Luis De Filippis is over 'super serious' trans films — she's ready to have some fun

Rising Stars is a monthly column by Radheyan Simonpillai profiling a new generation of Canadian screen stars making their mark in front of and behind the camera.

Luis De Filippis does not want you to take her movie Something You Said Last Night too seriously. 

"The film is not a drama," the writer and director says pointedly. "I think sometimes it's marketed or talked about as a drama because it's about a trans woman and her family. People automatically go, 'Oh, this is a serious thing.'"

But De Filippis explains that her debut feature about a family vacation, which opens this Friday, is in many ways a comedy. I mean, it's not National Lampoon — but the withering side-eyes and needling commentary, traded by the film's huffy Italian family as they're pitted into awkward confrontations up in cottage country, are genuinely and at times painfully funny.

"There are silly moments in it," De Filippis continues, speaking to CBC Arts over Zoom. "There are funny moments in it. There are stupid moments in it. I just want people to have fun when they watch it."

De Filippis, who won a Sundance Special Jury Prize five years ago for her affectionate short film For Nonna Anna, says she's over "super seriousness." She's done with anything that feels like a downer after the endurance test that has been the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, during a conversation that she keeps joyfully breezy, De Filippis explains she's simply in the mood for good dumb fun.

"I'm really excited for Barbie because of how stupid it looks," she adds, name-dropping the big summer movie putting dolls on screens just a couple weeks after hers brings "the dolls" out to play.

De Filippis is speaking to me from her apartment in Toronto's Little Portugal. I can't help but be drawn to the décor in the background, so much of it looking transplanted from a Montmartre home from the 1920s. There's a winter green secretary desk with elaborate floral patterning behind her, sitting below a painting of a poodle in a thick wood-carved antique frame. And then there's the clothesline running across the narrow corridor. De Filippis says she was going to put the hanging underwear and sheets away before our interview but thought why not keep them on display since it totally goes with her aesthetic, which she labels "grandma chic." 

I'm constantly reminded throughout our conversation of the way De Filippis channels different generations of women — not just in her apartment's décor, but also in her filmmaking. Both For Nonna Anna and Something You Said Last Night are about women finding common ground across generations. When I ask what motivated her to become a filmmaker, she talks about coming from a family of storytellers. She doesn't mean professionally — she's talking about just listening to how her family tells stories.

"When you have, like, six Italian women sitting around a table gossiping every morning, that's storytelling in its own way," says De Filippis. She was that child at her grandparent's house, refusing to go off to play because she'd much rather listen to them spill tea with their friends. "'I'm gonna sit at this table and have some espresso with you, and listen to these stories about what's going on in your life because it's so interesting.'"

The matriarchs in De Filippis' life loom large over her breakout short For Nonna Anna, which follows a young trans woman named Chris (Maya Henry) caring for her elderly grandmother, the titular Nonna Anna (Jacqueline Tarne). The film was partly inspired by the experience of De Filippis' mother when caring for the filmmaker's great-grandmother. Her mother described to De Filippis the effort to maintain a sense of dignity when helping the elderly woman during bathtime.

The film is also a love letter to De Filippis' own grandmother, whose apartment was used as the set. "[She] always loved me and supported me and never made me feel weird or shamed me for dressing or expressing myself in a certain way in her house," she says.

De Filippis credits For Nonna Anna as the film in which she found her filmmaking perspective. The throughline between the earlier work and Something You Said Last Night is not only the generational plot and De Filippis' "fierce female gaze," as she described it to IndieWire, but also the fact that it's simply about a trans woman's relationship to her family, rather than the burden of defending her truth to herself or others.

"She's just a sister, daughter, granddaughter," says De Filippis. "It's not about her transitioning. It's not about anyone fucking up her name or pronouns. All those conversations have already been had."

De Filippis describes Something You Said Last Night as a movie made "for the dolls by the dolls." Through mentorship programs and community callouts, the crew ended up being somewhere between 30 to 40 per cent trans. That meant that its lead, incredible newcomer Carmen Madonia — who De Filippis says just intrinsically grasped the role — could trust that the people doing her makeup, costume and more would also be trans.

On the surface, Something You Said Last Night moves along without any explosive drama. The movie is filled with scenes where Madonia's Ren and her family tiptoe around each other — as most families do — at the dinner table or in parking lots or at the beach. But every small moment and interaction is evocative, thanks to how De Filippis registers minute temperature shifts in atmosphere and performance.

"I think being trans — just like being any marginalized person — you can be in a room full of people and you're going to pick up on things differently," De Filippis explains. "That's what's happening for Ren. And we as the audience are experiencing it with her regardless of being trans or not. We're doing that through sound design and through the composition of the frame."

Another thing that stands out in De Filippis' compositions is the way she deploys mirrors. Part of it is just practical ("We didn't have a lot of space; mirrors are just a great way to cheat and have more shots," she says). But she also uses them as a narrative device — especially as it relates to telling trans stories.

"Most of the time when we see a trans character looking at themselves in a mirror, it's because either they aren't happy with how they look or they've gotten to the point where it's an empowering moment," says De Filippis. "Which is fine. It's a trope; it's not necessarily a damaging one. For Ren, a lot of the times when she's looking at herself in the mirror, it's neither a good thing or a bad thing. It's just like, a breath."

De Filippis talks me through some of the mirror scenes in Something You Said Last Night where she deconstructs that trope. There's the moment when Ren catches her reflection after an awkward moment at the beach; while we brace for some dramatic moment, she simply takes a bite out of her popsicle and moves on. "That's kind of the way that I think a lot of the dolls move through their lives," says De Filippis. "You come back from an uncomfortable interaction and you're just like, 'Well, that happened.'"

In another more elaborate moment, Ren checks out her fit in a revealing two-piece bathing suit in the mirror before her sister in a one-piece does the same. We see Ren watching from the kitchen in the mirror's reflection as her sister uncomfortably scrutinizes her own body before throwing a t-shirt on top. "That flips the whole notion that trans women are not comfortable in their body," De Filippis explains. "The most confident people I know are trans women. They're the ones who show up at the beach and put on the skimpiest outfits. They're like, 'I don't care. This is my body and I'm not ashamed of it. I know I look hot. You can't touch me.'"

The film, and perhaps that attitude, resonated with Julia Fox, who has since signed on as an executive producer on Something You Said Last Night, lending the film some clout before it opens in the U.S. Fox will also be hosting a Q and A and an onstage conversation with De Filippis at the TIFF Bell Lightbox this weekend. (If you're not familiar with Fox's work, go check out the spicy and fab Italian-American's breakout role in Uncut Gems opposite Adam Sandler, and witness the way the fashion icon has captivated us pop culture stans on the runway and social media.) 

"She's not trans, but in some way she is an honorary doll," says De Filippis. "She conducts herself as a doll. She moves through the world with this 'I don't give a fuck' attitude.'"

De Filippis says that attitude is a must to get things done. It's the way she approached making Something You Said Last Night and how she deals with the film industry as a whole, blazing past all the no's a marginalized voice regularly hears and demanding a yes instead.

"We've deemed this energy 'cutting through energy,'" says De Filippis — "just cutting through the shit."

Something You Said Last Night opens in select theatres July 7.