Shane Slater
While films examining sexual assault against women have become more commonplace, few filmmakers have explored such violations against young men. Inspired by a novel, Amalie Næsby Fick’s debut feature What Lies Between Us follows a trio of mothers, as they navigate the fallout of a sexual assault involving their young sons. This gripping drama stars Sidse Babett Knudsen, in a brilliant performance as a domineering mother who pushes her son to follow in her tennis-playing footsteps and will stop at nothing to protect him. As the film made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Awards Radar sat with Fick and Knudsen to discuss the film’s resonant themes surrounding motherhood, friendship and the metaphorical power of competitive tennis.
Shane Slater: Films centering sexual assault usually center women. What inspired you to tell this story from the perspective of young boys?
Amalie Næsby Fick: Our film is based on a book, so the choice of letting it be three boys was already made in the book, and I thought that was a brilliant choice. It was different gender-wise than what we usually see. So that was also a part of of why I was attracted to this story.
SS: What were your first impressions of this character and how did you approach it? She makes some questionable decisions in the film.
Sidse Babett Knudsen: Well, the first interest is this a character that I would be interested in searching. Are there angles that I have never seen or done before? And there certainly was. I think it touched quite a few taboos. Taboos from motherhood that we rarely see, like how you can be disgusted by your own child. I thought it was really interesting, that whole journey from finding out your child is is a little monster. And you know you love him, so you try to keep on living in that same sort of relationship. But there’s this whole part of you, that there’s no space for disgust in motherhood. There is no space for that. So it sort of comes out in little ways. I thought that was really interesting.
Also, that focus on parenthood and motherhood. That sort of sacrificing yourself for your kid. I thought it was really interesting to see a self-obsessed person in that position, because she’s not a self-sacrificing person. You have to find out who is she protecting. Is it herself? Is it her image? How it reflects on her as a mother, and all these things. I thought it was a lovely, complex story that’s quite efficiently told.
SS: Working with young actors is already challenging and then you add this sensitive material. How did you approach casting and working with these young actors?
ANF: We had an open casting, and all three boys were actually in that group. So that was of course our luck, finding them that way. They are all brilliant actors. Actually, they are more actors than they are children. So it was nice to work with them and direct them. Of course, not in the same way as you do with grown professionals, but I think their level was quite high.
And we did a very thorough preparation with them in terms of a psychologist. Talking with the psychologist about the theme and talking with us about the theme and making a very distinguished line between the character and the person. So it was very important to keep talking about the character and learning that the characters are not you. Always third person when we’re directing, both for the the kid playing the victim, but also for the one playing the guilty party. So it was a huge gift for me to have such brilliant actors in the main roles.
SBK: I feel that once we got through talking about the subject carefully, once we were on set, at least the actor who plays my son, he wanted to go all the way. Like, he was definitely like any actor would be. Let’s go where it hurts, you know?
SS: The film also addresses friendships between women and how the dynamics can change. Could you touch on how you explored these characters and how they relate to each other?
ANF: I think you cannot comment on other people’s children. It’s kind of like a rule. So when a conflict between two very close friends is actually about the kids, then the conflict itself gets bigger. So, that was what also interests me with this story. What happens between the boys is of course a very big and problematic thing. But what actually makes this story and the conflict escalate is actually the conflict between the grown-ups trying to deal with this situation and also the system around it. So this is like snowballing. It’s getting worse and worse and worse because of how the conflict is handled.
SS: How did you approach the tennis subplot?
SBK: I like that the topic was dealt with in a sort of efficient or approachable storytelling. I thought the whole tennis theme was so interesting. I could use it for my character that she’s a player. She wants to win. That everything is a fight. That people who are on the other side of what she thinks is right are opponents, even when it happens to be a best friend. Instead of just having a lot of people sitting in rooms and crying and feeling and talking, there’s a lot of emotional action taking place on the tennis court. I like the fact that she bonds with her son around tennis. She fights him, she supports him, she punishes him. She finally sees his pain. All that happens on the tennis courts.
This is Amalie’s first feature film. But she’s done a lot of animation. She comes from animation and has done comedy. She has a very physical approach.
ANF: Yeah, it was wonderful to be able to put a lot of the emotions into aggression in the tennis. So yeah, it’s not people sitting in rooms or laying in bed, crying all the time, because that’s also how a film like this could play out.
In the scenes after, when the character finds out that her son is more involved than what she originally thought, they are out practicing tennis, and she keeps on pushing the machine to spit out the balls faster. For me, that’s a wonderful scene because there are almost no words, but it illustrates how she deals with it. She tries to not punish, but she kind of ends up punishing him. But she’s holding back. I think that’s what the tennis also gave us in terms of storytelling. We wanted to do a pretty fast-paced story, and putting the psychology into a thriller kind of film.
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]
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