IN CONVERSATION WITH MITZI PEIRONE

After its UK premiere at FrightFest 2024, Mitzi Peirone’s SAINT CLARE finally arrives on UK screens with a digital release. 

GORE IN THE STORE chatted with the writer/director to discuss how she got involved with the project, the film's historical and pop-culture influences and the stresses and rewards of making such an ambitious film on such a low budget.

GORE IN THE STORE - How did you get involved with SAINT CLARE?

MITZI PEIRONE - So the first draft came to me in 2020 but I was in Italy. I am a green card holder, but I wasn't at the time. I was on a visa, so during the pandemic, I was not allowed to be back in the United States, where I had lived for almost a decade. I was interested in the subject matter, but I did feel like work needed to be done on the draft. And then time went by, it came back to me through a new draft by Guinevere Turner at the end of 2021 and of course, I knew of her work. I love Brett Easton Ellis. He's one of my favorite authors, specifically THE SHARDS, I cannot wait to see the TV show adaptation of it! So anyway, seeing her name obviously made me very, very interested in her version of the script. At the time, after reading it, the project was still very much in an embryonic phase. They didn't have an actress attached, and they knew that Bella and I had been circling each other on some projects, and none of them had come to fruition yet, but I had spent time with Bella as a friend, as a fellow artist and collaborator, and I knew how her mind worked, and I knew what kind of project she wanted to tackle next. Having read the book, having read two drafts, knowing Bella well and knowing that Bella specifically wanted to work with me on this project, she did task me. She and the producers wanted me to put out a draft that could make the project really come together. And so I did that, and Bella was attached within three days of me sending her the script at the beginning of 2022 and my dear producer friend Arielle Elwes, who made my first film with me, was also attached to the project. So a lot of it felt like the perfect storm. So much can go wrong in the making of a film. It's like an equation, or a giant puzzle. You take a wrong turn and the whole thing falls apart. There's just so many elements, so many components, so many people. It really is all about teamwork. It is just this massive mosaic effort. And so having the right people in my circle that believed in me and knew that I was right for the job, really helped.

You mentioned Bella Thorne there, who still seems to have a bit of baggage as a teen star and a Disney actress in a certain audience's eyes. Was that something that you wanted to tackle here as well with that kind of image?

MP - I try not to look online, but I'm grasping that there was a bit of a discourse around her age in the film. She's not in high school. She's in college. And although it is based on a book called Clare At 16, Bella's 27! Also, if I had put them in high school, I would have put them in uniforms, because it would have just been more esthetically pleasing. They weren't in high school. They're college kids. You can tell they're college kids. They're grown. She says it to Bob when he tells her, “Oh, we're friends.” And she says,” No, you're decomposing, and I'm in college.” I literally put it verbally in exposition. So it's funny to me that people are saying why would she cast somebody that old to be in high school? I didn't, but I can't go and answer every question of every person online that has an opinion! 

So the angle for Bella, for me specifically, was the idea of creating a character that, first of all, has zero romantic ties to anyone. I wanted Bella to be almost dressed like she could not care less about being attractive in a traditional way. You see her in very tight blouses. You see her in clothing that isn't necessarily flirtatious or sexy. She does have a moment where she is somewhat in an entanglement with one of the guys, but to me, that moment is like the siren song in the Odyssey, like the earthly call of being human and mortal and normal and falling in love and having crushes in college. But then, that's the moment when she returns back to her mission after finding an essential clue at that party where she has that little bit of abandon. So I wanted to create a character that was a female anti-hero who was extremely solitary and extremely enamoured with her own psyche and with her own mission. Who took something traumatic and violent that happened to her as a kid and turned it into a vocation, that this is what she was put on Earth for. Of course, there's moral implications with what Clare does, but I do think that the ideal of trying to turn scars into gold, into weapons, in a way, keys into her or somebody else's salvation, I think it is a valuable message. I do think that Clare, unlike many, has that lost value of having moral integrity. And I feel like Clare does live by her rules till the very last minute. And she also dies by the wrong rules, not like actually dies, but definitely the violence that she imposes on others then comes back to haunt her.

As well as being a psychological thriller, there seems to be a bit of a teen movie vibe in there as well. Is that intentional, and what were your influences there?

MP - I think that that definitely came from the book. I think that in my attempt in writing the shooting draft, was to service what I thought was necessary to create a compelling character, because you can't just have somebody obsessed with killing people and not explain where they came from, what influenced them, how they got there, from a cultural standpoint, societal standpoint, personal standpoint, religious and so forth. So I wanted to create a background for her psyche at the same time. The book is a young adult novel, so I couldn't entirely swerve from that and not honour what the intellectual property was.

