Sydney Film Festival: Eliza Scanlen in her own sharp focus
The 21-year-old is an astonishingly talented TV, movie and stage star; and now the writer-director of a short film selected for the Sydney Film Festival.
In the space of two short years Eliza Scanlen has starred opposite Amy Adams and Patricia Clarkson in the HBO thriller Sharp Objects, played Beth March in Greta Gerwig’s acclaimed Little Women, appeared in a Sydney Theatre Company production of Lord of the Flies and made her Broadway debut in Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird.
She has made two feature films in that time, too, which are awaiting release — Babyteeth and The Devil All the Time, in which she stars alongside another young hot property, Tom Holland.
And somehow the 21-year-old also managed to write and direct a short film that has been selected for this year’s Sydney Film Festival. “I’m amazed to be in it,” Scanlen says.
In the era of COVID-19 this year’s festival is a virtual event while retaining established elements such as the longstanding Dendy awards for Australian short films. Scanlen’s short, Mukbang, is one of 10 in contention, to be scrutinised by jury members George Miller, Sophie Hyde and Bryan Brown.
Mukbang centres on a teenage girl who gets caught up in an online phenomenon, first as a viewer, then as an active participant, turning the camera on herself. One of the reasons Scanlen decided to make the film, she says, was a pact she made to work with friend Nadia Zwecker, “who was predominantly a theatre actor at the time, and wanted to venture into film and TV, but was terrified of doing so”.
Another motivation was Scanlen’s strong feelings about the pressures of social media. “Some of the most painful memories I had of high school somehow always involved a screen, whether it was posting on each other’s walls, or the likes and comments.
“I remember refreshing my browser constantly after posting a profile picture to see whether it passed 100 likes, because if it didn’t pass 100 likes then that meant you were uncool.”
As she began to work as an actress, Scanlen says, she was expected to make social media part of her professional life. “The pressure to curate an identity online was very difficult for me.” She resisted, she says, until she found a way that worked for her.
In her short film, the central character, Annie — played by Zwecker — becomes caught up in a particular aspect of internet culture: the mukbang, or eating video.
The hosts on mukbang videos film themselves eating, often large amounts of food, and often interact with viewers along the way: Scanlen has created a fictional video for the film in which a YouTuber (Yerin Ha) greets viewers and tucks into a giant bowl of spicy noodles and extras, a dish she consumes with gusto, featuring sighs and moans. When Annie’s sister, Mara (Tessa de Josselin), overhears the sound of mukbang videos late at night, her first thought is that her sister is watching porn.
Last year Scanlen filmed The Devil All the Time, a psychological thriller with gothic elements, to be released later this year on Netflix, working with director and co-writer Antonio Campos on the shoot in Alabama. Campos, whose own 2008 debut feature, Afterschool, deals with the topic of internet addiction, became an important influence on the short.
“I was asking him all these questions about his trajectory as a filmmaker,” Scanlen says. “It was in the hotel in Alabama that I started to write Mukbang because I was so inspired by his journey.
“He gave me really great advice about making a short film and that was the push I needed. I ended up sending the script to him to read and give notes on.”
Rita Kalnejais, who wrote Babyteeth, which also stars Ben Mendelsohn and Essie Davis, read her screenplay, too, and gave her notes. At every point, Scanlen says, she was ready to take advice. “One thing I learned was that there’s nothing wrong with opening yourself up to feedback, and to your short film getting completely flipped around by these notes.”
Making Mukbang and getting to know local filmmakers and crew, she says, “gave me a sense of belonging that I’d been wanting from my home town”. She was happy to be working with a young team — “loads of us were under 25” — and hopes to continue the connection. “Beyond the film itself, that was the most important thing about doing it, I’ve gained so many talented, kind, generous friends”, with whom she plans to work again.
In her film, Scanlen sets out to explore issues of desire, identity and appetite, and to consider how Annie’s ambivalent, contradictory feelings about food might play into her fascination with the mukbang experience and what it has to offer her. “When I was in high school I was surrounded by many young girls who went through eating disorders and it was quite sad to see. I wanted to touch on that a little bit.
“I think (Annie’s) relationship with food is a very important part of her growing sexuality. I think Annie sees a lot of things about herself that are wrong, and this is one thing she can control.
“Then it mutates into a sexual awakening. And at the end of the day it’s about her trying to gain control over her life, and she thinks this is the best way to do it.”
There are other references in the film to online culture and the way it is used by or against young women. Scanlen chose to focus on mukbang, she says, “because to me it was a metaphor for the way we connect online, and this detached intimacy that manifests there”.
Yet, she says, she’s well aware that online communication is the best way to stay in touch with people she’s close to: she has chosen to limit herself to Instagram.
And, she adds wryly, this was how she made initial contact with several of the people crucial to making Mukbang.
She wasn’t familiar with the Sydney filmmaking scene; she contacted producer China White and director of photography Lucca Barone-Peters on Instagram to see if they would be interested in working with her.
“I didn’t think they would, because it was self-funded I didn’t have a team around me, there was no one really supporting me at the time apart from Nadia, there was no deadline, we were doing it for the pure fun of it. I was quite surprised when they took it on. But they’re really close friends now.”
She had other support close to home. Twin sister Annabel, an artist who introduced her to mukbang, supplied a lot of Annie’s artwork. She already knew some of the actors who appear in the film. Ha was in the cast of Lord of the Flies, as was Justin Amankwah, who plays a schoolboy Annie encounters. Scanlen had kept in touch with de Josselin since they were in Home and Away together. A friend’s house was a location, as was her old school, Loreto Kirribilli.
At the end of last year, Scanlen made her Broadway debut, playing Mayella Ewell in Sorkin’s adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. She joined the cast in November, alongside Ed Harris as Atticus Finch. The production was a critical hit and box-office record-breaker, but its run came to an end earlier than expected. When New York theatres closed down in March because of COVID-19, Scanlen returned home to Sydney.
Right now, she’s working on another short film script she hopes to make in a few months with her new colleagues. “I’m trying to keep busy creatively, but also taking the chance to reset because I haven’t had time to do that for a while. I’m reconnecting with old friends.
“And I’m auditioning for stuff. I’d love to do something in Australia again.”
Sydney Film Festival runs from June 10 to 21. The film program is at sff.org.au.
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