“I didn’t have a choice to abandon Lemonade”: Ioana Uricaru and the will to keep going in an inhospitable environment

By Theo Macdonald

Lemonade, directed and co-written by Ioana Uricaru, is an unsettling, deeply sad film about a Romanian immigrant trying to find a place in America for her and her son, but equally a dynamic and throat-grabbing piece of filmmaking. Uricaru does not give an easy way-in for privileged or non-immigrant audiences to relate to her protagonist, Mara: for example, there is no forbidden romance or serially abusive relationship that defines her in our Western terms as somebody to root for. She is a nurse and and is married to a man who is mediocre in most ways, except when he finds out about her (nonconsensual) contact with another man, and develops the frenzied, unempathetic personality of a serial killer, like most mediocre men do. Uricaru's portrayal of the experience of the 'Other' is closer to Fear Eats the Soul than The Shape of Water: that is to say, complex rather than juvenile, harsh rather than sugar coated, real rather than sanitised. It has in common with other Romanian New Wave films a sense of realism that is not merely a genre but a collective desire for order threatened by the gaze of authority. As a film that takes place in America, it directly challenges the capitalist ideal that stands as an example for the dysfunctional political system portrayed in New Romanian Cinema. Cristi Puiu’s Stuff & Dough, a film often credited as the beginning of the Romanian New Wave, starts with a kiosk owner who is short on Coca-Cola. In Lemonade, Mara finds herself in a land where the Coca-Cola never runs dry, but the question is what this fountain sustains. 

Ioana Uricaru has written and directed a segment of the omnibus Tales from the Golden Age, co-written the feature Outbound and Lemonade is her first feature as director. Following Lemonade’s premiere at Berlinale, Ioana and I discussed how originating from a Communist country, how Romanian films reinvented realism, the immigrant experience in America, perseverance as an independent writer-director, and the possibility of creating original work in the Hollywood system. (Spoiler alert: there is none.)

TM—To me a lot of the films of New Romanian Cinema seem like a reaction against American cinema. 

IU—That's interesting, how do you mean?

In the pacing, the editing style of allowing shots to last longer, a diegetic soundtrack, also in a sense with the themes that are treated in a realistic and ambiguous way rather than with black and white morality… Say how something like Police, Adjective could be read as a response to an American cop film with all the contrived dramatic elements replaced by the actual banalities of bureaucracy. 

Okay, yeah. I think it's true it is partly a reaction to the oversimplification of good and evil in American cinema. The nicely structured American mainstream films - with effective character arcs and plots that dutifully serve us the theme - are admirable in a way, but they feel just as faraway from Romanian reality as Communist propaganda did. Faraway in the opposite  - more desirable - direction I should say. 

This style you speak of is also a result of Communism. In New Romanian Cinema there is a resistance to manipulation, to the use of the medium to ‘convey a meaning’. Approved works during Marxism-Leninism were imbued with propaganda messages, and the contrarian works were also determined by the ideology they were trying to resist. Generally speaking, expression in pre-1989 Romania was conditioned by the very clear Marxist-Leninist teleological imperative: everything had to have a purpose, and the purpose was ideologically predetermined. In the New Romanian Cinema style there's a rejection of any ideological imperative and a project of discovering the world. It is hard to overestimate the oppressive nature of a system that imposes a strict meaning onto everything  - the very idea that the world, human behaviour and historical events might be something to discover and interpret at a personal, existential level instead of through the lens of ideology was a revolutionary one. So the idea that one can just let events unfold in front of the camera without "critical" intervention and let the spectator experience those events as they see fit stems, for me, from a rejection of ideological narratives and moulds. 

Do you think the qualities and similarities of New Romanian Cinema are the result of the collective experience of a group of filmmakers and the lifting of censorship for everyone? How about your own development as a filmmaker?

Well actually, after censorship in the 1990s most Romanian films almost became worse: very vehement theatre influences, characters who are saying things nobody would say in real life, allegorical, metaphorical, symbolistic films with lots of fog and trains. Also at some point Romanian filmmakers discovered you could curse on screen and man were they cursing, they were all like every other word…terrible to listen to. There were also experimenting with having sex on screen. In the wake of communism it was like let's do all these things we couldn't do before. It was probably a necessary experimentation, but not a very successful one.

