Tina Kakadelis
Roger Ebert once wrote, “For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears.” Movies have the ability to place us in the shoes of a life experience that is not our own. Through the magical property of film that Ebert described, Treading Water introduces us to Danny, played by Joe Gill, who has just been released from prison. He’s struggling with drug addiction and intrusive thoughts when a chance encounter with a friend from school, Laura (Becky Bowe), brings a little magic into Danny’s life. The script, written by director Gino Evans, takes us into the complicated world of Danny and Laura.
Ahead of the film’s digital and on-demand release, Film Obsessive News Editor Tina Kakadelis sat down with writer/director Gino Evans and stars Joe Gill and Becky Bowe to discuss the empathy at the heart of Treading Water.
The idea for Treading Water came from Gino Evans’ time working at a supporting house like the one Danny finds himself in in the film. Evans was teaching filmmaking to the residents who were struggling with some of the same problems that feature prominently in this movie.
“There was a lot of positivity, a lot of banter, chaos,” smiles Evans. “They were always having a go. There was resilience, too. That world is something I thought would be great in film.”
From this experience, Gino Evans crafted two characters at the center of the script: Danny and Laura. They came from the same hometown and probably had similar dreams of getting out of the city. Where we meet them in Treading Water is not where they thought they would be, but part of what makes Gill’s and Bowe’s performances so naturalistic is because they know where Danny and Laura came from.
“I’d never really, before in my career, played someone who I connected with and understood, who was so close to home as much as Danny,” says Gill. “He’s from the exact area where I’m from. He’s different to me in some ways, but I do relate a lot to him. I did bring things within the performance parts that were very sort of true to my own life as well.”
The audition process for Gill and Bowe was, as Bowe puts it with a smile, a “ringer.”
“What really made me want the role was the audition process and how passionate Gino and Ben [Toye] were,” explains Bowe. “They kind of made you feel like you’d already got the part and that you were building it with them through the audition because parts of it were improvisational. It was such a beautiful process right from the get-go.”
Gino Evans’ improvisational style adds a stunning layer of realism to Treading Water. At times it can feel like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. The audience is allowed to vividly see the inside of Danny’s head, with all of its pain, chaos, and hope. No one in the film is perfect, just like in life. It’s this complexity that made Gill interested in taking on the challenge of Danny.
“Danny’s a very complicated individual. It’s all about understanding his own mind and not necessarily making excuses, obviously, for some of the things that he does within the film,” says Gill. “It’s getting a complicated character and understanding why they believe what they’re doing is right, even if it’s not. That was something I was very conscious of and was an obstacle that I always tried to have in the back of my mind.”
“Similarly to Joe,” Bowe follows up, “when I read the script, even before the audition, I thought, wow, this is really complex and such a beautifully intricate human story. What an amazing challenge that would be. I wasn’t that long out of drama school when the script came through, and I thought, oh God, am I going to be able to do sort of a number two on a call sheet?”
Gino Evans never shied away from the complexity when creating Treading Water. When you want to tell a story about the tangible and intangible effects of mental health and addiction, there’s inherent divisive complexity. Anyone who tries to iron out that complexity is missing the reality of life. Gino embraces the wrinkles, meets these characters where they are, and trusts his actors to embody their roles.
“We would almost go in between text and improv, because we knew that performers like Joe, Becky, Darryl [Clark], and Darren [Connolly] could handle it,” Evans states. “They’re able to go seamlessly from improvisation back into scripted, and it takes away that expected rhythm. We always wanted that uniqueness of a take. We shot on two cameras. We wanted to get that, that moment. Like you’re capturing the moment for the first time.”
When Laura and Danny reconnect, there’s a remarkable moment when all the pain we’ve seen on Danny’s face disappears in a second. All of a sudden the years fall away and they’re teenagers again who haven’t made the choices yet that led them here. As sweet as the initial moment is, it becomes clear to the viewer that Laura and Danny aren’t really really seeing each other. They’re seeing the version of the other person they want to see that will help them escape their reality.
“That’s such a prominent thing that you’ve touched on there for Laura,” Bowe says. “ I think that was so important to her as a character because what he provides for her is this piece of the time before she was doing sex work. Before she was under this coercive control and before life had smacked her in the face.”
“Danny has this childlike connection of fun and joking. In her head, he messes things up by making it something different. She would love it to be this nighttime fairy tale that keeps happening and they’re able to just have these moments,” Bowe explains.
“Danny’s reminded of a time when life was simpler for him. When we meet Danny he hasn’t got a sense of belonging, and I think he’s trying to find something to hold onto,” continues Gill. “He does have an addictive personality. In a metaphorical sense, Laura is this new sort of addiction that’s able to save his life while he tries to drop the other things he’s addicted to. It’s almost the same thing in his mind. She’s almost this new drug.”
It’s very easy for filmmakers to take the general umbrella of mental health and warp it to mean whatever they want. Horror movies love diagnosing their masked killers with some mental health prognosis without thinking about the ramifications this portrayal has on real people who share the same diagnosis. Evans didn’t take the task of telling the story of a man with addiction and intrusive thoughts lightly.
“Intrusive thoughts and OCD aren’t often seen in film, so we wanted to do it justice,” Evans offers. “We did a lot of research, got a psychologist to really go over the script and tear it apart. Hopefully it’s as honest as it could be. That’s what we were going for. That by the end of it, the audience would develop a sense of empathy for how haunted Danny is by own mind.”
