An Interview with Bloomington Director Fernanda Cardoso

name names—though I could!—but it does make me wonder, why doesn’t anyone go pick on them? Yes, certainly, Jackie had this awful, absent mother; so it’s going to make sense for her to find satisfaction when she finds that somewhere else.

Vp: There’s also such deliberate exploration of Jackie looking for connections outside of her peer group; she’s shown feeling alienated from people her own age, she’s never really been to school…

FC: Definitely, yes. I’ve always been interested in those sorts of “fish out of water” stories, whether romantic or not, where you end up exploring these makeshift families where you’re missing something at home and you go searching for it in the world…that attracts me very much as a storyteller.

Vp: I think that definitely comes across in the narrative. Another thing that really surprised me in the film was how quickly Jackie and Catherine jumped into bed together. They really almost skipped over “phase one” of the relationship completely—you know, the flirting and seduction period—it was over in, like, a nanosecond. They have one conversation, and then they jump into bed. Did that feel rushed at all to you? Did you have to condense it for some practical purpose, or was that, again, just how the story came out?

FC: Well, yes, it was just how the story came out. I’ve had people email me and ask, “Was it because you ran out of money?” [Laughs] But, no. Look, what I really wanted to do as a director with this movie was to tell a story about two people who connect through a physical attraction; they sleep together, then they fall in love. Whether I accomplished that or not, I don’t know—but that was the story I wanted to tell.

I do see that it bothers a lot of people, but…if you look at Catherine’s story, she has a lot of flings and one-night stands, and then she usually gets people out of her life very fast. It just happens that with Jackie, she found something new…something that she was really looking for…but if you ask me, I don’t think Catherine realized that was what she was looking for at the outset. And, I mean, I totally respect people’s opinion when they say they don’t like that—but, did I invent the concept of the one-night stand? I don’t think so! People do