TERENCE DAVIES

Pure cinepoetry…

Aformer shipping clerk and accountant, Davies drew on his Catholic childhood for his acclaimed early shorts (later collected as The Terence Davies Trilogy) centred on his alter ego Robert Tucker. Personal history also fuelled his breakthrough features Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes, as he mixed fiction and veiled autobiography to explore his own sexual angst. “Being gay has ruined my life,” he once said. “I hate it.”

Idon’t know anybody in the industry,” says Davies. “When

I do see anyone famous, I never know what to say. I’ve got no small talk.” Schmoozing is not really his thing, then. But this outsider status perhaps explains why his films since 1995’s The Neon Bible – all literary adaps with the exception of 2016’s A Quiet Passion, itself a biopic of poet Emily Dickinson – are largely driven by characters who are socially or psychologically isolated.

Davies’ lingering style has won him as many admirers as detractors. Case in point: the (in)famous rug shot in The Long Day Closes. DoP Michael Coulter spends over a minute allowing audiences to soak up the emotions. “Some people were apoplectic with anger with that shot,” chuckles Davies.

While stars flock to work with him, Davies is often unaware of their fame. He’d never seen his House Of Mirth lead Gillian Anderson in The X Files. “I didn’t know what that was,” he says. “I don’t watch television.” He also hadn’t seen Sex And The City, for which his A Quiet Passion star Cynthia Nixon is best known. And he had no idea that Sunset Song’s Agyness Deyn was a model. “I don’t know about that side of popular culture.”

Ithink I’m in danger of becoming prolific!” laughs Davies, reflecting on how Sunset Song and A Quiet Passion were released a mere year apart. But he’s also experienced painful rejections and extensive gaps between films – notably 11 years between The House Of Mirth and The Deep Blue Sea.

If this suggests the struggles involved in funding his unique brand of cinema, it also proves that good things come to those who wait. JM