Patrick (2019)

Dove wrote:He picks some of the oddest projects to be part of. Though nothing will top the tree one. :#lol#:

[size=150:w5tw8co5]How ‘Patrick’ Actors Saw Nudity as a Costume
Will Tizard July 5, 2019

Sometimes the more you look for something the less chance you have of finding it. “If you really want something you have to try to not want it so much,” says director Tim Mielants, describing how his character Patrick finally cracks the case of his missing favorite hammer.

The zen exercise doesn’t just work for the obsessive lead character in his debut feature of the same name. It was essentially what allowed the director to finally shoot the story that had preoccupied him since his youth in Belgium.

Interviewed by Variety film critic Peter Debruge, the helmer was speaking at the Variety Critics Corner series at the 54th Karlovy Vary film fest.

Mielants, a veteran director of small-screen series such as “Peaky Blinders” and “Legion,” says he was trying too hard to break into film for years before finally finding his way to the realization of “Patrick,” competing at Karlovy Vary for the Crystal Globe.

“I came to television just to put bread on the table,” he says, “and in a way in television, I failed my way up and that’s actually how it all turned out.”

The offbeat story, set in a nudist camp in the mid-80s, is not really about nudism, Mielants says. The germ of “Patrick” was planted in an experience the director had as a kid, he says.

“This idea is more than 30 years old. My parents took me to a nudist camp back in the 80s and what I saw there stayed with me ever since. It was managed by a mother and a son, and the mother was blind and she didn’t know that everyone was walking around naked. And there were like terrorist organizations operating from there.”

Convincing his actors, including Kiwi thesp Jemaine Clement (“What We Do in the Shadows,” “Legion”), to bare all proved easier than Mielants was expecting, he confesses.

“Actually I was worried about it but nobody said no to the project because they’d be naked. The other way around – Pierre Bokma, who is like the Marlon Brando of the Netherlands, said, ‘Well, Tim, I’m gonna do it because it’s naked. Otherwise I wouldn’t.’”

Despite the challenges in funding a story like “Patrick,” Mielants says, the idea just wouldn’t let him off the hook.

“It stayed with me for a long, long time. It never left me. And I was doing interviews with people who went there back in the day and I was collecting a lot of ideas.”

The nudity was an element in that world he couldn’t escape either, Mielants says, but recalls it as “always quite normal.”

“I felt I wouldn’t be truthful if not using the nudity because that was something that stood out and that was special about the mysterious atmosphere. The stories I saw there, the people, the characters that were kind of mysterious and special and bizarre. It just made and extreme, big impression on me.”

The cast got on the same page surprisingly quickly, the director says.

“I think all the actors felt it wasn’t about the nudity. It was trying to tell another story. Actually, we all considered it a costume drama. Costume dramas are actually never interesting because of the costumes.”

What’s at the core, really, is Patrick’s way of handling the loss of his father, Mielants says. “The story I wanted to tell is actually about grief.”

Patrick, in obsessing about finding his missing hammer, “is trying to avoid that pain,” the director says. “Sometimes during grief we start asking ourselves questions. What do we want to do in life? Where is this going? What am I doing? These deeper existential questions.”

As camp visitors ask Patrick similarly awkward questions (“Do you want to stay here forever?”), the socially awkward maintenance man “is going through these five stages of grief told by searching for his hammer.”

As he does, the bizarre quotient steadily escalates – as do the laughs. Without realizing it, says Mielants, he made “Patrick” as a “slow comedy.”

That’s how Clement described the script, using a term Mielants had never heard. “He said it’s comedy without punchlines.”

After mulling that explanation for a bit, the director says, he decided he was just fine with that description.

[url=depatrickfilm][/url] Tijd voor een personagevoorstelling! De rol van deze campinggast en zanger Dustin Apollo wordt gespeeld door Jemaine Clement. Je kent hem misschien van Flight of the Conchords?

[size=85:1xaem72o]Translation

Time for a character performance! The role of this campsite guest and singer Dustin Apollo is played by Jemaine Clement.You might know him from Flight of the Conchords?

Anti-Worlds acquires UK rights to tragicomedy ‘Patrick’ (exclusive)
BY GEOFFREY MACNAB7 NOVEMBER 2019

Anti-Worlds, the new UK distribution company launched earlier this year, has taken British rights to Tim Mielants’ Patrick, which is on Beta Cinema’s AFM slate.

The Belgian tragicomedy had its world premiere in competition at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, where Mielants, making his feature film debut after a successful TV directing career on shows including Peaky Blinders, was awarded best director.

Kevin Janssens stars in the film as the titular Patrick, a handyman on his father’s naturist campsite whose life is thrown off its axis after he loses his favourite hammer. Jemaine Clement, Pierre Bokma and Hannah Hoekstra co-star.

Patrick was produced by Bart Van Langendonck’s Savage Film, which was also behind Michael R Roskam’s Bullhead and Racer And The Jailbird. The film also won best film and director at Fantastic Fest in Austin and will be released theatrically in the UK in 2020.

Anti-Worlds was founded by producer Andy Starke of Rook Films together with exhibitor Jason Wood of Manchester arthouse venue HOME, publicist Zoe Flower, and Sam Dunn and John Morrissey of Powerhouse Films.

“Patrick is exactly the sort of film Anti-Worlds was born for: funny, provocative and poignant. We are incredibly pleased to be able to bring the film to UK cinemas in 2020,” said Starke.

“Anti-Worlds Distribution is a young filmmaker-driven company that believes in the collaborative process and wants to do films that are exciting and outside the ordinary. Patrick is certainly such a film and one that provides for a distinctive cinematic experience, but also one that needs the passion you can feel from Andy and his team,” Beta Cinema’s Thorsten Ritter commented.