Animals is based on Emma Jane Unsworth’s book of the same name, adapted for the screen by Australian director Sophie Hyde. It stars Holliday Grainger and Alia Shawkat as best friends entering their thirties, but who struggle to let go of their wild and carefree 20’s lifestyles. It’s about being forced to grow up, and coming to terms with what you want for yourself. We spoke to Sophie Hyde and Holliday Grainger about the film, which releases in the UK August 2nd.
“When I read the book,” tells Sophie, “I just loved the women in it, I loved the celebration of female friendship, particularly the idea you can have a friendship that doesn’t necessarily last forever. I love their flaws, their desires, and I loved that I hadn’t seen that on the screen before.
“It’s a really fun and pleasurable film, but we’re talking about things that are meaningful to us. Even those women have these pressures – even if they have a different life, those pressures still exist. So trying to work out what you want as a woman is very difficult.”
Explaining how she got involved in the project, Holliday said that “Sophie sent me the book and her film 52 Tuesdays, and a sort of look-book pack… and just her style – her film has such an honesty and integrity, and shows life with such sensitivity. The complexities of life are shown so subtly, and I just knew after reading the book that Sophie was the perfect filmmaker to make this. The book was… I felt like I knew it.”
Sophie echoes the sentiment: “I hope women feel seen, that there’s someone familiar on the screen; I hope they think about their friends and how weird, messy and wonderful those relationships are. I think we’re always asked, ‘What do you want?’ And as women it’s really hard to work out the difference between what we want and what’s expected of us. Just trying to determine that is huge. We have many competing desires, and I hope a film like Animals shows those, and shows somebody struggling to deal with that…
“[In your twenties] You party, but you’re also uncovering who you are together, and there’s a very connected friendship. It’s very physically close, and it sets you up with how intimate you can be with somebody. So for me, I’ve always thought of these relationships as something kind of complex, but really important,” concludes the filmmaker.
Holliday finally adds, “I don’t think the book or the film are very time-specific, it’s a universal and timeless story… There’s a level of empowerment and self-belief that I feel Laura and Tyler have by the end. They know it’s okay to grab at what you want.”
Animals releases August 2nd.