Writer/ director Jamie O’Rourke told David Hennessy about his Oscar qualified short film CALF which deals with themes such as abuse within the family.
Jamie O’Rourke’s Oscar qualified and IFTA-winning CALF is a film about what is ‘under the surface’ of a seemingly normal family.
The film is set in the Irish countryside where the worst things can be silenced.
It tells the story of a sinister accident on a farm that leaves young Cáit with a terrible decision to make
The thought-provoking film has qualified to be considered for the 97th Academy Awards.
CALF deals with the theme of domestic abuse as well as shock, grief and trauma but while it poses tough questions, there are never easy answers when a family is in the grip of abuse.
It is an ordinary morning in the family home until her mother sends Cáit out to call her father for breakfast. When she goes outside, Cáit finds her father injured in a horrible farming accident.
Although shocked by what she found, she returns inside and says nothing of what has happened.
The film is brought to life by stirring performances from Isabelle Connolly as Cáit and Kate Nic Chonaonaigh (An Cailín Ciúin/The Quiet Girl) who plays her mother Áine.
Isabelle Connolly is a rising star in Irish and international cinema and has been tipped to follow in the footsteps of Saoirse Ronan and Eve Hewson.
The film’s title comes from a cow on the farm that is set to give birth. At the day’s outset, everyone in the family probably thought this was what they should be worried about.
We chatted to Jamie O’Rourke who is the Dublin-based writer and director of CALF. His first film, SCRAP, was nominated for an IFTA in 2022 and screened in competition at the 2023 Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival.
CALF was produced for Virgin Media Discovers in association with Screen Ireland by Carbonated Comet in association with Sugarloaf Films.
Where did the idea come from? What inspired you to make this film?
Jamie: “It came from very specific places.
“I worked on a documentary which the large- I was the editor on it, I wasn’t the producer or director, but the primary source was video interviews with women who had fled to domestic abuse shelters.
“I guess I said yes to the project because I studied psychology, and how trauma affects child development was something that was very interesting to me.
“I didn’t prepare myself well enough to hear these accounts because they were extremely harrowing.
“I didn’t realise the impact, how much it would leave it with me.
“Essentially that documentary is kind of where the seed of it started.
“CALF is an entirely fictional story.
“I think in that documentary, I became very aware of the statistics.
“There was a European wide study done where they looked at the numbers in each and in every country and they’re quite similar across the board but in Ireland specifically, one In four women will experience domestic abuse in one form or another within their lifetime.
“Those numbers are quite stark.
“Everybody knows somebody (affected) whether they choose to acknowledge it, whether it’s physical, emotional or mental abuse that they’ve witnessed.
“It was kind of 2018 when I started writing stuff around it but it was only maybe three or four years later that a script kind of came together, and I started looking to get it funded.”
So much of the film rest on the young shoulders of Isabelle Connolly who is excellent as Cáit…
“She’s incredible. Isabelle and Kate, I was so lucky both of those said yes.
“Everybody across the board on that film was just amazing.
“The more I do this, the more you realise how collaborative it is.
“We get to stand up and represent it as an individual but it’s such a collaborative thing.
“Isabelle, she’s just phenomenal. I think she’s a superstar in waiting.
“This is a film that really is just kind of on her.
“When I go to film festivals and screenings people come up to me afterwards, ‘Do you want us to talk about her action or inaction, whether we agree or disagree with it?’
“And that never actually entered my mind.
“For me it was always about how paralysing an abusive situations can be in terms of stunting their development, in terms of how they interact with the world.
“We learn so much from our parents, how they interact with the world on an interpersonal level, how they communicate.
“That was the thing that that last scene is really exploring, you have to dig deep to find hope. There’s a little bit but it’s tempered hope because that is a release. That’s a release of this circumstance, the circumstances coming to a close but the scars, the figurative, literal scars go on forever.
“People deal with it in different ways. Some people are better at dealing with it but it’s not something that just goes away.
“It’s something that leaves long lasting damage, and people almost have to figure out how to reconnect with the world when they come out of it.
“When kids come out of abusive households, they almost have to figure out how to actually deal with the world on every level.
“These things have to be almost relearned because you haven’t learned them in a proper fashion when you’re caught in that kind of paralysing trap of abuse.
“Those are the things that more percolated around in my mind when I was making it as opposed to the right and wrong of how she responded to it.
“I wanted the film to feel like it’s real time, she’s dealing with this in the moment as opposed to any sort of great sense of reflection looking back on this.
“It’s more how this person might be motivated in that moment.”
I get what you mean about real time, it is also just so every day as well. On one level, there is breakfast, the post man and no hint that something horrific or out of the ordinary is occurring close by..
“Another question I get often asked, is, what’s going on with the cow?
“It’s kind of a counter narrative.
“When we see the cow at first, it’s set up as an abnormal situation.
“And then we see the everyday family we go, ‘Oh, there’s just a normal family’.
“It’s a counter narrative, they flip.
“By the end of it, we realise that the family is totally abnormal and that this was totally a normal birthing.
“There’s other things at play.
“We understand Cáit takes a lot of responsibility for the family and that’s shown in her delivering the calf and protecting the mother and her brother.
“It’s kind of a hybrid in that it’s a drama but we set it up a little bit like it’s potentially a horror, potentially a sci-fi at the start.
“One of the things going around in my head is quite often in film, violence towards women is often casual and almost gratuitous in that it’s only there for violence’s sake.
“There’s no subtext or deeper level.
“It’s also distracting.
“A lot of people have said to me at the end of the film they were really surprised. They didn’t see it coming.
“And I kind of like that because I think it adds an emotional punch at the end.”
