Alena Lodkina’s Petrol
Interviewed by Gemma Hassall (they/she)
Naarm
Alena Lodkina (she/her) is a Russian-born Australian who is quickly becoming rising star of filmmaking. Petrol (2022), Lodkina’s second feature film as writer and director, premiered at Locarno Film Festival and later screened at the 52nd edition of New Directors/New Films presented by the Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Centre in New York. The film has a distinctive, voyeuristic quality, derived from its contemporary Australian setting and characters - Naarm’s inner-city artists and students. Defying genre, the film evokes a Lynchian-esque, dreamlike state, rare to see in contemporary indie Australian films. After viewing the premiere at Carlton’s Nova Cinema, a setting right within the film’s locale, Gemma Hassall (they/she) spoke to Lodkina about the creative choices of writing, shooting and directing Petrol.
Alena, Petrol is your second feature following Strange Colours, I’m just wondering is there a particular theme your work relates to, or that you’re drawn to?
I think that, they (Strange Colours and Petrol) are very different films with a similar tone. I think I’m interested in investigating the struggle of individuals in the modern world. I guess, trying to find a place in society and how the anxiety and pressure of modern life relates to the characters’ inner lives and inner worlds. I think I’m interested in inner realities as well; the inner worlds of people and I also think that there’s a kind of desire to express the longing to connect with others and the difficulty and fraught nature of that.
I think that’s definitely something Petrol spoke to me about, is that feeling of loneliness and isolation, but also being in tune with the world at the same time.
Yeah, I think it’s about the struggle of connection and the difficulty of it. It’s a difficult thing in life.
There’s a voyeuristic quality to the film, and how we observe especially with the slow zoom effect, reminded me of Hitchcock. I’m wondering what inspired this?
I appreciate the Hitchcock reference, I like the feeling of tension in those genre films, and whilst Petrol isn’t a genre film in itself, I wanted it to have that tension rounded in the protagonist’s quest to understand the reality around her and the tension around it. It’s tense, and because she is an outsider and she’s trying to belong to this new world that she discovers in the film, I think that sense of looking and being looked at, felt very pertinent to the story. Because so much of it is about her imagination and how she perceives things through looking. So much of Mia and Eva’s relationship was really about looks and appearances. So much of Eva’s fascination with Mia is based on appearance and clothes, how things appear and I think that voyeurism felt appropriate, and also in a world that is so based on images and the way that we perceive each other through images and appearance. So, the use of zoom and spying, being captivated by someone else, its very cinematic.
It's such an aesthetic film too, watching it was like a meal as in it was easy to consume visually, but the combination with the sparse dialogue worked so well together. What was the writing process like for the film?
Well, I developed the script over a number of years, I’m quite slow and it took time. Even though the ideas were quite strong to start off with and sustained throughout the writing, I think the story changed a lot with the creation of the characters, and the narrative arc I was able to shape through spending time with the characters. A lot of the texture of the film came through observation, I kept notebooks throughout the process of writing the script, I took diary style notes of my own experiences, conversations I had with friends, observations about the world or what I was reading, and some of it made it into the film. And I found that quite a rewarding way of working because I often talk about the collage-like nature of creating a script. I like thinking of a script like a collage.
I feel like a lot of the dialogue felt quite poetic, but then you have the realistic scenes with Eva with her parents that feels very relatable. How did you come to find a median between the surrealist aspects of the film and the realistic?
When the idea of the film was about how we remember reality and the everyday reality. The style was to combine this naturalistic observational style with a kind of magical realist creative elements, but I wanted it all to be level and create a world where it was normal, dreamlike episodes blended in with really banal things. So, I think that I tried to make it all the same. Sometimes in films there’s a distinct difference, like “now we’re in dreamland,” and I didn’t want to do that because the thing about dreaming is that your dreams are ordinary, and they are about everyday life.
I think it’s very in tune to the dreams we have, or that feeling of not being able to place something, that feeling of de-ja-vu. Something being slightly unsettling.
You know that feeling when you were younger, and you thought something had happened, but you’d dreamt it instead. But I think as an adult that happens less.
In terms of your career trajectory, what’re some goals or hope for your future, any projects in the works?
I’m in early stages of developing a new film.
In terms of where your work is now, do you think it’s changed from when you first started writing?
I think it has actually. I try not to have a single pre-existing thesis. I want to discover the themes through the process of working. The thing with Petrol is about embracing the unknown and being open to the unknown. And that, to me, that’s important to my conception of art and being an artist and making works of art and being open to the unknown. Trying to be open, and letting things come to me. There are filmmakers I really admire like Claire Denis, who’s always trying something new, who stay open to ideas.
If you had any piece of advice for young filmmakers starting out, in terms of what they should be open to, what would that be?
Holding on to your own intuition. We’re all different, we believe in different things, that’s the beauty of life. And I think often there’s pressure to conform to different standards, that can be the hard thing about the film industry. It’s not easy to commit to your own intuition, but I think it’s very important.