This all changed with a movie called Stuff & Dough by Cristi Puiu, made in 2001. It was an absolutely amazing revelation at the time.  It felt extraordinarily real, and at the same time very meaningful. It's a story that happens almost in real time, it has the richness of detail that was to become one of the marks of Romanian cinema and it also has a deep layer of meaning that is almost scary and that you understand somehow by osmosis, without it being shoved in your face or screamed out loud. I watched it breathlessly and walked out energised. Most of the movie is just these guys in ta van, very contained and precise and just mind-blowing. I saw it with Cristian Mungiu, we used to go to the movies together, we watched it… We were both looking at each other like woah, you can do that?  

Watching films by Puiu, Mungiu and Porombuoiu, I discovered that's what I was looking for and I didn't know how to formulate it, so I think I am inevitably influenced by that and I think I probably emulated some of their style, not intentionally but just because I am really interested in some of their concepts like no soundtrack or very detailed attention to small things, and ambiguity. So in a way I was attracted to their films because it was exactly what I was looking for. I'm sure I borrowed some methods.

What about your other influences?

When I was very young I was very impressed with Kieslowski, not his more poetic films, the trilogy that was very successful in France, but the Decalogue really made a big impression on me and I haven't watched it in a very long time but I have memories and imaginings of it. Again this ambiguity, which of course in Decalogue is the theme of it, the ambiguity of what's good and what's bad, right and wrong, thematically that's a big influence on me.  In the US I admire Kelly Reichardt very much, she's wonderful. I loved Certain Women. 

Like Mara, you came from Romania to America. What were you first impressions of it?

I came to America to study at film school. On my first trip I visited the UCLA campus and felt the dynamic energy, full of possibility, and the innumerable options that I imagined those students had - something that was utterly lacking for me back home - and I thought about how the accident of my birth's location was the only thing that kept me from having this kind of education and life experience. That's also a testimony to the extraordinary marketing tool for the American Dream that are American universities.

In Lemonade, Mara is not so much idealistic about the American Dream as just trying to survive. To what degree would you say this film is post-American Dream in the sense of not challenging it, and more about survival with the acceptance of the concept not existing?

There's one moment in Lemonade where we're supposed to feel the possibilities of the American Dream, which is when she visits the open house. It's really not a very nice house, it's kind of pathetic, everybody has a small above-ground pool in their backyard, but that's a scene where I would like for people to feel, if I could live like this, it would be very nice.

In Q&As I get a lot of questions similar to what her husband asks after she tells him about being assaulted in the car: why doesn’t she just leave? Why stay in America since it sucks so much? I want to say that this is the mentality of a person who feels they have choices and can do whatever they want. And not everybody thinks like that because we didn't all grow up and experience the world in that way of personal freedom and always having options and not just having to take one route all the time. 

Mara's [American husband] cannot understand this point of view, that's where the connection breaks, he doesn't understand it doesn't work like that for her. It works like that for you, it doesn't work like that for me. There's always a breakdown at some point between male and female or people from different cultures, someone finds it hard to understand your experience. 

In a way it's also similar to when she puts cotton wool in her ears to block the draft of the air conditioning  - people think you must be some superstitious, backwards person who believes in witchcraft. Actually I grew up with that, my parents were telling me that as a child, don't stand there because there's a draft and you'll get sick. They'd put cotton in my ears, and if somebody laughs at that, it's like they're laughing at my parents but my parents aren't stupid, don't make fun of them! So there's also that visceral reaction when somebody from a different culture doesn’t understand you - yes I see why you would think it's a quaint superstition, but it is mine.

And one of Mara's colleagues ask her what does Dragos [her son]'s name means…

Because of course we're from this strange, exotic culture where all the names mean something. Dragos I chose because it's a very Romanian name and it's impossible for Americans to say. Like my name. It's impossible to say Ioana, but I refuse to change it or find an American equivalent. I knew this Romanian couple who emigrated to the US and had a little boy whose name was Dragos, and as soon as they moved they changed it to George. They thought Dragos wasn't gonna fly here, they didn't want kids to make fun of him. To me that was so sad, you just lost a part of yourself just like that. That's what happens. You have to give up a lot of things that are intimate and mean a lot to you because if you don't you're never going to make any progress in America.

