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| Duchess |
Opening in UK cinemas this weekend, Duchess is Neil Marshall’s latest collaboration with Charlotte Kirk, a revenge thriller in which she plays Scarlett, a pickpocket turned gangster’s moll who is out to avenge her man, discovering a violent streak of her own in the process. it’s a typically entertaining actioner from the Dog Soldiers director, and when we met for a chat about it recently, I told him that it felt to me like a classic East End legend.
“I suppose that was kind of the intention, to create something like that,” he says. “The germ of the idea came about over sushi in 2018. I remember that one. I was having sushi with Charlotte, and we thought about what if we could make a female Scarface? Both being big fans of that film. And then it grew from there into this character of Scarlett and her being the kind of East End pickpocket who then falls in love with the crime boss and so on. So it's great. It was a journey. It was a process, from 2018 to shooting it in 2022.
“The first draft was set in the ‘States. I think she was an English girl who lived in LA and met this guys, and it was to do with the cartels in Mexico. And then for the second draft, I just had a complete rethink of, like, ‘Well, I've seen that before. I've seen drugs. I've seen Mexican gangs, all that kind of stuff.’ It was like, ‘Okay, let's not do that. Let's do something completely fresh.’
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| Duchess |
“I was looking for an excuse to go back to South Africa to film there because I love it so much down there. And was when I thought, ‘Well, what about the diamond trade?’ Because I've not seen a lot of films about the diamond trade and diamond smuggling, other than Blood Diamond. I thought that was pretty cool, so it developed from there, and then we ended up filming it in Tenerife.”
The desert where one scene is filmed reminded me of his previous film The Lair, but he tells me that that was filmed in quarries near Budapest, whereas this was right next to the airport in Tenerife. There was a predictable problem as a result. “Every few minutes, there was a plane flying overhead.
“We went to scout Tenerife and the one problem we had with it wasn't finding the locations, because there's loads of beautiful houses and a bit of desert and streets and all the various bits and pieces. It's not a huge island. But part of the reason to go there was for the sunshine. And then when we were meant to do the big arrival scene in Tenerife, when it was meant to beautiful sunshine, it was overcast that day, which was just so infuriating. But it doesn't really show when you're watching the film, and we did a little bit of visual trickery. You get a couple of shots of blue sky.”
The film opens with a classic noir shot, with a scantily-clad Scarlett posed beside a window, lit by neon light from outside.
“When I wrote that, I was thinking of Lauren Bacall and films from the Thirties and things like that,” he says. “Like, how can we do that but in a contemporary setting? So we just mimicked the style.”
I tell him I like the fact that we see her losing fights early on quite a bit. The film is more interesting because we know she’s not guaranteed to win, and also it seems important to establish that she can take a punch.
“Yeah, I think so,” he says. “We added in that strand of her doing boxing to make it a bit more grounded. She's in an East End gym. It gives us a sense that, okay, she can take a punch and she can throw one if need be, but she's not like some specially trained expert. She's a survivor, and that's the big thing. She's just born to survive no matter what. But when she's motivated to get revenge or whatever, then she's very driven.
“I think for me, anyway, the best characters are the ones who don't win every fight, be it Indiana Jones or a lot of Jackie Chan stuff. I love Jackie Chan because most of the time he just tries not to get hit, but Indy is very much a character who gets the crap beaten out of him a lot. So I like that in characters. We're not all kung fu experts.”
The film has a fantastic supporting cast, including the likes of Sean Pertwee and Colm Meaney.
“With Sean, it's just a dream,” he say, beaming. “I get to work with my mates. This is the fourth thing we've done together. I always try and get him into projects that I'm doing, no matter what. It's just a pleasure to work with Sean, and I try and give him something different each time as well. So it's just like a different character in every film that we play. Colm, again, you know, absolute legend. What a joy it was to work with him! And Stephanie Beacham, you know, is playing a really interesting role. You've never seen her do anything like that before.
