Parental guidance
THE ROADS NOT TAKEN I Sally Potter delivers her most personal film yet…
All stories are close to me if I’ve written them,” argues Sally Potter. “I’ve lived with them already for years. And all stories come out of personal experience one way or another.” Indeed, the British director of Orlando, The Tango Lesson and The Party has always made a point of drawing from her own emotional reservoirs, although her latest film, The Roads Not Taken, takes it even further.
It follows a day in the life of Leo (Javier Bardem), who suffers from frontotemporal dementia, and his beleaguered daughter Molly (Elle Fanning). The inspiration came from “some very difficult personal experiences”, says Potter, “with several people that I loved, including my own brother”. Her late younger sibling Nic Potter, former bass player with band Van der Graaf Generator, suffered from Pick’s disease, a rare form of dementia.
Potter, who cared for her brother before he died in 2013, stresses the film is not autobiographical. “It’s not a portrait of my brother. The character Javier plays is totally different. But what stayed true was what I learned through the experience of being with someone in an extreme mental state, and losing some of their capacities… how they’re treated, what the facts are, what it’s like being with them, what it’s like to feel such tenderness, and love for somebody when they’re suffering.”
As much as it is a father-daughter tale, as Molly tries to care for her ailing parent in modern-day New York, The Roads Not Taken also delves into philosophical conundrums, as a near-catatonic Leo imagines alternate parallel lives, including his time on a Greek island as a writer. “People can interpret it how the hell they like – what makes sense for them,” shrugs Potter, regarding this somewhat divisive structural device.
Potter also wanted to deal with masculine vulnerability. “I learned that through my own brother, who was a very vulnerable individual. I witnessed it first hand,” she says. “I remember somebody once saying to me, ‘Men are afraid of being laughed at. Women are afraid of being killed.’ But it’s a real fear, the fear of humiliation and rejection.” JM
ETA | 11 SEPTEMBER / THE ROADS NOT TAKEN OPENS THIS AUTUMN.