A lot of people are saying the themes of immigrant struggle and sexual abuse by men in power are timely because of Trump and Weinstein… but weren't they timely before those symptoms of our society were exposed?

Well exactly. The real event that I based this story on, the part with the [sexually abusive] immigration agent, I think probably happened during Obama, or even earlier, during Bush. What it shows is things have been festering under the surface and they came to a head. This overlap is a coincidence but the things were always there.  It is slightly irritating now because people think, oh she made a movie about this thing in the news. But obviously that's a physical impossibility. 

Do you ever feel a pressure to be commercial or aware of reaching an audience?

That's a good question because I think it's important for the film to be made with an audience in mind in the sense that, for example, I'm gonna make another comparison with the immediate post-communist period: there was this feeling that film is a kind of art and you can just do whatever you want because you're an artist and it's like painting or music and you express yourself. And while that's true to a certain extent, at the same time 25 years ago I still wanted something to happens in movies, I wanted plot. I personally like plot. My favourite genre is murder mysteries and thrillers so I don't feel like that's a compromise or something I have to think about. If I'm able to write something that is interesting and things happen and it keeps you on your toes, I personally love that so I consider that to be part of my art, if I can be so conceited to say that. My favourite living filmmaker is Michael haneke and his movies are extraordinarily tense with suspense and I love that.

Do you think a lot of movies that premiere at festivals get a kind of arthouse label that denies that they can be genre, or thrillers, even though they are equally exciting, tense, or plot-driven?

I think a film can be arthouse and also be genre. I don't think that's a contradiction.

Like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.

That's a film that uses all the tools of thriller and mystery brilliantly and the arthouse label shouldn't mean it's boring. Maybe it's difficult for audiences to immediately respond to it because we're trained to watch movies in a different way but I am yet to encounter a person who has watched that movie and wasn't engrossed in it. It can be done.  

What I wish for my films, all I want for Lemonade, is that it's seen by as many people as possible. That's my only desire.

You mentioned you started writing the script for Lemonade then brought on a co-writer, Tatiana Ionascu. How did the process develop with the two of you writing it?

I started writing it… Oh my God it was a long process. My first treatment was selected for the Cinéfondation residence. That was the first time, 2009. It was just a story about a woman with a child who marries an American and moves to America, at the time it was more of a thriller thing, and then it changed a little bit and became more like it is now. It was kind of like the middle of what we have now. That was the version I went to Sundance labs with and the version we got the financing with. Then when were close to production I reread it with my producer Cristian [Mungiu] and we decided some things were just not developed enough, needed to have some more context. So then we rewrote together, so the name of that other co-writer is a name we use for both of us. It's our process.

A pseudonym?

It's our pseudonym.

Is that known?

It's not yet. Tatiana Ioanascu is the name of Cristian's grandmother because he says that he learned from her how to look at things from different perspectives and really turn it around and look at all the details.

Do you think that's how you have to approach a screenplay?

I think so. This script has at least four different versions, even an alternative without the child because I just wanted to see what happens if I take out the child, and I just wrote the whole thing again without the child, with other events, you know… You have to consider what if this happens, how does it look from that other perspective.

I think I'm right in saying from the conception of the original idea to Lemonade premiering here at Berlin, it took eight years. What were you doing in the meantime?

I did a short film that premiered in 2011 at Sundance. I was looking for a job, teaching, also

this film almost got made at some point and then it didn't and then it fell apart and I had to start all over again.

How do you keep the faith in that case?

I didn't really have a choice to abandon it or give up. It is very hard, especially when it looks like it's not going to happen. Also, in the meantime I got a job teaching filmmaking and screenwriting. 

Which do you prefer?

I prefer teaching screenwriting because I'm better at it. With the filmmaking students they go out and film their projects then they bring them back and you give them feedback and inevitably after they've shot there's only so much feedback you can give them. I feel like sometimes it's difficult for me to really tell them things in advance that will really help them make a better film. In screenwriting, I think I'm just very good at reading something and immediately being able to say what if you try this, what if you try that, you just see instant results, the loop is very small so you immediately see results. To learn filmmaking, they just have to go out and do things and make mistakes.

