspired by that. I think that’s my main inspiration. But then, of course, I’m also inspired by some filmmakers who are working in that direction. Work a lot of movement and physical expression. Yeah, I think that’s it, basically.

TP- Which filmmakers do you like? We were talking about movement and stuff specifically. Who comes to mind?

HS– Well, on top of my list is Maya Deren. She was 100 years ago in the Avant Garde Movement in New York. She worked a lot with dancers. And when I was doing my master’s degree, I studied her really thoroughly. She was a filmmaker, dancer, and actress. So she’s on top of the list for me, and I always go back to her work and analyze how she moves, moves her world within the frame, and uses her facial expressions. And that’s also weird. Like it’s abstract or surreal, so it’s surrealism, of course, as we added from she’s, maybe crawling on a beach and then she’s crawling on a dinner table and to kind of have you seen any of her work? I love her work.

TP- Actually, I have.

HS– In modern times, I’m very fond of Lars von Trier. He has this way of making ugly things and things that are hard to experience for us in life, like losing a child or being abused or being a victim of violence, and in a perfect way, he can put it in a beautiful frame. Melancholia, for instance. His film about depression, oh my, it’s like, I think he’s a genius. So, I can mention Lanthimos’ early work because everybody knows who he is. His work, like Dogtooth, for instance, is about this weird family. But there’s nothing that I mean. I can’t relate to the behavior of those people. But there’s still some truth in it and some beauty that touches me.

TP- One more question. The grandma seems to have a very specific religion in mind. Did you have an entire idea, like built in your mind what it is that she is doing? Because it’s just so weird, but it’s so very specific to her. And it’s not like regular? You know, it isn’t anything that we’ve seen before?

HS- Right? In the script, I had in mind that she would have her own religion. Yeah, it could be a mixture of many religions or rituals or whatever. But I really wanted to leave it to the actress to finalize her own. And that’s what she did when she came in. She got her total freedom to make it hers. And then, she started to pick things from different religions and make them hers.

So it comes really from the inside of the actress. And I think that’s why it works. Because when I was writing the script, I always said, oh, this is such a cliche, and the only way to make it truthful and believable for the audience was to have the actress create it from within her. And that’s how we did it. So, she considers her character an angel. She says I’m an angel. And she’s the Savior.

Natatorium made its North American debut at SXSW 2024. Find all our SXSW coverage here.