In recent years, there have been many entries into the "Rich Person" party genre of films. There have been Triangle of Sadness-es to White Loti. What many of these films attempt is to make nuanced stories and characters of the ultra wealthy, show personalities through common insecurities. However "Two Neighbors" completely goes against this notion - trying to flatten its characters into one dimensional narrative chess-pieces. This is partly due to its story being an adaptation of the Aesop's fable "The Parable of the Envious Neighbour" and partly also due to its inspiration from modern-day meme culture that transfers the parable into modern day. Ralph Ineson plays a mischievous Genie (Jupiter in the original Roman text) that is hired by a rich family to set up a "make a wish" scheme for the upper classes, which naturally in the form of the fable leads to messages on greed and status in modern America.
It's an adaptation of an Aesop fable, right? I was wondering what prompted you to turn that into a film.
Ondine Viñao:
In general, in my work prior to this film, I like to in different ways adapt more archaic texts: myths, parables - stuff like that. Obviously something like a fable is only a few sentences long, so it leaves a lot of room for interpretation. But this Aesop fable also lended itself very clearly to a film if not for any other reason then it's one of the few about people - even if you were to change it to humans it can be a little bit more complicated with like the fox and the hare. Second, it felt very relevant to things that I was thinking about and noticing in myself and culture generally: envy and greed and the kind of self-destructive nature of both of those.
Would you say that the characters are archetypes?
Ondine Viñao:
Yes, 100%. Intentionally.
How would you say it works when writing or performing a flat kind of character?
Ivy Freeman-Attwood:
Yeah, it's sort of interesting because usually you would try to look for an arc in somebody. I think that in the case of Michelle though, she transformed kind of unwillingly rather than as a person because as a result of the Genie's influence on her - we sort of saw her begin uptight and closed off and then become kind of this ideal of a woman, which is what the film is about.
But it's sort of interesting operating in the same space and we really wanted to push - there's this kind of fundamental in humanity that people don't really change at their core and that's not true in so many stories, people have these giant transformations. It's kind of interesting maybe looking at the reality of people more.
Ondine Viñao:
And from my perspective at least, the archetypes calcify over the course of the film. They lean further into their most base instincts. I don't want to say narcissism ultimately as the umbrella of a lot of what ties these traits together and that's also not meant to be like a judgment because at least part of my intention with the film was to kind of set the stage for what sort of culture or what value system creates those kinds of people.
So when writing it with my co-writer and I trying to keep in mind ultimately what each person is, the big bad CEO, what does the big bad CEO do? what does the hot girl do? what does the nerdy girl do? Obviously making it predictable without trying to make these characters overly stagnant, which is kind of the second layer of archetypes.
We started with the fable and we then kind of pulled from the internet for how do we put this in a contemporary context. Very early on, the idea of Stacey and Becky as a kind of parallel to average as an envious occurred to me. Stacey being the greedy one, Becky being the envious one, and then kind of building out who are the other kind of characters who exist in this world. There's like the Chad alpha male, there's Sebastian's character who the internet would call the Virgin, there's different names for him.
And with the two main characters, they're very different just from the get-go - but there's also a lot of costume and just their environment differences.
Ondine Viñao:
This is definitely the place we were working from, how to visually show, the yin and the yang between Stacey and the Peterson Estate, and Becky and her apartment in New York City in the beginning of the film. Kind of sounds can make this as a oppressive, if you're a broke person in New York you might relate to how there's constantly police sirens outside or the ACs constantly broken. You can find a cockroach if you try to move anything versus you the birds in the Peterson estate being like the main sort of diegetic sound that We wanted to emphasize when we first switch.
But still trying doing these little things to tie the girls together whether it's the fact that they're both listening to the same meditation app in respective bedrooms when we first meet them. And then ultimately, I'm not sure if... you're aware of the Stacey and Becky meme that is the inspiration for these characters. That stick figure drawing from 4Chan was the initial visual inspiration as well. So that's why the girls wear what they wear in the final scene. It's helpful then because you have the point of reference. Stacey is pink, is blonde. Now how do we build that into her room, into her costume for the film and likewise with Becky.
Ivy Freeman-Attwood:
Yeah, I think when we were developing it and brought our heads of department on board, it was important that it was very like show-not-tell with the whole film and also with Ondine's background coming from video art. So it was something that we encouraged massively that the departments very much overlapped and costumed what production design to watch with a DAP to kind of where does the light go and what colors they're wearing - and because I think it's something that subconscious especially as women you see and think about every day, you notice a shoe or you notice a bag so having things that the audience could kind of absorb in that way.
I think was massively important to kind of the underlying message of the film and then especially at the end and I won't spoil it but what happens I think it's a big visual signal there as well and I think the message like punches in a way because of it.
The magical elements in the film, they kind of start realistic with eating fake glass or something like that and then they go, like you said, into this almost psychedelic like video art at the end. Was that intentional?
Ondine Viñao:
It was my hope, if anything, with this film maybe to engage a certain kind of audience that might not otherwise be interested in engaging with like an indie art house film. The bad way to put it would be like I was trying to trick the audience into like getting on board for this like normie teeny bop movie: you've seen these people on Netflix or HBO or whatever - and bright colours and it's glossy and it has a kind of commercial look down to the colour grade, but then start to introduce stranger and stranger elements.
Ivy Freeman-Attwood:
And also just to add as well, I think then looking back at the Genie, you then wonder: were they real or was it magical? You can look back on a second watch and then wonder what he was doing this whole time. So I think that was an interesting thing for it to unfold as well.