After receiving wild international praise across a tour of more than 50 independent film festivals, esteemed director Craig Boreham’s latest film Lonesome is finally out in Australia.
The film is an unabashed exploration of gay life in our country and follows gay young man Casey (Josh Lavery) as he trades his stifling rural hometown for Sydney after an explosive controversy. Junkee spoke with Craig about the influences that inspired Lonesome, and how his own background shaped the film.
Actor Josh Lavery plays protagonist Casey in Lonesome.
From the graphic sex scenes to the movie’s energy and pacing, I thought Lonesome evoked the acid-independent filmmaking of the 1970’s and 80’s, particularly ‘Head On’ and ‘Midnight Cowboy’. Did these films influence how you made a contemporary film about queer masculinity, desire, and loneliness?
Dean Francis, the Director of Photography and I looked at a lot of stuff to build out our cinematic language. We were looking at stuff from classic Western films and the way they handled landscapes as well as queer cinema from the seventies, eighties, and nineties to bring in that kind of rich, almost camp colour palette. We wanted to create something that was sort of somewhere between naturalism and a little bit heightened in the world as well. We also looked at Italian neo-realist films and the way they shot in the streets on long lenses and had these kinda invisible camera crews and action was just happening and people would just react to it. So we sort of did a bit of that as well in, in the film, which I really love actually.
Lonesome is an especially sex-positive film, showing a wide gamut of different sexual experiences without judgement. What inspired you to do this?
I wanted to portray gay men having sex. Cause quite often, we pan away to a tree or we pull focus or something. We just don’t show the moments of character interplay that happen in sex. Even with a random Grindr hookup with a person that you probably don’t expect to have any kind of connection with, there is still some kind of minute connection or some little power play happening. I was pretty interested in exploring that and looking at the way sex is used, especially in gay male culture. Whether it be for intimacy or to relieve boredom, maybe to take out some anger, or whether it’s just transactional. All of this becomes a big part of the tone of the film.
‘Lonesome’ director Craig Boreham
The politics of directing sex scenes and the role of intimacy coordinators has been a big focus in heterosexual films recently but isn’t as spoken about with queer intimacy. There are some spectacular moments in Lonesome, how did you and the cast work to achieve these?
It was quite a process. We worked with Leah Pellinkhof, who was our intimacy coordinator. And yeah, it’s interesting that you say that because when she first came into the production, it became apparent that the process is very much geared towards heterosexual sex. So she kind of got it and was like, ‘Oh, we have to rearrange some stuff and do some things differently’. We did a big workshop to start with. That process is very much about making sure absolutely everybody knows what’s gonna be on screen and where they’re comfortable being touched. It’s a lot about consent and I think that process sounds like it’s very technical, but it really just frees people up, it stops those scenes from being awkward.
I have shot sex scenes prior to intimacy coordinators being a thing, and they were heaps more awkward. You know, it’s actually all the scenes that we shot in the store were actually really fun. And the actors love it. The actors loved working with Leah. They completely loved it.
If you had to pick one, what was your favourite sex scene to shot for Lonesome?
Uh.. [laughs]. The biggest one was, there’s a sort of intense dungeon scene later in the film that was quite a debacle to shoot just because there were so many people. It was a super fun day cause all of the cast in that scene, they’re just the most beautiful people you would ever meet. It was a lot of fun, but also quite a big day, there was a lot of mess.
After playing a single father in your first feature film, Teenage Kicks, you’ve brought Ian Roberts back for Lonesome. As an ex-NRL player and one of the only openly queer players in the code’s history, did the infamous incident of Manly players boycotting the rainbow round last year influence your decision to give him such a strong role in the film?
Yeah, yeah that was all happening around then. Look, I just love working with Ian. He’s a really great actor. We don’t often get to see him be a great actor, he often gets put in these sort of action-focused roles, but he’s really brilliant! I wrote the part with him in mind and just showed it to him and crossed my fingers. But he loved it! He was really into it. I think he liked playing this character that had real shades to him and he brought them out really beautifully.
Former Rugby League player Ian Roberts is one of the surprise highlights of Lonesome.
The ocean is a central theme in Lonesome, it’s also a place that queer academics and critics often cite as having a special meaning for the LGBTQI+ community in Australia due to how it’s been codified for straight bodies. What does the ocean mean to Casey?
For Casey, I think the ocean was just something that was just beyond his comprehension in a lot of ways. I thought I imposed upon the character that it was this big symbol of emotional turbulence. I love shooting in water. I really, really love what it does on the screen. Although my poor actors — I also love shooting in winter because the light’s really beautiful, so everyone ends up in freezing water at some point.
There are countless harrowing stories about LGBTQI+ people growing up in rural Australia. Did you channel these experiences in the movie? Where did Casey’s backstory come from?
Yeah, it’s a tricky one because I mean, it can be seen as a stereotype, but at the same time it’s still very real. My hometown where I was born was like a town of 200 people, and Josh [Laverty] had a very small-town upbringing which wasn’t fun or empowering for him. So it was quite brutal. So there was a lot of parallels within our own lives and this story world, you know, it’s, it’s way better than it used to be, of course. And at least people have ways to connect digitally with other queer people these days, which is something that didn’t happen in the past. But even that has a dark side too. When I first met Josh, he was doing a video piece about his experiences of talking to older gay men online when he was a really young teenager, who were getting him to do stuff on camera. But that was his only connection with the queer world at that point.
Your journey to become a director included attending UTS and AFTRS, a path that hundreds of aspiring Australian seeking to work in the film industry also pursue. Are you satisfied with the roadmap for emerging Australian creatives in this country?
I think going to UTS was actually really great. I went to university quite a bit later than most because I was very involved in queer activism. In Queensland at the time when I was young, it was still illegal to be gay. So I was involved in that decriminalization movement and stuff. I think filmmaking for me was about that. Like, it was about putting gay stories on screen, queer stories on screen, as well as activism and representation. Going to UTS was great. It was very eye-opening. It sort of gave me a really good strong way to look at the world of cinema and especially queer cinema, which I kind of focused on.
But I think really that the films that I make come from lived experience more than say going to film school necessarily. I feel like it’s more important that people go and have a life and think about what they wanna talk about. Because, you know, you can always learn how to use a camera. It’s not that tricky. [Laughs.]
Lonesome is playing across cinemas in Australia, you can find your nearest viewing here. Check out the trailer below.