ELIOT & ME is a remarkable film. This Irish family project and live action feature for a young audience might mark the start of a new tendency in children’s film.

 

Recent technological innovations made it possible for filmmakers to undertake independent film projects, cheap and basic in the making, but with an artistic value and an outspoken independent feel. When it comes to children’s films, this often seems to result in small family projects in which movie making parents include their own children, like last year’s ON THE SLY. ELIOT & ME is another particular example of a charming father-daughter project.

 

More than anything else Lucy wants two things in life: she wants her mum and dad not to divorce and she wants a dog. In comes Eliot, looking like a street-dog, making Lucy the proudest, most devoted dog-owner in the world. One day Eliot disappears, knowing that all parents have worries of their own, Lucy is determined to solve this case all by herself.

 

This doesn’t sound like the biggest story ever told, and the apotheosis might even look a bit simple through the eyes of a grown up. But it has been a long time since a live action film could be understood so easily and totally by even the youngest audience.

 

We spoke with director Fintan Connolly and his family: “After playing a spooky kid in the Hammer horror WAKE WOOD, Ella wanted to be in a film she could watch. First we thought about ELIOT & ME as a short film but then it grew out till what it has become now. Compared to a horror movie, involving prosthetic’s and special effects, this was relatively straightforward. Ella dug deep to give this little girl a vulnerability and strength in keeping with the story. She was a joy to work with, and I’m not just saying that because I’m her dad.”

 

Who else was involved in this project?

Connolly: “It was a bit of a family affair. Ella’s mother, Fiona Bergin produced the film and co-wrote the story and our friend Owen McPolin was DOP. We shot at weekends and school holidays, casting actors we had worked with before. It was a real labour of love. We filmed all over the city, but mainly in Kilmainham where we live.”

 

Even Eliot, the dog, was a member of the family. How was it to have him on the set?

Ella Connolly: “He’s completely untrained, he hasn’t got a clue, he didn’t do anything he was asked. I thought that was hilarious. But he is the best thing in the film.”

 

Did he enjoy himself on the set?

Ella: “He enjoyed the sausage treats! Afterwards, we noticed he likes to watch himself in the film. He goes wild barking at all the other dogs in the scene at the animal shelter but he goes quiet when he sees himself on screen.”

 

Over the last year did the entire family have time for anything else than the film project? Or was everyone captured by it completely?

Connolly: “We did other things but this was the most fun. We continued work on our company’s film and television projects, Ella was busy at school and Eliot was doing pretty much what he does in the film – eating, sleeping and walking”

 

How did you succeed to make the film so understandable by even the youngest audience?

Bergin: “We decided to try to tell the story from the point of view of a 10 year old girl and chose a deliberately ordinary, everyday series of themes – parental separation, most kids’ desire for a pet, bullying at school. Many kids can relate to these issues as they experience them in their own lives. With Ella carrying the picture, her desire for a dog and her relationship with him are entirely believable.”

 

Was Ella already involved in the script writing process?

Connolly: “Ella wasn’t directly involved in the writing but she inspired a fair bit of it. We built a couple of things into the story, like the Tae Kwon Do, that Ella does in real life but the rest is just simple storytelling. Ella interpreted what we wrote in her own, unique way. She knew her character inside out.”

 

Lucy insists on solving all problems herself without the help of a grown- up.

Bergin: “Following her parents separation Lucy doesn’t really trust ‘adults’ much at all. Her relationship with her mother is strained by their shared loss of the father and her father is now completely absent from her life. Her response to the sudden change in her domestic circumstances is to rely on herself to solve her own problems and this is what she does.”

 

There is a small but alarming extra storyline about a gloomy character chatting with Lucy on the internet.

Connolly: “It’s a plotline that is never resolved, but we felt it added to the story. Kids are on the internet a lot in away you couldn’t even conceive of ten years ago. This character of ‘Mike’ who Lucy begins chatting with on the internet is exactly that: a deliberate attempt to make children think about who they are in fact chatting to when they are online. We didn’t extend the storyline to involve any actual meeting of the characters (although that is what ‘Mike’ suggests) as we thought that would be too frightening for a very young audience. We do want kids to be aware about the dangers and this is why it is Lucy’s friend Ben, and not an adult, who warns her of ‘freaks’ on the net.”

 

How does it feel as a father to hear all the time the – well deserved – compliments for your daughters acting?

Connolly: “It feels good. She is a wonderfully natural actor and we enjoyed doing this film together. She likes acting but she likes other things too – drawing, reading, sport...”

 

-Gert Hermans

European Children’s Film Association Journal