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| Duchess |
“It was surprisingly difficult to find an actress that wanted to play that role. Once Stephanie was mentioned, It was like, ‘Oh, she'd be fantastic.’ And she was well for it. But, you know, it's just great. Philip Winchester as well, lovely man. Great for the action stuff. I mean, he knows that stuff inside out, he knows how to handle firearms and things like that, so that was great.”
From The Descent to Game Of Thrones, he has always excelled at directing action, but teaching somebody to move like a pickpocket is something else.
“We just watched films about pickpockets, and just tried to practice, practice. I mean, that's all it is – but yeah, with these kind of films, you're always on a tight schedule, so you've just got to think on your feet and think ‘How can we do these scenes in a convincing manner?’ As a director, you've just got to come up with good ideas on the day sometimes and think, ‘How would you do it? How would it work best on screen?’ And make sure, because ideally, pickpockets work in such a way you don't see them doing it. But for us, we need to see them doing it. So things like the little freeze frames and stuff like that help with that.”
When it came to the combat scenes, he started by thinking about them from a character perspective.
“She's a survivor, so she'll stand her ground to a point, but when she's up against somebody who's a killer then it starts to get, you know – I mean, how far is she willing to go? And that's always the true test. How far are you willing to go to survive? And ultimately, she's willing to kill. But I think a lot of us probably would be.”
She’s not the only killer in the film. How on Earth did he get a tiger on board?
He laughs. “That's an interesting story. Originally, it was written to be a hyena or a pair of hyenas. And we actually got this hyena. We couldn't get two because apparently if you put two in a pen together, they'll kill each other. So we got one hyena. It was a female hyena, and she was really subdued and quiet and just wouldn't really do anything. I cut that into the film but it just didn't have the menace that I wanted. I wanted something grisly and gnarly.
“I ended up doing reshoots at a place in the UK near Oxford which keeps animals like lions and tigers and stuff specifically for use in films. They used the lions there for recording the T Rex sounds for Jurassic Park. We rebuilt a section of the set in the cage with the tigers, and the guy who runs the place got in there with the tigers and managed to control them and get them to do various things. And we had various props and we just filmed a whole bunch of pick-ups and inserts that matched with what we previously shot with the hyena. And suddenly we had a tiger instead, which just looks way cooler and does all the right snarling and looks way more tough.”
I suggest that the end result looks like like a classic motif as well from a lot of Hong Kong movies, where there’s a tiger and then a cut away and to people and one never actually sees both together.
“We did what we could,” he says. “It would have been great to have a bit more graphic stuff with the tiger. We had a dummy rig to throw in with it, but it just ran off with it. It was like, ‘Oh, it's my new toy.’”
There is other grisly violence in the film, however, accompanied by gruesome special effects.
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| Duchess |
“I think inherently I bring my horror sensibilities to whatever I do,” he says. “I was trying to think of ways to torture and interrogate people, and some of the violence and stuff in the film. I think inherently, I like that kind of stuff in movies. So if we're going to do a gangster film, I want it to be a violent gangster film. But it's practical effects as much as possible, and poor old Sean getting beaten up again.”
We talk about the music, which, I suggest, gives the film s real Seventies vibe.
“Well, I love those movies, you know? Particularly British gangster movies from the late Sixties, the Seventies and the early Eighties, that whole genre. And that was what I was very much trying to tap into, especially with ending up in Tenerife. It's kind of like the Costa del Crime. So it's kind of a vibe from that era. And because I love that style of filmmaking as well, I like zooms and things like that in movies. So when Paul [Lawler] came aboard to do the music, I gave him that remit: I wanted it to sound like a Seventies movie. And he did a fun, fantastic job. It's all great brass and stuff in there and drums and things like that. So it's good. We've got a really cool style to it.”
Last year he shot another film with Charlotte, which will probably be their last, he says, describing it as “a sort of giallo slasher movie.” He also has something else in the works.
“I've just written a World War Two-set alien invasion story, which I'd like to make next.”
