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| Sugar Rot Photo: Fantasia International Film Festival |
“Originally I was just playing around with the idea of Juno meets the Fly,” says Becca Kozak, getting comfortable in an easy chair as the others perch on the couch. “This was a decade ago. It started as a short script.”
She’s talking about Sugar Rot, recently screened at Fantasia, which tells the story of Candy, a young woman who is assaulted and subsequently starts turning into ice cream. Smelling and tasting delicious, Candy finds herself treated – even by people who claim to love her – like something to be consumed. The actor who plays her, Chloë MacLeod, is also with us for the interview, as is co-producer and production designer Heather McDonald.
Becca tells me that she never felt unsure about her ability to to pull off the special effects on which the film depends, not least because almost every bit of bodily disintegration we see in the film is depicted using sweets.
“It almost makes it a bit easier because the gore doesn't need to be as realistic because it's ice cream,” she says.
“Yeah, like imagination,” says Chloë.
Becca laughs. “But it still manages to gross people out somehow.”
“Yeah, I have some friends that couldn't even look at the icing,” says Chloë. “Which is fair enough.”
“We used real cake icing,” says Heather. “I think that really helps everyone get into the sensation. Smelling the vanilla on set really like made everyone feel like there was ice cream, and added a vibe on set that was essential.”
“I felt like uncomfortable, too, with all this icing on me,” says Chloë. “I was freezing, I was sticky.”
“You were such a trooper,” Becca tells her admiringly.
Chloë beams. “But it worked. It worked, it worked.”
“I’m so grateful for this actress,” says Becca. “It was so cool seeing Chloë perform as well. “We didn't realise what a genius actress she was.”
The presence of all that ice cream also solved other problems.
“I wasn't hungry on set. I was constantly eating icing and candy, every day,” says Chloë.
It must be difficult to know how pitch a rape scene in the context of something to watch. it’s necessary to the plot and, I venture, not too distressing to watch because it has that edge of camp to it.
“Yeah. It's not like we made Irreversible,” says Becca.
“It works for the story too,” says Chloë. “Of course it's terrible, but this character's like ‘Eh, it's just another day being Candy.’”
A similar approach is taken to Candy’s dealings with a doctor who reveals his character early on, whilst conducting a gynaecological examination, with the line “Stop screaming. This doesn’t hurt.”
“Absolutely, yeah,” says Becca. “That’s one of my favorite scenes in the film, the jelly bean clitoris part. That is one that I've heard is especially disturbing. For me, I think it perfectly encapsulates the vibe of the film. I mean I don't find anything offensive or disturbing in it. With the film, I only really get grossed out by the hair in the shower drain.”
“Oh, she could not look at it on set!” Chloë remembers.
“We collected all the hair from the ten person crew,” Becca explains. “We collected hair from the combs of everyone and then mixed it with icing and then I was gagging. We got one of the guys who used to be a plumber to put it in the drain.”
There was a lot of creativity on set, she explains.
“Heather always had great ideas for how to do things cheaply. I couldn't have done it without her.”
“I think really everyone just wanted to facilitate,” says Heather. “Becca had such a strong vision and we all just wanted to facilitate that into a reality.”
“Yeah, you were super focused and headstrong through it,” Chloë tells Becca.
“I felt very comfortable directing because it's very clear to me what I want,” Becca says.
“I think the political stuff almost found its way into the script subconsciously. I know they literally say the word ‘feminism,’ but it's just because I am a feminist. Basically in all my short films, all my fiction work, that feminist or female subtext works its way in, and I don't really have to think about it. It just happens.
“It definitely got some strong reactions on Letterboxd, but they're more keyboard warrior types than to say anything to my face, you know. And I was in a confrontational mood.
“The strange thing about the film is I actually didn't mean to freak anyone. I was just making art. So it's funny because people seem to assume I would take walkouts as a compliment, but I'm just a sensitive artist like anyone else, that's for sure.”
We talk about the distinctive look of the film.
“I'm a visual artist as well,” Becca points out. “You probably noticed, in the apartment, a lot of paintings. There's a certain colour palette I always work with, and that's the same sort of palette we were using when we were painting on Candy.”
“I was so lucky to have so many pieces of art that Becca had made to put into the film, so there's so many layers of Becca in the project,” says Heather.
For Candy to stay alive when everyone literally wants a piece of her required a sort of superpower.
“We had to pick and choose where there would be blood,” Becca says. “At the beginning of the film, she slices her hand and her blood gets in the ice. That was to set everyone up for the way the gore effects would look.
“She goes in the ice cream store and she rubs ice cream back. She can re-form by either ingesting or putting on ice cream.”
This feeds into a theme of dependency which we also see reflected in Candy’s addict boyfriend.
“Even Chloë's character starts trying to chug vodka,” Becca notes. “I think a lot of my personal struggles come in through the film. I have a little bit of a drinking problem. I also have body image issues. It just comes through in the film, whether I want it to or not. There’s the idea that when everyone's calling Candy fat, is that society or even our own minds, the way that we distort things? Some people don't understand it. They think the film is just being mean, but really, it's like the voice in our heads and from society.”
“I did a lot of work for this character,” says Chloë. “I had to make a lot of her backstory up because we only started from a certain part of her life and we didn't really get the context. I wanted to try to create, in my mind, this world that Candy is used to and lived in, and how she grew up to be this. Whether that's being an only child, her parents struggles with her, or her struggles with herself. There were just so many layers that helped me be able to progress the character better.”
Candy’s troubled relatioonship with her mother provides something meatier to work with.
“Yeah, exactly. That was also a fun scene to film because the actor who played my mom, she's such a good actor. It was fun to work with her.”
Getting into Fantasia still wasn’t something they expected.
“It was quite a surprise,” says Becca. “I mean, I know the film is pretty damn good. Watching it last night, I was like, ‘Wow. The mix, all these complex layers of narrative!’ You actually have to pay attention because there's some substance there. I think people see that, and then they also see the entertaining side of it.”
“I think it's confusing for some people,” says Chloë. “It's like, ‘I feel uncomfortable watching this, but I'm enjoying it.’”
“And for men as well, because I underestimate how easy it is for men to get turned on,” says Becca. “They get just a few shots of Chloë and then they see something disgusting as well, and so I think their boners get confused.”
Chloë also had another film at the festival, with a role in Ava Maria Safai's high school-set fable about migration, identity and capitalism, Foreigner. “A very different film,” she observes, but she’s good in both – part of a new generation of talent which one hopes will not melt away anytime soon.
