‘Mother’s Baby’ Director Johanna Moder Isn’t Afraid to “Go Somewhere Where It Hurts”
The dream of motherhood turns into a nightmare in Mother’s Baby, the new film from Austrian director Johanna Moder (High Performance, Once Were Rebels, TV series School of Champions) that is world premiering in the competition program of the 75th Berlin Film Festival on Feb. 18.
40-year-old Julia (Marie Leuenberger) is a successful conductor and has a loving partner (Hans L?w). So what could she be missing for complete happiness? Well, the couple is longing for a child. Luckily, a fertility doctor (Claes Bang) offers them hope and treatment. Unfortunately, though, the birth does not go as planned, and the baby is taken away, leaving Julia in the dark about what has happened. When reunited with the child, she feels strangely distant. And she begins to doubt whether this is really her baby.
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From there, the co-production between Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, which was co-written by Moder and Arne Kohlweyer, takes the audience on a female journey full of tension and simmering doubt.
Moder, who has two children, talked to THR‘s Georg Szalai about how her personal experiences inspired the story, the importance of music in Mother’s Baby, her ensemble cast, and how she cast the baby.
Why did you want to take on the topic of motherhood for your new film?
Well, that certainly has something to do with my own motherhood. The script came about based on my own experiences and basically wrote itself. I find it interesting that, in terms of society, stories are sometimes wrong. We say how things will be, including motherhood, and in reality, it turns out completely differently. We have an event here that is sold or marketed in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with reality, and I found that interesting.
Are you saying motherhood is like New Year’s Eve, which everyone always seems to predict will be the most fun we will all have all year?
Or like Christmas. It really creates a false expectation. But, of course, you have such a longing that is also hormonally supported, and many people are also socially pushed. There are so many things that, if you could think about them for longer or if you had several lives instead of just one, you would do things differently. But because of hormonal and societal pressure, you give in.
Where do you see the pressure on the couple in Mother’s Baby coming from?
In this story, you have a couple that is actually doing very well. But they are still missing a child because of course their parents and everyone asks about (a potential baby). That’s how it is. Even people we don’t know are really interested: “Why haven’t you had one yet?” And so on and so forth.
Marie Leuenberger plays the mother, Julia, with a range of emotions and gets to not only play off Hans L?w, who portrays her partner Georg, but also a midwife, played by Julia Franz Richter, and a doctor is portrayed by a big name, Claes Bang. How did you get him to join the cast?
When we first asked, his agency sent us an okay. But when we told them okay, we’re shooting, they said he didn’t have time. And then I wrote him a letter.
What did you say in the letter to convince him to take on the role?
I said how great I think he is. I knew him, especially from The Square.
I experienced the film as a thriller where I constantly felt worried that something bad could happen. How key was it for you to convey a sense of dread?
That was certainly a goal. I put effort into ensuring there was this concern or an underlying worry. Since (the protagonist) feels a lot of insecurity, that can also be transferred to the person who is watching her. The doctor, of course, has such status. And Claes was the best choice for this because he embodied this through its appearance alone. He added exactly what this character needed. He is, so to speak, a god in white, as we say in German. You want to believe him, you want to trust him because he gives you the feeling that he knows everything. And I think that’s a basic human need, at least in Austria. When people meet doctors, they want to lie in their arms and say please, take care of me.
Watching Mother’s Baby, I found myself going back and forth between the characters’ different perceptions and trying to figure out what is real and what is imagined. What was your approach to signaling versus not signaling to viewers what they should believe?
That is a very fine line that you have to walk, including in the visual implementation, to not force people but to always give them the opportunity to create their own view and interpretation. That is fundamentally important in cinematic storytelling, giving a viewer enough in terms of dramaturgy so that you can make connections yourself, but never feel like you are being made fun of or being taken for a fool. It is such a fine line. This is something we tried to do throughout the film, including with the music, which is above all a soundscape.
Do you have any examples?
It is used so subtly that sometimes maybe the first time you see the movie you don’t hear at all what kind of sound lies underneath. One example is a scene where Julia is sitting on the terrace at this private hospital alone. But then a certain feeling of unease arises that you carry into the next scene. And once there is a scene where you are not sure if it is reality or a dream. These are all attempts to seduce the audience in some way into a feeling that is meant to connect you emotionally with the main character.
The film is a co-production between FreibeuterFilm in Austria, telefilm in Switzerland, Match Factory Productions, as well as Austrian public broadcaster ORF and Swiss broadcaster SRG. There has been a lot of talk about how difficult it is to get film financing these days. How important was it to bring the different parts and elements together for your movie?
FreibeuterFilm, my main production company, was very good and clever in financing. Switzerland supported us a lot – they were totally enthusiastic about the script from the very beginning. And Marie (who is German-Swiss) is quite a star there, so that played into our hands. And Switzerland, compared to Germany, has more resources.
The collaboration with the Swiss production company worked very well. They supported us really well and we mixed the film in Switzerland. But the composer is from Germany. The bigger a project gets and the more funding comes in, the more you have to put together a team and locations that reflect that but this must fit together (for the story).
We also see scenes elsewhere but as a native of Vienna, Austria, I recognized various parts of the city throughout the movie…
At the beginning, I was wondering whether we should set it in a specific location at all. But then we decided to set it in Vienna because most of the time when you see films that are not localized, that have no home, they often seem so soulless.
Anything else worth highlighting in terms of setting or visual clues?
One of the things we attempted was to not show cars, or not many. I don’t know if you noticed this. There are only two cars in the film.
I didn’t.
Cars are also really ugly visually. The production designer suggested that we could try this approach. And we really did it, and you don’t miss them. I find it fascinating that you don’t miss cars visually.
You have made films and TV series. I’m curious if you plan to focus on one of those in the future or keep doing both?
Well, ideally, I want to do both. The big difference is the speed with which you have to do television, and you have to improvise a lot. Film is a completely different kind of artistic form of work. You can rehearse, you can think about stuff on set. In television, you sometimes don’t have any time to think. You just have to act.
Any ideas yet for your next film that you can share?
I already know what interests me for my next feature film. But it is a really taboo subject. It is definitely a subject where again I must go somewhere where it hurts.
How exciting is it for you that Mother’s Baby was picked for the Berlinale competition?
It’s totally great for the film.
Anything else you would like to share?
The babies were so amazing. We had two babies (playing the baby of the protagonist). And the babies’ mother was just so amazing.
The baby in the film is supposed to be a boy but I heard that you actually cast two babies in that role, and they were girls?
Yes. They are twins.
How did you find them?
We cast pregnant women. And we thought that probably not a single person would get in touch. And then surprisingly many people did. That’s probably another one of those things, similar to your expectations for being pregnant and being a mother, where you have so many wrong images in your head. You’re really surprised that it actually happens. But there are just really cool people who can be on set three weeks after giving birth and say, “Please do what you need with my children.”
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