THE INTERVIEW: ODE TO VIOLETA

Where did the idea for Ode to Violeta come from?

My friend and co-writer for It’s Not Always What It Seems was visiting. We thought we’d write a short together. We just needed an idea. We got as far as brainstorming and then her trip was over. I continued to brainstorm to the power of one.

There’s a small neighborhood park in San Miguel where I take my dog and let him roam off leash. While he’s sniffing to his heart’s delight, I use it as a walking meditation. It’s very quiet with benches tucked into leafy nooks. Lovers will cuddle on one while another entirely separate couple sits just feet away. And there are the solitary people. Are they content in their solitude or are they lonely, hoping someone will join them? It seems to me that a bench creates an inherent boundary that one doesn’t cross unless invited.

The thought of loneliness and my brain leapt to Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Blue. A complicated film, I remember most empathizing with the protagonist’s grief manifested by the screen going black and waves of melancholic music washing over her and the audience.

Yet another leap and Wilbur Smith’s Eagle in the Sky came to mind. I was a teenager when I read the book, but the story had stayed with me: lovers separated by war, both physically altered who find each other again.

The benches gave me two people living in close proximity, separated by an invisible boundary. Blue gave me music as a way of expressing grief. Eagle in the Sky gave me lovers torn apart by trauma and the possibility of finding each other again. Together, they became the foundation for Ode to Violeta.

What story emerged from that foundation?

I created two characters who sit on their chosen park benches separated by bushes each day. She shares the wisdom she’s acquired through her grief and years of solitude by recording an inspirational podcast. He is a blind composer enthralled by her voice. He doesn’t hear her words, only her lilt, which is music to his ears.

Since he is blind — and stubbornly independent — he needs spatial assuredness. He also needs to be somewhat confident that she will be on her particular bench. Since you can’t exactly make bench reservations in public parks, I decided the benches had to be in a small, predictable space: a private garden like they have in London and New York.

I researched both cities and settled on Crescent Garden in Maida Vale, London. I then dug into house floor plans, access to the garden, and local bars and restaurants. While Rose and Alejandro don’t venture beyond the garden, their young, single assistants, Kam and Lulu do.

A passing comment remembered from when I lived in London became a rule for Kam: people prefer to date people who live close by, otherwise they’ll spend hours either on packed tubes or in congested traffic getting across town.

I found this authentic Victorian pub in the neighborhood and made it the location for Kam and Lulu’s blind date set up by Kam’s flamboyant gay brother Raj. Raj’s personality was inspired by a friend of mine who used to host Pub Trivia nights in San Miguel. He’s also the catalyst of the story aided by a snow-blanketed London. Encouraged by Lulu and Raj, Rose and Alejandro break out of their routines and their shared history unfolds.

Once you had London, how did Buenos Aires enter the story?

Next came the decision whether to write a small, indie-budget movie or to do as Ken Atchity once said in a screenwriting class, “Write big.” My scripts invariably contain snippets from my life. A friend was worried when her brother, a big teddy bear of a man who would trip over his own feet, went off to climb Mount Aconcagua. I decided to have my lovers meet in one of the most romantic cities in the world and, always looking to break clichés, make her the adventurer and him the dancer.

I then researched Argentina in the 1970s. I did not want the period to function solely as a romantic backdrop.

Violeta’s father is a reporter covering IRA activity. His work gives him the excuse for delaying his trip to Argentina, although in truth he never intends to make it. For Violeta and Sandro, the violence he is reporting feels far away—something happening on the other side of the world.

My research showed me what was already gathering around them in Argentina. The signs of the coming repression are breadcrumbed through the story, in the way Cabaret reveals political menace gathering at the edges of its love story. The histories are not equivalent. What connects them is the belief that events happening elsewhere will not touch you, until they do. For Violeta the consequences were particularly devastating.

How did you tell a contemporary story about lovers who’d been separated thirty years ago?

I told the Argentina story through flashbacks of Rose and Alejandro’s memories, sparked either by music or a physical sensation. In those days, she went by Violeta and he used his nickname, Sandro. Giving them different names was a device intended to give the audience an aha moment when they realize these are the same people who now live across from each other.

How does the modern love story between Kam and Lulu parallel the story of Rose and Alejandro?

Unlike Violeta and Sandro who devoured life, Lulu and Kam reflect the trepidations of modern-day city life, specifically how people box themselves into self-imposed limits.

Their story is a counterpoint to romance in Buenos Aires of the ‘70s. Violeta and Sandro became separated by events beyond their control. Kam and Lulu risk being separated by their assumptions, the lives they’ve constructed and their reluctance to step outside them.

What connects the two stories is the consequences of their decisions. If Violeta had not insisted on her idea of romantic perfection, i.e., a marriage proposal on Christmas Day, their lives might have been completely different. Her decision triggers a realization for Sandro, and the dominoes of fate begin to fall. Lulu hides that she lives with Alejandro and, through her cockiness, stops Kam from walking her home. Had he done so, the story might have unfolded differently.

At the same time, neither realizes that, while they are stumbling toward each other, they are drawing Rose and Alejandro out of their solitude and moving them toward a reunion. The two love stories unfold alongside each other, with one generation unknowingly helping the other recover what was lost.

When you look back at how Ode to Violeta developed, what does it reveal about the way you build a story?

I feel like a spider weaving a web crossed with the Shazam app. I’m constantly picking up on elements: an observation, a memory, a piece of music, an old book, a place I’ve lived. At first glance, they have nothing to do with one another. Then I ask, “How can this fit?” How does it affect what I’ve already set in place?

Once I have the premise, I start designing my characters. I examine how their histories and personalities define their needs, and how those in turn affect the physical spaces they occupy. Alejandro’s need for spatial assuredness led to the private garden. The garden led to London. London led to Kam’s rule about dating locally. That rule, the neighborhood and Raj’s blind-date setup gave Kam and Lulu a story of their own.

I consciously construct the location, characters and basic story. Then I keep weaving, looking for how each decision impacts the next. Nothing can be there simply because it is interesting. It must support the story and, ideally, have consequences.

What question sits at the heart of Ode to Violeta, and what would you like audiences to take away from it?

At its heart, Ode to Violeta asks what happens when the smug confidence of youth collides with decisions that cannot be undone and events no one can control. Violeta and Sandro believe their future is theirs to shape. Her insistence on her idea of romantic perfection changes the course of their lives. Then the Dirty War in Argentina and IRA bombings in England show how political violence can reach across decades and continents, affecting people who have no idea they are connected.

It is also about isolation: the way people go about their daily lives oblivious to what is happening around them. They can be sitting on nearby benches or living across a garden from someone whose life is entwined with their own and not know it.

I’d like audiences to come away with a hell of a romantic story, while also thinking about how music impacts our lives, war outlives the headlines, and how one unconscious decision can alter our life’s trajectory.

The benches that sparked the idea for Ode to Violeta ©Lorraine Flett