All the Dirty Little Secrets: Halina Reijn Digs Up Bodies Bodies Bodies

Halina Reijn (l) on the set of Bodies Bodies Bodies with stars Amandla Stenberg and Pete Davidson (Image Courtesy of A24 Films)

When a director makes a film, the most obvious first question is, "Why this movie?" In the case of Halina Reijn, director of slippery Gen Z whodunnit Bodies Bodies Bodies, the question its slightly different: why this movie, and not a play?

While American audiences may know her from from films like Paul Verhoeven's Black Book or Bryan Singer's World War II drama, Valkyrie, in her native Holland she is equally well known for her stage work. She's a member of the prestigious Toneelgroep Amsterdam and a long-time collaborator with its Tony- and Laurence Olivier-Award-winning director, Ivo van Hove, "who - in my opinion but I'm completely brainwashed by him - is the most brilliant director in the world."

Hove, she admitted, has encouraged her to direct, and a decade ago she started circling a stage production of A Doll's House, "which is my favorite play beside Hedda Gabler." Enter another van Hove regular, director Thibaut Delpeut, who wanted to direct the play with Reijn as Nora, the lead part. "Ivo was like, 'What do you want, do you want to direct it or do you want to play it?' and I go, 'No, I'll play it.'"

But that was one part, a decade ago. In the meanwhile, Reijn has directed two films, but still not made the transition from stage actor to stage director. "Theatre is my religion," she said, "and I just didn't dare any more. I looked up to it so much. Film, which is also a medium I look up to, I'm a little more naive, and I thought my naivety might be my weapon."

She made her first film, 2019's Instinct, "on an impulse. ... It felt less heavy than to go into the theatre." Now her follow-up, Bodies Bodies Bodies, has taken her behind the camera for a second time. So, back to that first question: why this film?

"It is kind of surprising," she said, "especially to people who have witnessed my career until now." What initially intrigued her about the initial script by Kristen Roupenian was the game at the center of the film, a version of the old party favorite of Mafia, where the players have to guess the killer. "I used to play that a lot, she said (unlike in Bodies Bodies Bodies where the killing is literal, as a group of affluent 20-something turn on each other after discovering a corpse).

However, it was also an opportunity to work with distributor A24, which she called "a dream. They kept talking to me, and I was like, 'Eh, I don't know, but if I were you I would do it like Mean Girls meets Lord of the Flies, make it more into a Chekhov ensemble piece, make it more about group behavior,' [and] then they went, 'Well, why don't you do a rewrite with someone?'" So Reijn worked with Pulitzer-finalist Sarah DeLappe (The Wolves) on a new draft "and that's how it evolved.

Coda: van Hove may finally get his wish and, if anything, the experience of directing movies may finally be what brings her to the stage as a director. "Literally yesterday I met with my team, and I did say, 'Listen, guys,' I'm gonna direct theatre. That's my dream.'"

Halina Reijn (l) on the set of Bodies Bodies Bodies witb stars Maria Bakalova and Amandla Stenberg. (Image Courtesy of A24 Films)

Austin Chronicle: You mentioned Lord of the Flies, and I remember talking with Amanda Kramer about her film Ladyworld and this idea that you couldn't make a version of it with women because women wouldn't turn on each other like that - and her response was that, no, women would turn on each other, just in a different way.

Halina Reijn: Of course. There is a great new time, and we still have to do a lot of work to make everything more inclusive, but I do feel that, as women, we get a little more space.

My first role was Ophelia, and I watched the boy version of me play Hamlet. I had five scenes and I was dead already, and he was constantly on stage asking, "To be or not to be," and I was asking, "Jeez, where's my Hamlet?" My stage life, with a few exceptions, I'm serving men, and even though I'm considered to be Ivo's muse and Ivo's most important actress, at the same time, all these classical plays, it's just how they're written.

So now we have more space, I want to look into our weaknesses, our darknesses. I'm not interested in us as heroes. I don't care. I want to look at, "Why am I so twisted? Why do I want to be a little girl when I'm with a guy, but a boss when I'm at work?" ... The idea that women are holy figures - that we’re the virgin or the mother - is a male-based idea. We are evil too.

I enjoyed doing this film, making all these characters - likable is a stupid word - but not necessarily unlikable. We're all beasts, and we're all innocent too, at the same time. All of us. It's very dangerous to think you can divide the world into good people and bad people, and that goes for everyone.

AC: My favorite character is Jordan: at the beginning she's absolutely unlikable, she's hostile, she's short-tempered, she's just constantly trying to cause trouble, but the more you go on the more you think, "Hang on, is the one I hate in the right?"

HR: People call it a parody, but I feel like when I see myself or my friends or people at a Christmas dinner, we all change. We all think, 'Oh, I'm going to be with my family, it's going to be lovely.' No. It's always so horrible, and things come out of us that we don't expect and we don't want to come out of us, but it just comes out when we are in the pressure cooker of suddenly having to spend time together.

I'm gonna tell you this, because I think it's too funny. There was a news report about my country saying the rivers are dry because of the heat, and another Dutch person tweets, "Yeah, Halina Reijn has been dry for longer." ... Basically, my country, they don't give a shit about success. If you could hear what everyone's saying about you - and, as a famous person, sometimes you can - that's very horrible. I find that making a movie about that is kind of an exorcism. It's not so much about creating likable characters, it's about the thrill of watching characters that are relatable - although, of course, we take it a little bit over the edge.

The cast of Bodies Bodies Bodies on set (left to right: Myha'la Herrold, Amandla Stenberg, Pete Davidson, Lee Pace, Maria Bakalova, Rachel Sennott, and Chase Sui Wonder) (Image Courtesy of A24 Films)

AC: The location of this rambling house in the woods pulls triple-duty here. The great whodunnits always happen in a remote mansion, while most slashers rely on remoteness. At the same time, it's like the rural estates and villas that Ibsen and Chekhov loved to use as setting. Those Chekhovian elements really connect to your body of work, and to this idea that there's an affluent American middle class youth that is basically a new aristocracy.

HR: It's true. Here there is much more class system than in the countries we come from...

AC: Although Americans will tell you there is not.

HR: (Laughs) I know! Of course you know it in the back of your head but, fuck, if I had been born here, what would have been my chances? My parents were radical hippies and they thought it was cool to be very poor. They glorified it! They had no money! They didn't like money! But if they had done that here they would never have had access to education in the way I did. I had an elite education, and a big career because of it, but going into the research here, that made me very much aware of how it all works.

Of course, slasher films, I researched them and I saw them, but it's not in my DNA. What's in my DNA is all these Chekhovs and their summer houses, and I've played a lot of them. And I love anything in one location, because it reminds me of the theatre.

Bodies Bodies Bodies is in theatres now from A24 Films. Find showtimes and our review here.