American director Jane Spencer seems to have something of a fascination with struggling writers.
She is probably best known for the 1992 Sundance Award-nominated film Little Noises, starring Tatum O'Neal, Rik Mayall and Crispin Glover, in which a struggling writer steals the work of a friend to achieve success.
In South of Hope Street, which is in pre-production and she is promoting at Cannes, she has turned her attention to the aspirations of an Arab refugee writer who is forced to work as a janitor in a fictitious, European-style country in an unspecified future.
The movie – which stars Michael Madsen, a frequent collaborator of Spencer and Quentin Tarantino, and Tunisian actor Dhaffer L’Abidine – blurs the lines between sci-fi, romance and political commentary.
“The film is set in a highly structured future country,” says Spencer. “It’s kind of inspired by Switzerland, as that’s where I live, so there are lots of clocks and a big bank – though it’s not intended as Switzerland, per se.
“The female lead notices one day that there are two planets in the sky one day, instead of just one moon, and wonders if anyone else has noticed, but the people are too scared of the unstructured and unknown to even acknowledge it.”
One person who does notice is the janitor (L’Abidine) and a plaid-wearing mountain dweller-turned-revolutionary (Madsen) who hands out flowers as a means of spreading his ideology – with an agenda of his own.
L'Abidine, a former professional football player in Tunisia who became an actor after hanging up his boots and moving to the United Kingdom with little command of the English language, has since starred in TV shows including Law and Order: UK, Dream Team and Transporter: The Series, a spin-off from the action-movie franchise. He has also appeared in movies, including Mark of Cain, The Da Vinci Code and Sex and the City 2.
“I’d seen Dhaffer around and seen his face in different things and thought he was interesting, but I guess it was coincidence,” says Spencer.
“I was chatting to a friend of mine, who’s a writer, on Facebook about the film and he just said: ‘Have you ever thought about making this janitor an Arab refugee?’ And it was interesting because I wanted this idea of someone who was a poet and a writer and a very forward-thinking person who’s stuck with this reputation, and it made sense with the whole perception of Arab refugees in Europe right now – the terrorist thing and so on.”
From there, everything fell into place.
“My friend’s brother happened to work for [Abu Dhabi and Egypt-based film distributor] MAD Solutions, so he put me in touch with them, and with Dhaffer.
“We had some meetings at Cannes last year and at Berlin, too. I spoke with Dhaffer a lot on Skype and he seemed interested in the same things about the script as me. He liked the character, a janitor who’s also a writer, who sees the truth of what’s going on – and as the sky gets stranger, what’s going on underneath it gets stranger and more fascistic.
“I wanted to present a different view of an Arab character to the usual that’s coming out currently and I’m confident he’ll be wonderful for it. I love what he’s been telling me about his thoughts for the character.”
The movie is in the final stages of pre-production, with distribution already in place for Middle Eastern markets through co-producer MAD Solutions.
Shooting is due to begin early next year, with American actress Tanna Frederick also lined up to star.
cnewbould@thenational.ae