Mimi Cave was only in post-production on her debut feature — the 2022 horror film “Fresh,” with Sebastian Stan and Daisy Edgar-Jones — when she was approached about directing Nicole Kidman in “Holland,” a screenplay by Andrew Sodorski that had been bouncing around the industry since it first appeared on the Black List in 2013. (Naomi Watts and Bryan Cranston were initially attached to the film, but it fell apart.) Having grown up in a suburb of Chicago, she was familiar with the film’s setting of Holland, Michigan, and she felt like she knew the film’s characters from her time there.
“The town I grew up in was not too dissimilar from Holland, so I just felt a real kinship with them,” she says.
Kidman, who also produced the film through her company Blossom Films, plays Nancy Vandergroot, a high school home economics teacher in Holland who suspects her optometrist husband, Fred (Matthew Macfadyen) is having an affair. So she conscripts the school’s shop teacher, Dave Delgado (Gael García Bernal), to help her investigate him, even though she doesn’t really have much proof beyond her intuition — so the audience is left unsure about what is really driving her certainty that Fred is being unfaithful.
In advance of the film’s premiere at the SXSW Film & Television Festival (it debuts on Prime Video on March 27), Cave discusses her connection to the material, why she chose to set the film in 2000, the importance of staying ahead of the audience, and her experiences working with Kidman.
Jaclyn Martinez / Prime Video
How did this project first come to your attention?
I was in the middle of editing “Fresh,” and it was sent to me through my agent. I knew a little bit about the history of it and how it had tried to have a couple of different lives. And, for some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
What about the script that really struck you?
It was really more about my connection to the story. I grew up outside of Chicago. I grew up going to Holland — I had a vague memory of it, but I also had a familiarity with the characters and the lifestyle they had. The town I grew up in was not too dissimilar from Holland, so I just felt a real kinship with them. I really could understand the way they spoke and how they functioned in their little town. When you’re not writing the script, you’re looking for your entry way, and that was something that kept coming back to me.
The script, when it was written back in 2013, it was set at present day, and I chose to set it back to 2000 because it felt to me like some of the themes they were dealing with, in terms of like Dave feeling like an outsider, felt more of that time. Also, I was able to relate to that period a little bit more since I left the Midwest around 2002.
What did setting the story in 2000 provide for the movie?
There was a lot of her unfolding everything that happens, to have to go to the library, going to Ask Jeeves or whatever, and it’s a slow dial-up [connection] — the slowness of needing urgent information just added a tension to it that felt fun. It felt cinematic. It was more visually interesting for me, and gave something for the actors to dive into maybe something they knew in the past, but hadn’t lived in that way in a long time.
Did you attempt to film in Holland?
We did film a couple days in Holland, Michigan. We had originally wanted to film the final scene, the Tulip Time parade, on the main street recreated exactly, and it just became difficult. We ended up finding this amazing little town called Clarksville, Tennessee, and we really kind of took over the town. I think it ended up fitting better, in a weird way, because the Holland we created was an elevated, more surreal version of Holland, Michigan.
Without spoiling anything, the movie has to walk a tricky line about keeping the audience unsure whether Nancy’s suspicions are valid or just all in her head — I thought both multiple times throughout. How do you calibrate that kind of storytelling as a director?
It’s a lot of instinctual choices and consistently checking in with the audience point of view. How am I experiencing this story? What would I find fun here but frustrating, or what would cause me to lean in? Also tracking Nancy’s character and the choices she’s making, and that feeling of well, we’re goin to write her off or call her crazy. Hopefully, there’s a moment in the movie where you don’t know who to believe and at the moment of the parade, it could go in any which way.
Nicole Kidman was also a major producer on the film — how did that work for you, between talking with her as a producer versus as an actor?
With her, she’s a dramaturge — really, really sharp. She has studied more scripts than any of us. Before shooting, she’s involved, not in a heavy handed way, but in a way that’s pinpoint surgical, looking at what could be helpful in the script. As an actress, she’s very interested in what the director wants, so the moment we start shooting, she steps back from the producer role and really allows herself to be caught up in the actual role. You’re getting lightning in a bottle. She has to stay available, spiritually, physically, emotionally, to play the character. Snd then once we come into post-production, she’s back into producer mode.
What were your conversations with her like on set?
I think there were three days she wasn’t there. But with the whole cast, it’s more about me getting out of their way. I take a lot of pride in setting up a set culture that’s safe and comfortable and allows people to take risks. That means everyone on set — the whole crew is on board with that, and we hold space for that.
Your first movie, “Fresh,” premiered at Sundance. What was it about SXSW that made this the festival that worked for this movie?
With the writers strike of last year, everything got all moved around. Who knows if that hadn’t happened, if it would be different. But my hope is that the experience of watching this is a fun escape from everyday life, and you can just jump into the movie and let yourself get carried into it and not ask too many questions. So South By has that fun, irreverent energy to it. I’ve been there a few times for smaller things, and it’s an audience that’s really open to different types of experiences. There’s not a lot of pretension at South By, it’s just people who are ready to to enjoy the cinema.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
From Variety US