Filmmaker Fleur Fortuné says it was necessary to take Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Olsen, the cast of her thrilling debut feature The Assessment , into “a danger zone” for them to fully comprehend the implications involved in making a movie set in a dystopian future where couples have to grovel for permission to have a child.
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The film is an emotional minefield where people are harshly appraised by assessors to judge whether or not they would make suitable parents.
Fortuné says that she knew it was vital for her and the two actors to meet together before the shoot. “I wanted to put them at ease,” she says.
The Paris-based director had already conversed with Vikander. “When I met with Alicia, she was like, ‘This scares me a lot, but I really want to do it.’ That’s good, because I felt if she tells me that, it means that she wants to go in areas that she had never gone before. And that’s what I wanted. I didn’t want someone to feel safe. I wanted her to go into a danger zone,” she tells us.
The three women met at Fortune’s apartment and they discussed “topics that are very emotional,” and “I remember, the three of us, that first time, we were all crying.”
Here’s the rub: It’s impossible to reveal too much about this movie.
There’s a dynamic moment at the film’s core that will shake you because it can’t be unseen or unimagined.
Here’s what I can say about the movie that’s having its world premiere at TIFF today.
Vikander plays Virginia, a sort of Calvinistic Mary Poppins; stiff, upright, seemingly very proper in a starched white and stark black uniform. “Yes, but at the same time there’s a kind of Japanese cut to the look. I thought it would make it look quite strict, which is how she needs to look and be,” says Fortune.
We first meet Virginia as she enters the home of Mia (played by Olsen) an agricultural bio chemist scientist who has designed a mammoth greenhouse that contains the last samples of thousands of plants and vegetables that were saved before destructive natural forces doomed the planet.
Mia shares the home with Aaryan (played by Himesh Patel). Aaryan is an expert in AI and virtual software and can conjure up visions of anything you fancy, but they’re not real.
It is Virginia’s task to determine, over a period of seven days where she resides with them 24/7, whether this couple are of the right calibre to be given a child.
The means test is cruel in the extreme.
Virginia throws all manner of obstacles for them to solve, physically, practically and morally.
For years, Fortuné has shot videos for the likes of Pharrell Williams and his Chanel collection, and with Cate Blanchett for her campaigns with Giorgio Armani. And she has shot music videos with Drake and Travis Scott.
Her visual imagination is stunning.
Several years ago, Stephen Woolley, who runs Number 9 Films with Elizabeth Karlsen, was searching for a director to take on a script by John Donnelly and writing duo Nell Garfath Cox and Dave Thomas (aka Mrs. and Mr. Thomas).
A friend of Fortune’s heard about Woolley’s inquiries and suggested her.
“I’ve done IVF for many years, many years. I was trying to have a kid and in fact I was writing my own feature about this. So I was totally on top of the topic of the film. And I was already, in my videos, doing some kind of sci-fi. I was totally in this universe,“ she says.
She met with Woolley and they spoke for hours about family and about children. “And there were all these questions about, well, why do you want to have a kid and so on. It was fascinating because when you’ve been trying to have a kid for so many years, sometimes, you’re like wait: Why do you want that? Are you a suitable person? We are already having those conversations now,” she explains.
Fortuné says that on and off for five years, she worked with Mrs. and Mr. Thomas on the story. “We already had the structure of the story, but we had to bring the characters to life and also to set the tone of the film.”
The project took so long because Fortuné says it was “complicated” for her to explain to the writers the tone she was after. “It’s a mix of genres because it’s a dark comedy, but at the same time it’s a drama and there’s a bit of sci-fi.”
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But she wanted to ensure that the sci-fi element didn’t overwhelm the delicate story at the heart of the movie. “It’s about the story, and the character and the visual stuff. I wanted the sci-fi to be in the background, because sometimes when you see a sci-fi movie, like Minority Report , for instance, the sci-fi element becomes so present, so technical, so good, that you don’t care about the story.”
She says that she asked her designers and writers to get “rid” of “all the kind of Minority Report elements. I was like, no, no no!”
Fortuné also charged production designer Jan Houllevigue with giving Mia and Aaryan their own distinct space to reflect their disparate scientific interests.
“For Aaryan, imagine if AI is so advanced that it’s all in his mind, so the space he needs is minimal — it’s virtual. Whereas Mia’s character is the opposite. She’s so natural and grounded that she lives outside with the world. She swims, she likes old technology and she likes to repair her own stuff,” Fortuné says.
Seeing the movie in a theater on a big screen is essential for understanding why Fortuné was so insistent in her design choices.
What goes on in their spaces and in their home is mind-boggling and mind-tingling. For a while, I was beginning to understand what Pauline Kael meant when she wrote that some movies can leave you “giddy with excitement.” I’d add, like a child.
The Assessment arrives at a time when reproduction rights is a hot button issue. It seems incomprehensible, to me at least, that politicians, the church and the courts deem it proper to interfere with the most personal, intimate and private matters concerning a woman and her body.
Minnie Driver finds herself as a guest at Mia and Aaryan’s home. Her character Evie gives a two-minute monologue explaining how the world in the film has gotten into the state that it has.
Fortuné says that the Evie monologue was a tricky scene to get right.
“I think we rewrote that scene so many times because it’s very hard in the film when you need to give that piece of information, but you don’t want people to notice that you’re giving them information. She was brilliant to deliver that,” Fortuné says with a smile.
Early on in the movie, Vikander’s Virginia upends the household.
Both Fortune and Woolley have implored me not to disclose Virginia’s actions.
That’s tricky for a journalist. At the same time, it’s a fair request. I went in fresh, as it were, with not one iota of what the film was about. But as you immerse yourself in it, and human nature being what it is, you slowly begin to suspect what might happen and pray that it doesn’t.
Fortuné says that she spent time, individually, with each of the three leads to “hold their hands.”
They put so much into preparation, she says. “The character of Mia, she’s so real and grounded that she’s not like the other people in this planet because she so wants to be free. And I told Elizabeth that she needed to be so free to do this. I remember she was saying one time, ‘I’m walking around naked in my house.’ She was preparing so much to be free,” Fortuné says gleefully.
There was a “great creative energy” between Vikander, Olsen and Patel, says Fortune. “They loved to work together because they’re so different. They sparked ideas off of each other.”
When Fortuné was a child, her parents were always telling her, “‘Oh, she’s in her own world,’ because sometimes they would call me and I was not answering right away. And years later, when I did all those IVF tests, at some point my husband said, ‘I think you have some hearing problems.'”
Fortuné did some tests with a doctor, which she describes as being “right out of Sound of Metal .”
She says she was told by the physician that she has a “medium” hearing problem. “And so I discovered that I had a disease that also increased with the pregnancy hormones, which is weird. But then I discovered that it comes also with a creative side because I was more into my world because of it. And my parents never tested me maybe because I’m the last child they had. But the disease, I think, has helped me more in my world; it helps me create my world and my own sensibility,” she reasons.
“I spent many years trying to have a kid through IVF. I even tried adoption, and in the end, I got pregnant during the prep for this film. And then I had my baby, May, during the prep, and then she was on set when she was, like, 18 months. She was on set with me, and I had to have my own sort of assessment to ensure that would be okay,” she explains.
That’s why The Assessment is dedicated to Fortuné’s daughter May.
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