Stephanie LaCava, Isaac Hoff, and Tess Sahara’s “Based On, If Any”

“Based On, If Any” is the first collaboration between Stephanie LaCava, Tess Sahara, and Isaac Hoff, but the way they communicate feels intimate: like they’re reading each other’s minds. The trio came together to direct a short film that follows a duo. Beyond that, it’s not a piece they feel requires much context. Shot on film, and coming in just under five minutes, the short stars a version of Tess and a version of Stephanie. Their roles are sometimes reversed, but I’ll let you figure out how and when. The coats the characters wear suggest it’s winter, but of course we can’t be sure, because in film, seasons are easy to fake. 

It’s one of the few recent films I’ve felt compelled to watch several times in one sitting. Don’t miss your chance to see it once on a big screen.

“Based On, If Any” will be screening as part of the Mezzanine series alongside Catherine Breillat’s 36 Fillette on February 15th at Brain Dead Studios in Fairfax.

Jesy Odio: “Based On, If Any”  fragments the script, the image and sounds as all separate elements. As a team, what came first?

Tess, Isaac and Stephanie: The script was written first, but it was very loose. We were interested in the kind of movies that came from directors deciding to write novels instead of standard screenplays (Breillat, Dumont are extreme examples.) This idea that maybe there was no screenplay. There was only image, and then sound and its interplay with image & then music came later. 

And which one is the most reliable?

I’m not sure any are — least of all our narrator. 

Discuss the pigeons in the film. We watch the birds at first at large and loose. We then watch one singular bird captured by Tess and Leigh.

The original reference for the pigeons is from Claude Miller’s 1967 short “Juliette in Paris.” It became a kind of running joke thereafter — a sort of history of pigeons on film— everything from Cindy Sherman’s early work to the news item about Michael Bay killing a pigeon on set. We like this play between high and low. Pigeons are supreme here.

The piece captures very few interior scenes. Much like the characters, there is a lot of exposure to exteriors, facades and simulations. What was the intention there?

I think there is a definite rally against interior spaces, and the ones shown are extremely coded: leopard carpeting, for example, and then the frames which reveal only mirror and reflection. Instead, this is a world of scaffolding, being trapped outside—not wanting to go in— uncertainty of domestic constraints. She's manically walking through a kitsch Manhattan we've seen countless times on screen- there's a delirium to that notion of constant reproduction across mediums. From 16mm to DCP to Instagram screenshot. 

The color red, so beautifully shot in film and saturated in a bright hue in post. There’s red lipstick and there’s the red scarf connecting our two subjects. What do you see in this color in the film?

Red is also kind of a resistance color, no? And lends itself to sensuality— especially in this illumination. 

There is no sense of maternity in this piece but there’s a notion of the mother as a motif. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Again, an attempt to agitate societal ideas on there being only two sorts of women: why must the mother be classic maternal— also the reverse caretaking. The initial text about the casual affair with the concert pianist being seen differently by the two parties and producing a child into the world.

Tess is not actually played by Tess. And Tess is missing but Tess is also the one speaking. I’d love to hear your thoughts about how film often captures absence and doubleness, being present and absent.

The doubling, the uncanny— the Beckettian mix was all part of it. Also the shadow self of psychological work and the implicit egotism of association by naming/claiming a character, an actress, a person. 

Some of the voice over was originally written in viewing with Marguerite Duras’ Nathalie Granger. What do you see as the connection between these two works?

Nathalie Granger is about two women in their domestic space — and their rebellious daughter. This short film is very much borrowing from Duras’ preoccupation but there was also a motivation to re-contextualize the text and to reframe its meaning.