Miranda and Elektra Kilbey by Rory van Millingen

ATTENBERG

Rosie Dalton in conversation with Say Lou Lou

June 2023
Sydney and Stockholm

FILM CLUB —

I first met twin sisters Miranda and Elektra Kilbey many moons ago in Sydney. Having split their childhood between that city and Stockholm, both now reside in California. But when we speak, they are curled up in their mum’s living room in Stockholm and are just beginning their European summer.

So it feels fitting that we have connected again to discuss Athina Rachel Tsangari’s 2010 Greek film Attenberg. A cult independent film produced by Yorgos Lanthimos, it follows a twenty-three-year-old named Marina who is grappling with her father's impending death and navigating her own coming of age in modern Greece.

Elektra and Miranda suggest the film and it becomes a fast favourite. The daughters of Steve Kilbey [from Australian band The Church] and Karin Jansson [from Swedish new wave band Pink Champagne], the sisters have been making music through their project Say Lou Lou for over a decade now. But after a four-year hiatus—in which Elektra explored her career in acting and Miranda gave birth to her son Gio—the twins have recently rekindled their music project and, in it, found a new sense of freedom and creative expression.

In the midst of this creatively fertile time in their lives, we FaceTimed to discuss film, music, motherhood, and more in our Virtual Film Club conversation for JANE.

Rosie Dalton: So Attenberg came out in 2010, but I feel like it has aged really well.
Miranda Kilbey: Oh, it's aged superbly. I feel like people are still, not ripping off, but people are still riffing off that vibe—aesthetically and also story wise.
Elektra Kilbey: I was just saying to Miranda that, when I saw it last time, I had a completely different perception of the film—and that was less than a year ago. Watching it again now, what I realised is that there was a vibe [around this time] when a lot of music videos and ads were in this same vein. Now I understand where that came from, because Yorgos Lanthimos—who directed Dogtooth and [produced] this movie—was introducing this absurdist, surrealist kind of thing.
Miranda: But also hyperreal.
Elketra: Hyperreal and surrealist at the same time. What I'm saying is there was definitely a trend in music videos and ads after films like this. And I didn't know that this movie existed, so now I'm seeing it and realising how everything comes to be. 

How it’s all connected. So do you feel like that was just the moment in time and there were lots of creatives exploring that kind of style, or do you think that this movie directly inspired those music videos?
Elektra: I think this and Dogtooth paved the way for a new style of cinema for sure. I mean, Yorgos Lanthimos is the pioneer of Greek New Wave. 
Miranda: Well, I mean, it's kind of inspired by older styles like Godard too, but definitely in this era—in the 2000s—it represents a new style.
Elektra: And they have something less romantic.
Miranda: Yeah, because [Attenberg] is Greek. It’s set in modern Greece, so it isn't romantic; it’s set in a society that's falling apart. In Italian movies of the 50s and 60s, it was a lot more romantic. 
Elektra: Yeah, totally. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves; we are the sidetrack queens.

No, it's great, I love the sidetrack. I had a Book Club conversation on Just Kids with Neada Deters of LESSE and it was such a beautiful, rambling conversation.
Elektra: Yes, we've met Neada. She's good friends with Chloe Hayward, who is a female director that we’re very close friends with. And when Chloe was pregnant, she was at home a lot watching movies, so I would stay with her in LA and [one day] she said, ‘we should watch this movie Attenberg.’

Wow, what a small world! Well anyway, I think the tangents are what it's all about. Because everyone has a slightly different experience of these texts and films, so it's nice to hear those different perspectives and learn how it intersects with your own creative practice as well.
Elektra: I think that, if I were to give my review, I would say it’s interesting that when I watched Attenberg in America, alongside my friend who was then seven months pregnant, on the big screen and in a beautiful house in LA—the eye of entertainment and capitalism—I saw the movie with completely different eyes than when I was lying on a mattress on the floor, with headphones in my mum's studio apartment in Stockholm. The first time I saw it, to me it was about sexuality and the female body and coming to terms with puberty and, I don't know, a coming-of-age story. Then, watching it now, the only thing I was thinking is that this movie is about Greece. It’s about the collapse of Greece in the 2010s. This is a death letter to Greece and the fall of modern Greece. Two completely different observations. And this time, I saw her father as being the narrator and there are so many beautiful scenes where he's talking about how all we're doing is building ruins. We put buildings upon farms. We went from peasants to building houses, but we skipped the Industrial Revolution and now we’re falling. It's like the bourgeoisie and the modernist death of all this stuff.
Miranda: I feel like he was used as the messenger. His character was kind of like Greece, he was Greece. Or he was the ideologies of Greece. I guess what I love about these kinds of films is that there's so much hidden—there's a story, and then there's a wider story, of course. And I feel like you find one character or one vessel that can explain what the story is. Then all the other things are co-stories that have a similar arc, but that are talking about something very different. In this case, sexuality, his death, and the animal kingdom.