So are you more attracted to the horror genre? 

MP - I would say that I'm most attracted to psychological thrillers with complex characters and important themes.

The filming and the lighting in particular is quite striking in the film. I thought there was a giallo influence, particularly in some of the colors that you use.

MP - Absolutely! I'm glad you caught that, because being Italian, I saw DEEP RED (PROFONDO ROSSO) when I was very, very, very young. And I think that 70s Italian giallo definitely influenced the style, themes and tropes in SAINT CLARE for sure, down to the black gloves. We have our own version of it, and the female killer and the mystery that unravels in a small town. I feel like all of those elements are definitely giallo inspired. I’m glad you saw that.

I was also wondering what exactly influenced you, especially in regards to the film's darker subject matter?

MP - I was influenced by AUDITION, by Takashi Miike. I was influenced by this Italian Renaissance painter from the 1500’s named Artemisia Gentileschi. She was known as the female Caravaggio, and she went through a traumatic incident of her own, where she was sexually assaulted by her mentor, and ever since that moment, almost all of her paintings are violent paintings like Judith beheading Holofernes or themes from the Bible of Susana and the Elders, which I wouldn't even know where to place it in the Bible, but thanks to her, I know it's in there. There is clearly a moment where there's two older guys just harassing a young woman, etc. But that's to say obviously, what happens to us shapes us. And I feel like Artemisia and the main character in AUDITION and SAINT CLARE and Joan of Arc, I feel like those three are my pillars to make SAINT CLARE,  they all have this distrust in institutions, from a societal standpoint, they don't feel like there is a system in place to bring social justice when something wrong happens, and so they all feel like they have to take it into their own hands. And for Artemisia, the Renaissance female painter, her sword was her brush. She immortalized the moment of trauma and violence into perpetuity by painting what she painted.

As well as Bella Thorne, you have a particularly  impressive cast including Rebecca De Mornay, Frank Whalley and Ryan Philippe. How did it feel to work with them?

MP - I believe getting out of the actor's way is the best thing that I can do as a director. My method is to have a profound, honest heart to heart with the actor. Talk about everything that they are, that they understood, of the script, that they didn't understand, if anything. Talk about their character. Talk about what their background of the character could have been but I am also a big believer in trusting actors, and I think that the best gift that I can give them is to get out of their way once we're on set, and if they need me in any way I am there for them. But that's to say that all of them, despite being very different, brought such professionalism, such care, such craft, that they made my job almost non-existent.

What was your biggest challenge in making the film?

MP - We shot it in fifteen days. We were shooting nine pages a day. By comparison, BRAID, my first film, was twenty-five days. They say that six pages a day is how far you want to push it, and that inherently is supposed to feel like, Oh, you're shooting an independent film. You're shooting like a rough and rowdy, guerrilla style independent film. We were shooting on average, nine pages a day, having one company move a day at least, which always destabilizes everybody, because “Oh, where's the restroom? Where's craft services?” So just getting to a new location is a whole situation. You lose time. Every director wants all the time and all the resources in the world. Obviously if you love the story, if you love the film, if you love something, anything, you take care of it, even if the circumstances aren't ideal. And I believe that happened for SAINT CLARE. I think that it thrived because of the loving care that everybody poured into it, but the circumstances were definitely not ideal, because I personally think that rehearsal time is crucial. It's essential. If you don't get rehearsal time, every shot, every take is a gamble. So whilst it may sound exciting, it is also a huge risk. And if you fuck up a scene for any given reason, like, she got the wrong outfit on or because we're all rushing, and for whatever reason you cannot go back and reshoot that scene. So because we don't have time, you have to move to the next location. I don't know who said it, but a filmmaker did say you don't know what filmmaking is like. You don't know what directing a movie is like until you see the sun is going down. You’ve still got two scenes to do, and they both say exterior, interior, daytime, and the producers are looking at you, and they're tapping their wrist, saying “What's taking so long?” And so I do feel like I had a trial by fire through SAINT CLARE. I feel like a stronger director. Now I don't encourage anybody to shoot a film in 15 days. It just had to work out that way. I do feel like films have a will of their own, in a sense, and so despite the fact that I spent a good chunk of pre-production suppressing panic attacks, because the schedule looked insane, I eventually came to a moment of stillness, and I told myself, you would not be here if you weren't capable of doing this. Just delusional. But it got me through.

What's next for you?

MP - I did write two full feature screenplays since SAINT CLARE and a short film, with a musician that I really love from France. I am in development for a TV show, and I have a sci-fi and a murder mystery thriller. So that's the triptych that I have in my arsenal right now. We'll see what works.

Iain MacLeod

SAINT CLARE is available now On Digital from 101 Films