As an unapologetic lover of pop music (both the good and bad), one of my favorite films out of Fantastic Fest last year was French writer/director Alexis Langlois’ feature length debut pop musical Queens of Drama. The glitter soaked love letter to the early aughts pop scene follows two divas – Mimi (Louiza Aura) and Billie (Gio Ventura), who engage in a tortured decades long love affair that has to be kept from the spotlight, thanks to Mimi blowing up early in her career, with her infectious earworm Don’t Touch. The film is a touching tale of unrequited love between these two fictitious icons through their many eras, that plays out to a soundtrack of some impressively catchy original pop anthems.
Queens of Drama which feels like an early aughts Velvet Goldmine, makes its theatrical debut this week at select Alamo locations. In anticipation I got to chat with its director Alexis about the film and their inspirations, the Queer communities’ relationship with pop music, casting and crafting the film’s soundtrack, since not only is it such a unique idea, but the caliber of the music employed manages to live up to its premise, which is a rare feat. So read on below and given Queens is the kind of film that has future cult classic written all over it, if it’s playing in your area I can’t suggest checking this out enough, to say you saw it before it was the cool artist everyone liked.
You’ve said the Queens of Drama was based on a love that you personally experienced, can you tell me what was behind your decision to tell that story with pop stars in the early aughts?
Alexis Langlois: Sometimes I feel like you need to sidestep, to go a little bit deeper regarding emotions. It was of course heavily over-dramatized because my life is not as interesting as the Queens of Drama, but we also find that artifice as a whole is a good medium to go deeper into more than just emotions. On a personal level, it also ended up being something that allowed me to express myself in my own non binary identity. I’ve represented myself in my own movies as a woman very often, so it was a way to put a finger on it, even without necessarily knowing exactly what it meant at the time.
So yeah, presenting myself, representing my own life at that point works within that context.
Another thing that’s important is the grand and almost fairy tale-like nature of the movie, allowed it to be very memorable. The fact that it follows a very classic structure of the rise and fall, like you’ll find in pop stars, that you find in movies, makes it very easily approachable and very wide reaching to something you can easily relate to and find those same schemes in your own life.
When you’re making not only a musical, but a musical about pop stars, the music really has to not only tell a story, but be as infectious as you’d expect for a pop earworm. Would you mind walking me through the process of how the film’s standout earworm Don’t Touch came about from start to finish?
Alexis Langlois: The songs were really central to the story, and they were kind of halfway written and then worked into the structure of the movie. Not necessarily written as knowing what was going to be said, but more so knowing how it was going to sound, depending on when it would happen and what kind of vibe exactly we were going for. So it was more necessary, knowing how it would sound. I mean some songs were fully written out, like Listen to my Heart was very much designed and defined at the beginning to be in the movie.
So the idea was to give the scenario to the composers, the same way you’d give the scenario of the script to the actor and then have them work through it and have them work emotions through it. So Don’t Touch, notably, was really interesting because I had a lot of references, whether it be, additional songs, or French or American (artists). It was a big mixed bag. And so when I vaguely came up with it and presented it to the composers, I told myself no, that’s not really gonna be it. It’s not catchy enough. It’s not exactly what I’m looking for. But Yelle the band that I worked with, told me, ‘no, no, no, no. This is good. It’s going to be a hit!’ Leave it to us and we’re going to make it big.
You know, three years later it’s the one thing everyone talks about and it ended up being really, like, diabolical, almost. It really catches your ear.
Is there a particular song from the film that is especially meaningful to you?
Alexis Langlois: Down by Love and Listen to My Heart, because it’s really important, because it’s the make up song. These two songs that we worked with Pierre Desprats and Rebeka Warrior to produce, I think are really the heart of the movie, you know what follows the love story at the core of it.
What was the casting process like? I read that Gio was a fan that had messaged you on facebook about wanting to work with you and this is Louiza’s first role?
Alexis Langlois: So it started out as a bit of a joke at the start, Gio’s thing about texting me was a bit over dramatized. I mean, he did contact me like years earlier and I never really answered because I never really knew how to answer to fans other than just saying you know, ‘thank you’. But, Gio walked in for the audition and it was really about pairing the right Mimi and Billie, and what was interesting is that the role of Billie, was not originally meant for Gio. When I wrote the role I had my sister in mind who actually still plays in the movie, she plays one of the muscled up ladies.
At the beginning it was mostly designed for my sister and the chemistry between Gio and Louiza really worked off and that’s what ended up happening. What happened also is that my sister, after many, many tryouts with different Mimis didn’t feel like playing in the movie. You know like it didn’t really work.