Yeah, it’s very true that her father seems like a vessel for everything Marina is experiencing throughout the film. Because even her coming of age in terms of sexuality is projected onto him when she admits that she imagines him as a man without a penis. Then the two of them acting out David Attenborough documentaries is sort of mirrored throughout her experiences—it's almost like she sees human nature through the eyes of these wild animals. And the fact that he is an architect also allows them to have these poignant conversations, as you said, about how they're designing ruins now and how Greek culture has just totally skipped the Industrial Revolution.
Miranda: I think the way I perceived it—and I have no idea if this is the truth—but I feel like her mother passing away or disappearing really stunted her growth. And that her mother not being there has created some form of void in her, some reluctance to human connection. So, by making sense of her mother's disappearance and her father's loss, she turned to the animal kingdom and found solace in the fact that animals just go about their day, doing these automatic movements and there is no romance or feeling behind it. Like in the first intro scene when [Marina and her friend Bella] are kissing, it's all very technical. She's trying to make sense of the world from that perspective, but she’s so reluctant to feeling. And she gets annoyed with herself when she's feeling things. So I perceived her as someone who has been stunted in their emotional growth.

Yeah, that’s interesting. I do feel like that obsession she has with the documentaries influences the way she then communicates with people. Like in the scene where she is kissing that man in the hotel and starts describing everything that she's doing—it almost reads like a documentary.
Elektra: Yeah, she’s describing it. Like: ‘Now I'm going to put my tongue here’. 
Miranda: I also find it interesting, because I feel like sex and death are so connected and our relationships with all men are similar—whether it's with a father or a love interest—those things are so intertwined for women. And I was saying to Elektra earlier that I noticed and thought it was beautiful how [her dad’s] hospital room was almost identical to [her lover’s] hotel room. There's a window and both of the men would be lying on the bed—one who is naked with an erection and one who is about to die. [There are parallels in] how she is physically moving in that space too. And I thought it was interesting how, once her father had died in the space, she started dancing to ‘Be Bop Kid’ by Suicide.

Oh my gosh, yes, it's so powerful that scene.
Miranda: Because that was also kind of what was happening in the other [parallel] space clip, where they were listening to ‘Surrender’ by the same band. I also love it when he says, ‘You’re too young to listen to Suicide’ and she goes ‘What's your favourite song?’. He says ‘Surrender’, which she says is ‘a bit melodramatic, but it’s okay’.
Elektra: Just riffing off what you were saying, it’s almost like she starts surrendering to feeling and to this man as her father is withering away. He tells her she has to start being with people and she says she doesn’t like people and doesn’t want to be with people. She just wants to be there with him, and he is a man without a penis; just a figure. But as he's withering away, she is realising that she has to take the leap.

Yes, so true. And I think, as you were saying Miranda, it's very much that parallel between creation and destruction, fertility and death. It's like all of these intertwined motifs, which do come up when you're faced with a loved one dying. You start to think about the entirety of their life, and the cycle of life in general. Maybe that's why she finally develops the courage to explore the world and be with people like her father tells her to. Even though she points out that's not how he raised her to be.
Elektra: I think it's almost like he didn't raise her like that because he wanted her to avoid pain, because of the mother. Whether it was that the mother left or the mother died, she became his little companion and he’s realising as he's dying that that wasn't fair.
Miranda: Also I find it interesting that her sending her best friend in to sleep with him is her realising that he isn't a man without a penis. He isn't a ‘fartless’, ‘witless’, ‘spitless’ man. He's just a man and that's okay and she loves him regardless. And as she is realising that he's just a man, he’s also realising that she's a just woman. That she isn't just this robot, emotionless body enacting animal [behaviour]. 

It's almost like she begins by kind of mimicking animal behaviour and then moves on to mimicking human behaviour. It's sort of performative at the start but then, slowly, those boundaries dissolve and it starts to become genuinely how she's experiencing the world.
Miranda: Yes, and then you see, by the end, that she's having sex in a real way right after her dad has died. It’s almost like, in order for her to really become a human, she had to feel the pain and loss of her father dying. That allows her to really come into herself.