You say violence against women in film can be gratuitous, this is the very opposite. It is a film about abuse that doesn’t mention abuse once. Like in reality, it is not seen but under the surface…
“It’s absolutely beneath the surface.
“And it’s in these remote places.
“That was part of setting it on this farm in the middle of nowhere.
“I come from the country.
“I don’t have a farming background. I never worked a farm, I won’t pretend I did but that’s part of it.
“It’s trapped out in this remote, nowhere to go, ever expanding countryside.
“That is exactly it.
“It’s what’s unseen, what’s beneath the surface.
“When you hear about these situations and, actually, you bring me back to those accounts of those women that had fled to those shelters.
“For a long time, up until very recently, a lot of this was kept down under the surface, hidden behind closed doors: ‘You don’t tell people’. ‘You keep it behind closed doors’. ‘It’s not for other people to know our business’.
“And that is terrifying really when you think about how prevalent it is that it’s almost like a shame thing.
“Nobody in that situation should ever be ashamed of being in that situation.”
I think the remote location adds an element to the horror. It often does with any film that is set in the middle of nowhere. Think of Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes, they are scary because there is no help coming..
“Absolutely, it’s the isolation that traps.
“That was part of bringing in that environment.
“We’re showing this remote farm, that they’re on their own.
“I think it almost becomes a character in and of itself.
“It also helped us very much.
“We had an intense four day shoot so the fact that we were in a single location was extremely helpful for all of us to not just get through all of the stuff that we had to get through, which was a lot, but when you’re dealing with such sensitive subject matter, you want to give it that time.
“You don’t want to be insensitive to how people might be reacting to that.
“As I said, those numbers means everybody has some tangential link to somebody who’s suffered this at some point in their life.
“You don’t know how people are going to react and that’s part of our job as directors, producers, etc: To take that on board, be sensitive when you’re doing it.”
Regarding those survivors’ accounts, did you feel a sense of responsibility in spite of this being a fictional story?
“Yeah.
“Like you said there, I purposely didn’t show any abuse.
“I think that’s immaterial to what often victims go through, and whose story is it?
“Quite often we see the monster, and that’s one element of it, but I really wanted to focus on Cáit and Áine in this story, because, for me, it sometime gets confused about whose story is it?
“There’s almost a titillation around the perpetrator over the victim.
“We’ll be fascinated by these stories of serial killers or monsters because it’s ‘the other’ and quite ‘other’ is interesting simply because it is different to what we can comprehend.
“For me, it was really important that we did step away from that.
“We didn’t need to see that in order to create it in the mind. Everybody can imagine.
“That last scene, we show a little bit of potentially the past, as we see it on Áine and Cáit’s bodies, what potentially happened.
“That’s probably the only bit we see of that.
“I think they (Cáit and Áine) also represent two different worlds in a very reductive way.
“There’s an old Catholic repressed Ireland where it is that thing we talked about, ‘behind closed doors’, ‘keep everything behind closed doors’, say nothing’, ‘do not speak about it’.
“Then there’s this newer Ireland where we talk a lot more openly about things, about domestic abuse, about mental health and bringing these things out.
“Those two worlds are hugely different so that scene at the end between Cáit and Áine is super important for me.
“There’s no dialogue or whatever, but there’s a look shared between them.
“I’ve made a couple of films now and what seems to be repeating for me is that I’m not really one for these clear, unambiguous endings.
“It’s not really a happy, sad, clear, black and white ending.
“I think there’s hope in that ending.
“I think it’s deep veins of hope, you have to dig to find them. But I think it had to reflect real life.
“If you get away from this life, if you flee to a shelter and you finally get away from somebody who’s abusing you, it doesn’t suddenly just stop affecting you.
“Trauma affects people in so many different ways and has so many different impacts but it never just goes away, it’s an ongoing, continuous thing.
“That ending really reflects that for me.”
Once again I think credit goes to a young actress Isabelle Connolly who can communicate so much without saying anything..
“She’s just incredible.
“Our DOP (Director of Photography), Colm Hogan, said to me on the first day of shooting, maybe halfway through the day he just turned around to me and he goes, ‘You just believe everything she does, she’s just incredible’.
“Yeah, it’s just a real privilege to get to work with her.
“I think she’s on the verge of breaking out.
“I really do.”
You said people are talking about these things more. Is that at the intention of this film and the unclear ending, to start a conversation? Have you seen it starting profound discussions?
“Definitely, I think that’s been one of the most rewarding things.
“I’ve had people come up to me and you can obviously tell some people, when they approach, that maybe this has been part of their life or part of family members’.
“In those situations, you’re in a public place and there’s loads of people milling around so it’s never a really in depth conversation about potentially what that might be or anything like that.
“But you can tell and yeah, the conversations have started.
“It is something that should generate some discussion.”
I doubt you make a film, and particularly one about this subject, with awards in mind but to have qualified for Oscar consideration just shows how much it is resonating..
“I think those things are good on a number of levels.
“I think plaudits get put on a singular or couple of people whether it’s an actor or director or writer, whatever it is, but it’s so collaborative in the sense that you can’t make anything without this incredible team behind you, so those instances are a great way to acknowledge them in public and they should be acknowledged.
“They also do generate some interest around the film.
“I often get trapped in my little insular world of writing and stuff like that, so it is nice to take those moments to thank people, to enjoy it with them, things like IFTAs and conversations around Oscars- although that’s a massive long shot.
“CALF has been very lucky to go around the world, all these different festivals.
“I think it speaks to the universality of the theme.
“Those numbers in Ireland, they’re not dissimilar to any other country.”
CALF will screen 8.45pm Friday 15 November at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in the Friday Shorts Programme of Irish Film Festival London (13- 17 November, iftuk.com).
