Taglines: Close your eyes and picture the perfect world.
Mouth to Mouth unfolds as Sherry, played rising star Ellen Page (Hard Candy, X-Men: The Last Stand) meets the radical street collective SPARK – Street People Armed with Radical Knowledge – while she is living on the streets of Europe. They introduce her to an amazing and radical life as they travel towards the vineyard compound that will be their home. Manipulation abounds and Sherry comes of age realizing that individuality has its costs.
A disillusioned young girl looking to carve her own path in life and live on her own terms hits the road with a volatile collection of radical revolutionaries in director Alison Murray’s uncompromising coming-of-age road film. Sherry (Ellen Page) is a teenage contradiction of sorts; she wants to be accepted but she doesn’t want to sacrifice her fierce individualism.
When Sherry meets up with SPARKS (Street People Armed with Radical Knowledge) and decides to join the curious group of counter-culture activists in their trek across Europe, it appears as if the idealistic young traveler has finally found a family who will accept her for who she really is. When the SPARKS group arrives in an abandoned Portuguese vineyard to set up their own private Shangri-la, though, their ultimate goal grows increasingly ominous as the heated rhetoric of group leader Harry begins to take a dangerous slant.
When a pair of deaths prompt the more weak-minded members of the group to pledge unwavering support, skeptical Sherry and questioning fellow SPARKS member Mad Ax begin to see the group for what it really is — a cleverly disguised recruitment tool designed specifically to promote dangerous leader Harry’s warped ideology.
Mouth to Mouth is a 2005 drama starring Ellen Page. The first feature film written and directed by Canadian-born Alison Murray, it won the Grand Chameleon award at the 2005 Brooklyn International Film Festival. It was shot on location in England, France, Germany and Portugal.
Director’s Statement
I left home when I was 15. The energy and vitality of youth is paramount to the film. Like me at that age, the film’s heroine Sherry is searching for a place to belong where she can still be herself. She thinks she has found this in SPARK – Street People Armed with Radical Knowledge. I tried to create an organisation I would want to join, SPARK was the result.
Harry, SPARK’s leader, says “Most organisations aimed at helping the homeless want you to fit back in, and contribute to society, like you should get off the street, into a house, into a 9 to 5 job… but maybe there’s another way.”
The down and out characters SPARK recruit are clever, witty and sardonic. I tried to show the tenacity of these people on the margins in an irreverent, humourous way. It is the apparently craziest street person, Mad Ax, who is the least taken in by SPARK’s rhetoric. He appreciates Sherry’s innocence, and falls in love with her. She rejects him, but inspires him to break out of his apathy. This strange relationship between Sherry and Mad Ax is my favorite thing in the film, a love story.
Sherry leaves the group after compromising what she believes in order to find acceptance. At the end of the film she stands up for what she knows is right, aware that she will go out into the world totally alone, but with her freedom and individuality intact. Others joined the group easily prepared to give their power away, in exchange for the security and sense of righteousness that being part of a group can bring. George Orwell’s Animal Farm was a classic inspiration for exploring this meeting point of politics and human nature.
Although SPARK helps some of its members, my own disillusionment with ‘alternative lifestyles’ is reflected in the story. In my teens I lived for several years in squatted buildings in London, teetering on the edge of homelessness. I met and was inspired by political activists who wanted to change the world. The let down was hard when I discovered so many of these people to be armchair anarchists whose daily lives were little different to anyone else’s. The utopia we were meant to be building never materialised. But at least there was a good party along the way.
I intend the film to look to the audience as the world looks to Sherry as she experiences it. As she travels from Northern to Southern Europe the dramatically changing landscape illustrates the mood. We experimented with how far we could push the limits of the HD blow up process from 16mm to 35, to create our unique look of saturated colours, sometimes blown out, sometimes shadowy. During the shoot, we often used very long master shots, which we grabbed just as the sun was about to set, rehearsing the shot again and again as we waited for the perfect light.
I used my background in dance and physical theatre to express the deeper emotions of the characters. Choreography is central to many films I admire, the fight choreography of Raging Bull, the soldiers in Claire Denis’ Beau Travail. I love the heightened and intense physical drama dance conveys, but I am often puzzled as to why the dancers are going through the angst their contorted bodies express so powerfully.
With Mouth to Mouth I was able to create choreography where the audience knows exactly why the characters move as they do, because they have spent the previous thirty minutes getting to know the characters’ stories. The choreography flows naturally from the characters’ interactions and does not reflect conventional dance styles. I tried to work with the unique physicality of the individual actors to create something believable yet heightened. I hope the overall style to be truthful, yet poetic. The moments where Sherry physically touches and is touched by the other characters speak the most. — Alison Murray
Mouth to Mouth (2006)
Directed by: Alison Murray
Starring: Ellen Page, Eric Thal, Natasha Wightman, August Diehl, Beatrice Brown, Elliot McCabe-Lokos, Diana Greenwood, Willy Rachow, Armin Dillenberger, Patrícia Guerreiro
Screenplay by: Alison Murray
Production Design by: Ulrika von Vegesack
Cinematography by: Barry Stone
Film Editing by: Christian Lonk
Costume Design by: Jemima Cotter
Art Direction by: Astrid Poeschke
Music by: Rowan Oliver
MPAA Rating: R for violence and brief language.
Distributed by: Artistic License Films
Release Date: May 19, 2006
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