Get us in your inbox

Search

Interview: 'Unexpected' writer/director Kris Swanberg

Written by
Michael Smith
Advertising

Unexpected, a new film based on writer/director Kris Swanberg's own experiences, is a beautiful pregnancy drama that integrates issues of gender, class and race into its narrative so naturally that you're not likely to notice until reflecting on it afterward. The film opens locally at the Music Box this Friday.

Are there few films about pregnancy because there are so few films made by women?

Absolutely, no contest. And the reason I know that’s the reason is because I made this movie about pregnancy not realizing that it was from my point of view. Just like a man wouldn’t realize he’s writing it from his point of view. It’s just the most natural way to go about it, to write from your point of view. Most films about pregnancy are from the point of view of a man looking at his wife and thinking, “Oh, she’s going crazy. What do I do?” All of that stuff, it’s usually pretty funny. You know, the delivery scene tends more toward comedy. Not that I have a super dramatic, heavy film, but I definitely took some of that stuff more seriously. 

There’s been a lot of discussion in the media about the lack of female voices in cinema. When you created this film, did you think of yourself as having a responsibility?

No. I didn’t think about it at all. I didn’t think about the fact that I was a woman making it. I didn’t think about the fact that it was a woman in a lead role and another woman in a secondary role. It never crossed my mind. When men are writing movies and directing movies I don’t think they’re consciously leaving women out of these movies. I think they’re just writing from their own experiences. And that was what I was doing, writing from what I know, which is being a woman. I never once took any kind of political stance and thought, “Oh, I’m making a movie from the woman’s point of view finally.” It just naturally happened.  

I appreciated your depiction of Chicago as diverse. It’s common to see films with predominantly white casts or predominantly black casts, but you made a film about interracial friendship that feels very honest.

The movie is based a lot on personal experience and my own experience as a high school teacher on the West Side here. Those relationships...I realized at the time how unique they were. Not so much for the racial component because I think, at least in our urban liberal world of Chicago, it’s fairly common for people to have friends of another race. I certainly have friends of other races and it’s not worth making a movie about (laughs). The reason why is because they’re of the same economic...the same social class as me. Our lives are very culturally similar. Of course, there are differences with race and how we’re brought up and how we experience the world. But it’s not nearly the...class difference that exists between Samantha and Jasmine. That was what was really unique to me. People have relationships with other people of different classes but they’re usually, “This person works in the same building as me,” or “This is the cashier behind the counter where I get my coffee every morning.” They’re usually on a professional level. They rarely get intimate. I think that’s what the real difference was with that relationship (in the film). 

You made a lot of subtle points in the movie about class division, and I was wondering if you were ever afraid Sam was going to come across as a stereotypical “white savior” character.

I was really conscious of that. I felt the solution was, and it was something my co-writer (Megan Mercier) and I talked about a lot, to make the movie very self-aware—and it is. (Sam) has assumptions about Jasmine’s world and that’s brought up very subtly in the film. At one point she asks her, “What did your boyfriend say when you told him you were pregnant? Was he mad?” And Jasmine’s like, “Why would he be mad?” There are a few moments like that where you realize the film is aware of that sort of movie trope. We have this weird history in our modern cinema of these white ladies going into schools and making everyone fall in love with Shakespeare or whatever. I didn’t want to do that, but because it was coming from my own personal experience as a teacher, I felt confident I could portray it realistically.

You may also like
You may also like
Advertising