So I had to cast different people.
We needed people who would have that aura to them, but what was also necessary was that they would be somewhat vulnerable and they would have that very fragile side to themselves. So, finding people who could strike that balance between the two was really hard, and especially having that chemistry. When the two of them met, the chemistry really worked out in a very interesting way. They met right before the audition and felt like they were doing that audition as a team, which really carried the spirit of the movie.
And also I mean, they’re very smart people. They’re very nuanced people who do other things. I think it’s really interesting working with people who are also artists in other ways as well. I think it adds a lot to the movie and really shows.
I dug how visually Billie Kohler’s physical condition is not just a representation of her changing musical identity, but a great visual metaphor for how keeping secrets and repressing your sexual identity can distort people in different ways. I really love this bit of symbolism, if you don’t mind me asking what inspired this particular choice of visually making her character this grotesque thing in this dream like world and the thought behind it?
Alexis Langlois: Well, for me, both of the characters change. Like at the start when they fight and they compare their own notions of radicality, which ends up changing later. And you end up having this kind of switch, which is really interesting because you discover that the way Mimi changes may be a bit more radical, or at the very least more nuanced than she would let you think. Even maybe more radical than Billie.
When she shaves her head, you get that very strong image from it. Also when she gains that long white Afro, which was actually an idea from the actress, because I had written her as keeping her head shaved at the end.
When it came to Billie I had kind of written a Courtney Love to Dolly Parton trajectory. I had this kind of idea of going from a butch to femme, and then the other one a femme to butch kind of trajectory throughout the movie. But what ended up happening is that the movie kind of Queered itself up with Gio being a he/him in real life outside of acting. I ended up directing Billie more towards a kind of Pete Burns-esque approach, who I have tattooed on my forearm right here. He’s one of my idols.
He ended up alot more Queer and presenting a lot more of almost non binary aspects, because you end up having this character who has those very extravagant pop long blonde hair characteristics, but also the heavy muscles, the pecks, the big arms. You end up in this kind of non binary identity that isn’t the neither nor, but more a push towards both extremes.
So you have this very peculiar, very strong, very, very intense, non binary identity that isn’t really out in the open, mentioning itself as such, but takes so many inspirations from so many different ideas that it really pushes in all directions.
I mean, also to add one last thing, Billie’s nose at the end was designed after Thierry Mugler’s nose, which was itself designed to be very intense and very big and was very much mocked in many ways. Same thing with Pete Burns, who was mocked for his use of cosmetic surgery.
The idea was to push forward all of those extremes. All of those strong visual aspects that can end up being very, very fierce and are not typically considered as traditional beauty. And having a character that really pushes itself out and assumes and wants to have those things at the forefront, was really important. Also it felt kind of sexy to have somebody pushing those things forward as openly as Billie’s character did.
Finally, given the film’s themes, how do you feel that female pop music which has always been a staple of a Queer community andQueer coded is going through a bit of a renaissance and finally saying the quiet part out loud, thanks to the likes of chapelle roan who is making mainstream Queer pop music.
Alexis Langlois: I think it’s great. I love it when pop culture takes from other genres and artists. I think it was Madonna who took references from Metropolis. You’ve got Vogue, you’ve got Madonna sighting actresses. I think it’s great that culture flows and exchanges between different media and I think that’s how you lead to Queer culture and to support between those different things.
I am all for Chappell Roan. I love what she does, but I’m very much afraid that in the era in which we live, we might have to face the fact that she might be an exception. I really hope that she’s not. I really think it’s really, really, really important that we have, at this point, actual pop idols that are Queer pop idols, not pop idols that support us and here’s hoping she’s not an exception.
I mean, what’s interesting with Queer culture is that Queer is very much in our view and the way we view the words. We are very often able to take and claim things and make them our own and make them Queer, in the way that we interpret them. I’m not saying we need to go back to never having to use our own Queer idols and relying on external things that we interpret. But I think it’s beautiful that there’s a resilience to Queer culture that stays alive and visible throughout its own interpretation of external factors.
As for my favorite artist, it’s not necessarily a pop artist, GRLwood. I’m a massive fan. They’re a bit more on the rock side. Dochi as well. Both of them. I don’t know that she’s Queer exactly, but I do remember reading Dochi said one of the biggest red flags on the first date with heterosexual men. I don’t know if she’s Queer, but she’s definitely a bit of something.
