Interview: Vicky Krieps on ‘Went Up the Hill’
When Vicky Krieps first read the script for Went Up the Hill, written by New Zealand-based filmmaker Samuel Van Grinsven, she found herself immediately drawn to the project. “On one level it’s a scary ghost story,” she says. “But on another, it’s like a psycho thriller, almost about psychoanalysis and how we as humans deal with trauma — how we break free from it, how we heal it. In order to heal, you almost have to kill it, or kill something in yourself, or at least fight.”
The film follows Jack (Dacre Montgomery) as he travels to remote New Zealand for the funeral of his estranged mother, Elizabeth. There, he meets her widow, Jill (Krieps), and over the nights that follow, Elizabeth’s spirit begins to possess them in turn. What starts as a search for closure soon unearths deeper wounds. Bound by grief and haunted by what remains, Jack and Jill must break free from Elizabeth’s grasp before she pushes them to the edge.
The decision to explore grief and trauma through the lens of a ghost story was what made Krieps want to be part of the film. “I find it so genius to choose a ghost story to talk about this,” she explains. “Because it does feel like we are all walking around with these ghosts hovering over us. We think we’re free, but there’s all this stuff talking to us and making us be a certain way or another. That was what really drew me internally.”
And then there was the challenge: two actors, three characters, with Krieps and Montgomery sharing Elizabeth in a way no film had quite attempted before. As Elizabeth possesses Jack and Jill’s bodies in order to speak of each of them respectively, there is no outward sign, no visible change that signifies the possession, as is usually seen in possession films. Instead, Van Grinsven, Krieps and Montgomery chose to interpret it through voice, body language and demeanor instead. “It was a journey into the unknown,” she says. “We started knowing we wouldn’t have any crutches — no help from the outside. It would just be us.”
The process became physical and elemental. Working with choreographer Polly Bennett, Krieps and Montgomery explored body energies, and how to create the dynamic between Jack, Jill and Elizabeth. “[Polly] worked with us on the energy of the body,” she recalls. “How we relate to one another, creating the Jill and Elizabeth dynamic, who they were, what they were, how abusive it was, what kind of abuse, which turned out to be too much. Very soon we stopped and we said, ‘We don’t want to do this any longer,’ because we understood really early on what kind of abuse and what kind of darkness it was. Dacre and I just didn’t want to be around it for more than necessary. So we didn’t explore it that much more.”
“We also realized that less is more, and that it’s really just inside us,” she continues. “It’s not the voice. It’s not the body that changes, the face that changes, it’s really understanding Elizabeth inside of us and trusting that what I feel is what he feels without talking. Almost like telepathy, in a way. Trusting that humans can communicate without words in a way. And every day was a new day and a new discovery, and it was just very intense. Almost too much. I know it was a lot for Dacre, definitely, emotionally and physically, but for me too. Because there was nothing, there were not many other characters, there was no script or set or anything. There was just us and us opening ourselves to a third person.”
Krieps has a number of rituals she embarks on when taking on a new role. One of the most intimate ways she builds a character is through scent. “I always have a different scent for all of my roles,” she says. “To my surprise — or good surprise — Dacre had the same ritual. So we knew we needed one for Elizabeth.” She brought two perfumes, one black, one white, created decades ago by a couple who have long since separated. “I thought, wow, that was perfect for Jill and Elizabeth. The scents were intoxicating. We used them and it became incredible — because if you smell something, you know she’s there before you even see her.”
Her portrayal of Jill, meanwhile, is just as layered, even without the spectral presence of Elizabeth. Even though we don’t get to see any of it, Jill feels like her own person outside of her relationship with Elizabeth, thanks to Kriep’s nuanced, incredibly complex performance. “We talked about her weaving, and why someone would weave, what it meant to be in that house alone,” Krieps says. “Early on I brought the idea of her being like a doll, or a puppet. That’s why I removed half of her eyebrows — to me, it was almost like she was Elizabeth’s doll, allowed to be painted happy or sad.”
Although there are no direct flashbacks or recollections, the relationship between Jill and Elizabeth was fraught with tension. Elizabeth, the film heavily implies, was abusive of Jill, taking advantage of her meek nature to extend her control over her. “We don’t talk a lot about lesbian relationships, but there’s a lot of abuse also,” Krieps says. “Humans are humans, and abuse can be mean, ugly, destructive. Between two women it can sometimes become even worse, even more deadly. That was what I was thinking about a lot.” In Jill, she also found something maternal, a nurturing instinct that extended to Jack, complicating the already fractured web of ties between them.
The intensity of the process left its mark, but so did the release. Watching the film with an audience for the first time at its TIFF premiere, Krieps felt a rush of relief. “I was scared I had brought up the wrong idea — you know, here’s Vicky again, remove all digital, go analog, and then it fails,” she admits with a laugh. “But seeing it with people, I knew it worked. It reminded me of what acting is, what making movies is. Like when you were a kid, and you play something and you almost wait for it to go wrong — and then it doesn’t. You think, ‘Ah, cool, it worked.’”
She didn’t expect the resonance the film has found since. “I never expect people to like my films,” she says. “Definitely not this one. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t all my love in it — there was. But I’m very surprised, very humbled, that people relate to it so much. Because so much of it is what we really tried, what we really wanted. The fact that it came across is like a miracle.”
WENT UP THE HILL is now playing in theaters.