Yeah. It's so interesting.
Elektra: I also feel like [this film] is very static. It’s very Square, in many ways, but it's so not boring. We’re so used to, with Netflix and HBO and all these things: eye candy, eye candy, plot, plot, plot, eye candy. Instagram is eye candy, eye candy. And this movie is just letting it be what it is. They barely do close ups and they don't do cuts. It’s just sitting there observing. But it's not boring in the slightest. My eyes weren’t bored. I wasn't uninspired. I wasn't going ‘oh, what's coming next?’
Miranda: There's also very rarely drama in a scene. It’s never like: the character wants to get from A to B in the scene, and this has to happen in order for the character to do this. It's more about the little moments between people that say so much. It’s like her riffing with her dad and saying ‘fartless’. Or she says ‘Marina’ and he’ll say ‘Marina, again’. Or ‘daddy’. It’s those little things that say so much about a relationship and about where her mind is at. And there's not much else happening in the scene other than that, but those little breadcrumbs of their dynamic say so much about where she's at in her development and who the character is. You don't need to have a poignant conversation where she explains her objectives and her dreams. And that's really interesting to bring with us into storytelling, and into any creation: that it doesn't have to be so explained or literal. We have to trust that the audience understands what we're trying to communicate and understands the subtext through things that are real. Like a real nickname or a real gesture. You know, I get it. I don't know exactly how to explain it, but I get it.

Yeah, I think that's one of my favourite things about the film as well. [My husband] Joel and I talk about that all the time, because I find it frustrating when things are over-explained. It’s very common in American cinema in particular; it's like they don't trust the intellect of the audience to leave it up to their imagination. So I liked how little was explained in this film. Like the fact that it's ambiguous what's happened to her mum. I found myself wondering whether she'd left or whether she’d passed away, but it's also beside the point. 
Elektra: We don't even know what the dad's dying from.
Miranda: And we don't really know what her job is, what the story of the town is, or how she met her friend. We don't know who [her lover] is or how old he is, where he's coming from. It doesn't matter.

Yeah, which makes it feel more authentic. Because real life is like that. You meet someone new, and you don't really know their full backstory, but that gradually unravels and reveals itself to you, as your relationship develops. And it develops through little nuances, like the conversations that these characters have that are weird and don't read like the perfectly scripted lines you would hear in lots of other films.
Elektra: Yeah, and sometimes connections can be made through music too. Like in this instance, the reason [that guy] invites her up to the hotel room was because in the car, she was playing a Suicide song. So it can be those little things that connect human beings. I mean, I feel like that's very telling of youth, where you bond over liking the same song. Or, for example, when the girls are walking down the street at night and all these young guys are standing around with their mopeds and they're singing the Françoise Hardy song [‘Tous les Garçons et les Filles’].
Miranda: And they’re wearing those sixties dresses.
Elektra: Yeah, and the guys are looking at them as Françoise Hardy is singing about how everyone else is in love or falling in love. But [Marina] is not that person, and she only knows that song because it literally describes how she feels.
Miranda: Yeah, and it's so cute when she's sitting on the bed playing the bass and she's trying to teach her friend French. 
Elektra: It’s almost like that is not real in the movie. I feel like them walking down the street doing their dances is more like vignettes. Because they're the same and they keep appearing throughout the movie. So it's almost like that's just another time. 

Oh, I wanted to ask your thoughts on those!
Miranda: I feel like those scenes, to draw a connection to Yorgos Lanthimos—who plays her lover—are quite typical [of his style]. That there is almost like a dream sequence or a vignette that keeps recurring throughout the movie but that isn't really part of the movie. It's almost like it's a little symbolic visualisation of the concept of the film. And I find that gorgeous. I love breaking up the idea of reality or of the world or the conceit by adding something that makes you stop and wonder ‘is this really happening in the movie? Why are they dressed up in matching dresses? What is happening?’
Elektra: You just let it go, though. 
Miranda: Yeah, and quite quickly, you just fucking let it go and let that come over you, to give you insight into what the character is going through, without necessarily being what the character is going through.

Yeah, I really loved that.
Elektra: And then it's also interesting because Yorgos Lanthimos, who plays her lover in the hotel, he made [independent] Greek movies to begin with, which were in Greek and with Greek actors. But now he's making movies with some of the most famous people in Hollywood. I mean, The Killing of a Sacred Deer was with Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman. And it's interesting that, despite changing language, changing scenery and country, the essence of his work is the same. I feel like often when Swedish or European directors who have worked in their own language make the transition to America, they get diluted by the language or the culture. But he really has not let that happen. And even when he directed The Favourite—which he didn't write, that's the only movie he’s directed that he didn't actually write—it was the same thing. Which, to me, is like ‘wow, what a director’. Nothing sidetracks him from his vision, not budgets, crew, actors, or language. 

