One of this year's under-the-radar critical favorites, Stephen Cone's Princess Cyd (now available on Video on Demand and DVD) is about a Chicago-based novelist named Miranda Ruth (Rebecca Spence) who hosts her game 16-year-old niece Cyd (Jessie Pinnick) from South Carolina over the summer. The athletic and sexually curious Cyd knows little or nothing about her aunt's work, but Miranda gradually awakens by putting down her books occasionally as Cyd slowly falls in love with another Chicago girl named Katie (Malic White).
"In some ways it was almost started as kind of a chemistry experiment to see what would happen when you put these two elements together in one place," Chicago-based director Cone says.
Earlier this year, Cone presented the movie as part of Little Rock's Kaleidoscope Film Festival, which also programmed his film Henry Gamble's Birthday Party in 2015.
Strange Magic
During a nearly one-hour conversation, Cone occasionally uses the word "alchemy" to describe how aspects of his film came together. Despite making some deliberate choices, like keeping moments of violence off screen. The movie begins with a 911 call, but all the audience hears is a traumatized voice.
"There's a time and a place to show [violence], but it's often misguided," he says. "You're just trusting the audience's imagination. Let's let the audience have this one."
Similarly, though the film is Chicago-set, Cone doesn't give us lots of shots of "L" trains and the Loop. Instead, most of the film takes place in a shady residential neighborhood that seems poised between gentrification and shabby gentility.
"I live not far from where we shot the scenes. That's just my experience of it. I wasn't even super aware that I was creating a kind of look. I knew I was purposely avoiding shots of the skyline and stuff you've seen in John Hughes movies and things like that. I wasn't totally conscious of creating a new impression. I guess there aren't a lot of movies set on the northwest side of Chicago, where it is a little more lush and lovely."
One scene in particular has grabbed audiences in a way the director is still trying to describe. When her aunt holds a party for some of her intellectual friends, Cyd shows up wearing a tuxedo. At times the image is almost as striking as Ursula Andress emerging from the sea in a bikini and a belt with a knife holster in Dr. No.
"There's a lot of magical stuff in the film that I can't take credit for. The first time we screened the film in front of a large audience, the tux shot got loud applause, I was worried because it was going to be kind of a predictable little moment," he recalls.
"I think that it has something to do with the uniqueness of Jessie Pinnick, and that she's not ready made for a tux, neither physically nor behaviorally. She's not your 'typical' lesbian heroine. It may be seeing her, specifically about seeing her, Jessie Pinnick, in a tux that's exciting to people."
Keeping the Faith
Born in Kentucky but raised primarily in South Carolina, which is Cyd's home, Cone has explored what it's like to be gay and in an Evangelical environment in his previous movie The Wise Kids. His own father is a still a pastor who graduated seminary in Louisville just as Cone was born.
While Cone describes his faith as oppressive, Princess Cyd often changes viewers' preconceptions of what they may think of the South, Christianity and homosexuality. While Miranda, who is loosely based on novelist Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping, Gilead), has no qualms about Cyd falling in love with another girl, she bristles at the discussion of her own love life. Miranda boldly declares she's simply not concerned with physical intimacy.
"I always say that may be 65 percent true. I want to believe her, and I want to give her the benefit of the doubt. She's a human being, so there's no way that that's scripture," he laughs.
"There is this common assumption that the person from South Carolina would be more oppressed than the person from liberal Chicago. It's not always the case, either. There are deeply dangerous oppressive people in liberal communities. That was something I felt needed to be integrated into the narrative."
Filling a Void
While Cone makes films with LGBT characters, he's quick to point out that he made Princess Cyd to appeal to another demographic that has been poorly served.
"There's a void. In the '90s, you had Hollywood making movies like How to Make an American Quilt. Those don't exist anymore. There aren't smart movies for young women. I didn't make it for a queer audience. I made it for girls and their moms and their aunts and their grandmothers. It just happens to have a lesbian sex scene," he explains.
He and British filmmaker Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years) both made their initial marks with LGBT storylines, but no one dubbed Haigh as a "gay filmmaker" before he made 45 Years about a straight couple whose relationship hides a secret that emerges after decades.
"Weekend and The Wise Kids were on the same festival circuit together. We won Best U.S. Feature at Outfest, and Weekend won Best International Feature at Outfest in the same year (2011). So we were both kind of branded, but his movie had premiered at South by Southwest, and my movie had premiered at Outfest, so his movie had already crossed over from the beginning," Cone recalls.
"I've just learned that everyone has their own timing, so I take inspiration from filmmakers like Sean Baker (Tangerine, The Florida Project) who is in his late 40s and has been very slowly ascending for the last 20 years. It's those guys I look to in order to keep going. I'm part of a similar slow-burn ascent."
Some Explaining to Do
Most of Cone's eight movies have been micro-budgeted experimental films featuring talented but unfamiliar actors. Thanks to the success of Henry Gamble's Birthday Party and Princess Cyd, that appears to be changing.
"I'm my own boss. I do not have family money. I've raised all the money from individuals, no grants, no companies. It's been very exhausting, " he says. "I'm ready to move on to chapter two, in which I have partners who will take some of the load from me and put together a larger film with similar quality that will allow me to focus more on directing and less on finding the damn money."
Nonetheless, he, like Miranda, has relatives who haven't followed his work.
"I explained to my dad two weeks ago what it meant to be on Vanity Fair's top 10 of the year list," he says. "My sister's a singer-songwriter (Christina Cone of Frances Cone) who's doing very, very well. We both do a lot of explaining to people back home."
MovieStyle on 12/29/2017