British director Richard Hunter’s debut film, Foul Evil Deeds [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Richard Hunter
scheda film], is not explicit about what qualifies as an evil deed. World-premiering at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, in the Cineasti del Presente competition, the movie keeps us at a distance and employs a mix of static and home-video aesthetics to ask important moral questions.

Cineuropa: The stories in Foul Evil Deeds are unified by the camera’s distant perspective. Can we talk about the role of the camera? Who’s looking?
Richard Hunter: The camera was definitely something I considered right at the start, as well as its voyeuristic perspective. An obvious answer would be: the audience is the one who’s looking. It’s us – everyone is kind of looking in on these people’s lives, essentially.

You mentioned voyeurism. Why was that interesting to you with regard to this particular film?
It naturally relates to this story because it’s focusing on the human condition and behaviour. It felt like the mix of the framing and camera movement – or lack thereof – gives it that sort of vignette or tableau style. Also, there is the home-movie aesthetic. That combination felt right to tell the morality tale, whether it’s good or bad in the end. It’s that distance that allows you to observe in the first place.

Does that relate to your background in documentary film?
I think there are some elements of that, but mostly, it relates back to the question of the camera. Shooting on mini DV evokes a certain era that relates to home movies; it feels personal and familial. The film then acquires a nostalgic aesthetic. So, when you take that aesthetic and ground it in a much more photographic way, it does two things at once.

Regarding nostalgia, how do you situate Foul Evil Deeds in time?
I see it as a contemporary piece, but adding that “old” aesthetic in, again, makes for a nice contrast. I wanted to capture people on their phones and how we interact with one another these days, without it being heavy-handed. Perhaps a little bit like a documentary that is capturing the era, so that in ten years’ time, you can look back and be like, “Oh, wow. Remember when we were on our phones?” We have a natural love of the past: we want to look at old cars and old buildings, but I think it's important to remember that what we’re living through right now will one day be something we look back on.

There are some quite short sequences and cutaways. Can you walk us through the process of cutting them up and arranging them?
I always envisioned the film having a fragmented style. That was because I wanted to be able to play with time, and to keep people paying attention and never really knowing where they are, which is why I use the black gaps as a device to signal an ending. We shot each story to completion, though. Then, I worked closely with my editor [Matthew J Brady], who’s amazing and has such an incredible grasp of the film. I wanted to see what they would bring to it, but there was – it’s hard to explain – just a natural rhythm that evolved.

Did you discuss the fact that the film would be relinquishing control to the audience?
The goal was to avoid saying what I think is good or bad, or pointing a finger. But in terms of the relationship to the audience, yes, that is deliberate: by giving them this information, I’m giving them some context to both the human that is behind the event and their life. So hopefully, as the film unfolds, you’re finding out more information as you go along. Rather than getting it through exposition, you’re getting it through piecing these fragments together yourself. So, by the time you get to the event in question, you’d have all of the information you need to make sense of how you personally feel about it.

Since this is a film about the human condition, do you think it says something about Britishness, too?
I would hope so! But what’s interesting about the film is that you could take it as an exercise and give it to anyone, anywhere in the world, and push the same subjects. However, what you would get coming through would be the culture of where it’s set. Foul Evil Deeds might be saying something about Britishness as a whole, or the culture of Britain, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what that is. Maybe the repressed nature of what it is to be British, and the dark, dry comedic sensibilities?