After decades of writing songs filled with visual imagery, Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch has finally turned his storytelling talents to film. From the looks of this trailer, it is everything that we would imagine a Belle and Sebastian song to look like: vibrant and colorful, but with hints of dark undertones.
God Help The Girl is a coming-of-age story that follows Eve (Emily Browning) over one summer in Glasgow. During this time she meets James (Olly Alexander) and Cass (Hannah Murray), and decides to start a pop group with them. The trailer then offers one breezy tune that candy-coats the glimpses of more serious themes it also portrays.
Whether you’re a Belle and Sebastian fan or not, this looks like a movie that offers something for everyone, and the trailer makes it look moving and magical. We spoke to Murdoch, who gave us some insight into the making of the film and told us how small moments came together behind the scenes:
Second day of filming, we were kind of rambling all across the city and it was the first time I was in specifically my neighborhood and I was thinking, “This is great!” You know, this is right in the street, eight o’clock at night, and we’re filming in my neighborhood and the girls are dancing. This was a choreographed scene at the end of “Musician, Please Take Heed.” So they were singing, dancing, and they were trying to score drugs off these guys. The two guys that they sent along, the drug dealers, looked like English literary students. They were just all wrong. They were just a small part, but sometimes these small parts are important. And I said, “What are we going to do about these guys? These guys are no use. I don’t think we can dress them up.” [laughs] So we were in this lane, just at this moment, I kid you not, there were two guys that climbed over the wall. It was a high wall, they climbed over, and dropped down in amongst the crew. In Glasgow accents were like, “What’re you guys doin’? You’re making a film? Can we be in it?” And so we put them straight in! And I said, “OK, you guys are drug dealers, you’re gonna do this thing.” You only see them for a split second in the film, but it’s enough. You know, you could see they’re real guys, and one of them in particular had a nice way of moving that fit in with the choreography. This is kind of movie magic to me.
God Help The Girl is out in theaters this Friday, September 5. Our full feature with Murdoch and God Help The Girl will be appearing on our Web site soon.
