'Sukkwan Island' director Vladimir de Fontenay and star Woody Norman stop by THR's studio in Park City and dish on their new film. Vladimir reveals the reason why he created this film and breaks down the moment he knew he had to cast Woody Norman.
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00:00We were late to set once. We were in the car going to set and a Céline Dion song in French
00:05started playing on the radio and he wouldn't leave until the song was over and it was like
00:08a four-minute song. It's terrible things to hear as a director, like your cast is just
00:14singing to Céline Dion in the car while you're waiting on set. Like QA? Yeah.
00:23The tragedy of this family really just moved me a lot and there was something about
00:30the way we try to constantly protect, bond with the family members and the idea that
00:40once you've destroyed something in your family, do you have a second chance to rebuild it?
00:46And that is something that I find very interesting and moving and also the idea of
00:53having a project together and in that case it's like going very far away from what you are and
00:59to try to sort of reconnect with something that's been broken is something that really moved me.
01:05Woody, why did you say yes to this movie?
01:07Just everything about Succo Island was amazing to me. The script, usually I'm like,
01:14how many pages are left? Can I stop? But I didn't want to stop reading. It really drew me in. I
01:21thought it was well balanced with the tragedy and the more lighthearted moments. I think it was
01:27just an amazing experience as well.
01:29It's funny, as I was writing the script, I just had this one belief which was like,
01:36the kid in the movie has to go through such hard emotion that I wanted a young actor who had
01:46a high level of experience, which isn't the case of young people so much. And I
01:56accidentally went to the theater to see, well not accidentally, but it was during COVID,
02:00and I went to see a screening in Paris of Come on, Come on by Mike Mills. And I was just blown
02:07away by Woody's performance, to be honest. I just thought he was just so vulnerable and young,
02:12but also just so mature. And I think at the time you were like 12?
02:15Younger. I was nine.
02:16He was nine. And then with Swan, he's also just, it is very hard not to have,
02:23feel empathy for him. There's something where you forgive him almost everything. And so I thought,
02:28because the part is so tough and the father is getting his son through such horrible things,
02:36it'd be interesting to have Swan. Well, I knew his work. In France, he's very famous.
02:41And then it just happened that I saw a screening of Anatomy of the Fall,
02:44but as I was going to ask him to play the part, and then as he said, yes, and then we had to
02:50push the shoot because he needed three months to get ready to prepare, to speak English language
02:58and everything, and to prepare for the part. Suddenly the whole sexy lawyer thing happened,
03:03and it was just really, really funny.
03:05From Come on, Come on, was there anything that was really hard?
03:08I think the hardest thing was working with Joaquin, because I respect him so much. I'm
03:12such a big fan of it. But he made it as easy as he could. And he made it really,
03:18really easy. But just sometimes it would be a bit threatening working with Joaquin Phoenix,
03:21because he's like so amazing at what he does. And I hadn't really worked before. I was like
03:27nine or 10. I've been working for like five years up to that point. I'd never really done
03:32a film that big. So it was just a lot of learning as well.