Do you think the script is a separate entity to the film in the sense it has to be created on its own?

Each filmmaker has their own process and there are great filmmakers who write two pages and go out and improvise, work with actors, rewrite all the time. But if you work in a relatively industrial setting like you have fifty people on set, it really helps if you have a script, and the crew know exactly what you’re doing, otherwise it can really throw things into a tailspin. With the actors I usually insist on them saying what's exactly on the page. 

Improvisation is not encouraged once the script is final?

Not for me. I think it helps to have an anchor and to really know you have something you're relying on.

Do you find you have to tell the actors that the dialogue and action have to be exact or is it something they just know?

I have many situations when actors, especially American or Canadians actors tell me but can I change this word, this comes to me more naturally, I don't understand why they're saying that. I usually insist you have to find a way to do it that feels right for you. Maybe you have to come up with something, maybe you need to find some backstory or emotional occupation, but I want you to try to say it the way it is…and I try and I try… I'm okay with taking out lines; I'm not okay with adding things. Sometimes when actors read you realise we understand the subtext of the lines from the way they're saying them and we can take out this other line cause it's too explanatory - we don't need it because we got it from the way they're performing. But I really resist adding things. 

You also mentioned in the Q & A it's harder to get funding for a drama film…

In the US. I meant in the US. I used ‘drama’ semi-ironically, because everything that doesn't have a genre that is about a character and things happen to the character and the character goes through a transformation…is called drama. if it's not a clear commercial genre then it's drama. It just means it has no marketable selling point. Unless you manage to get some name actors to be in it, it's definitely hard.

And you insisted on having a Romanian actress to play the lead in the face of Hollywood producers requesting a name?

In the first incarnation of this movie, the financier had some connections and got me to go to the big talent agencies in LA to talk about casting. They had put together these bound books with head shots to show me the proposed potential actress for the film. It was a surreal experience, I still have these books. We open it and it's like what do you think of him, we started with the husband. I'd say I didn't really imagine quite him like this, too old, too young, whatever, and the agent or executive or whatever, he had a permanent marker and he took and did a big X on the headshot.  And then he'd turn the page, what do you think of him? I’d say, umm, no, not what I had in mind. He crossed the face again. After he did this three times I started to feel really weird, because it was like voodoo, it was like black magic. I had to ask him, do you mind not doing that? And he got annoyed, like what, how dare she challenge the way I do things? In one of these sessions there were these proposals for Mara, like ethnic actresses, she's Spanish but she could be Romanian, close enough. One of them was Jennifer Lawrence. It was before Hunger Games, right after Winter's Bone. They said Jennifer can do anything: she can learn Romanian. Not to say Jennifer Lawrence could ever have been in my movie, but just the idea of it…

I imagine it's even harder as an outsider, even they're probably saying they want to tell your story…

They always say that. They say we want to tell personal stories…we want it to be connected to you. But actually it's a little bit more complicated. It's almost impossible to do anything different or bold in the Hollywood system because it doesn't work like that, it's not built for that, it's not built for experimentation or trying things out. it's a very brutal world and not for everybody.

It seems like when they have guaranteed models of success, why would they want to stray from them?

Yes exactly, it's industrial, it's for manufacturing.

After so many critically successful films, a lot of Romanian filmmakers must be getting phone calls from Hollywood.

Yes, all Romanian filmmakers have received offers and none of them want to go. There's something to say about working in Romania, having complete control over what you're doing, nobody asking you why are you doing this, why are you doing that, no pressure to cast this person or that person. Romania has excellent crews. There are definitely advantages.

Finally, the performance from Dragos [the child] is really, really good. So often with child actors you can tell that they're trying to imitate adult actors, or sometimes they're able to play themselves. But he's actually acting and still seems like a kid.

Well he's very good. What happens often is children start very young doing commercials or TV and they learn very quickly what adults want from them. But he hasn't done anything like that before, so he was very fresh and natural, and also wanted to do it. It has to be something they want to do in the same way they stay up all night playing video games. But at the same time he didn't think of it as a game, he was very aware it was work. He was punctual, knew his lines, hit his marks, and would do fifty takes.