That's amazing, right? And not even the power of the studios, because you often hear that the studios will try to steer people in a particular direction. So you've got to be really strong as a creative to push back against that.
Elektra: It’s super impressive.
Miranda: I also thought it was really cool to see him be such a vulnerable character in this film. It’s cool for someone who isn't an actor, he’s a director, to allow himself to be this extremely vulnerable character on screen. To be, not necessarily impotent, but naked and vulnerable. They're all willing to have interchangeable roles in the creation of film and I think that's cool.

Totally! So back to this idea of vignettes. That filmic technique kind of reminded me of the video for ‘Waiting for a Boy,’ which was the first single you guys released after taking a break from making music together. I feel like there are some beautiful parallels happening in that video as well. And you guys always have such a strong vision in terms of the world of a song—the way it looks, not just the way it sounds. So, do you want to tell me a bit about how that song and video came together—about what the creative process was like and how it feels to be making music together again?
Miranda: Well, we didn't make anything together for about four years and then, when Elektra came back from Australia, where she was shooting Shantaram, we straight away felt like we should do a session.
Elektra: But we had kind of put Say Lou Lou to rest at that point.
Miranda: Yeah, we had no plans of going back into music. 

So what inspired that decision then?
Elektra: I think the distance.
Miranda: Lately we've been talking a lot about the concept of youth being wasted on the young. And our father said something really interesting to us. We have been spending more time with him lately and he came to visit us in California; he just sort of appeared out of nowhere and we were talking about this idea of youth being wasted on the young. That, when you have these opportunities and you have this career when you're young, you're not cognitively or emotionally ready to appreciate it. To be grateful or to go with grace in the situation. You find antagonists everywhere. You see yourself as the protagonist, and you see everyone else as an antagonist on your journey to what you want. And then you realise [that’s not the case] when you're older—and he's a lot older than he was when he started, obviously, he’s almost 70. But it's the same concept, where I just saw everyone and everything around me as a hurdle. As someone who was out to get me or something that was going against me, rather than seeing that the universe was working in my favour. 
Elektra: Well, you're not in an abundance mindset, you're in a scarcity mindset and I think that’s kind of common for your 20s.
Miranda: Yes, you’re seeing what everyone else has versus what you have. And I think it's kind of funny, because at the height of his commercial success and at the height of our commercial success, we were the most unhappy and lost and ungrateful. And not as nice as we could have been to others or to ourselves. So it's been funny, spending time with him now, because he has become humbled by his old age and becoming a grandfather and is now so grateful and chill. He just loves music and loves to talk about it. And I think that we’ve realised that's also been happening to us, slowly but surely. I think that, through you exploring another version of your creativity with acting Elektra, you’ve also realised what a privilege and a joy it has been to be able to do music. 
Elektra: Yeah, I think I realised that when you're solely an actress, you are at the mercy of a director, casting agent, or the industry. You are chosen. You don’t get to choose when you can express yourself, you’re waiting and it's a waiting game. For certain actresses, they don't have to wait long, they just get chosen over and over again. And some actors wait for years in between projects. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. But in music—especially when you have your own band—you get to choose when you're creative. And what I realised from being an actress is that in between, in the moments when I'm not being chosen, I get to choose me and choose to express myself with the band. That’s why, all of a sudden, I’m now so excited about making music, because I get to choose. I get to be in control.

Yeah. And you're also doing it for the love of it and for the creative expression, not just because you feel like it's something you have to do or that you're expected to do.
Elektra: Or because it’s something that’s the only thing I know how to do.
Miranda: I think that has also reminded you that, when something feels like a choice, it feels like you. It's the same thing with relationships, you have to feel like you're choosing your relationship every day. Not just feeling like ‘I'm in this relationship, so I'm going to stay in this relationship.’ It’s about choosing it because you want it. I feel like that is the new energy we have with each other. We don't have to work together; we don't have to be in this band together. We used to have to, because we didn’t know anything else.
Elektra: We didn't know how to survive in the world without each other.
Miranda: Yeah, and I mean this kind of goes back to the film. It's like, we didn't know how to survive in the world without each other or without doing the band. And now we do, but we're going to choose to do it because we want to do it. And I feel like it was with that energy, we went into the studio, after not having written any music together for three or four years. And the first song we wrote was ‘Waiting for a Boy’.

I love it!
Miranda: And so we’re like, if this is the vibe—which is flowing, grateful, humble, present, and also no stakes—then sign me up. It feels easy, it feels fun.
Elektra: And it was the same thing with the video. 
Miranda: Exactly and we were working with people that we have known for years and who were also excited to be a part of this new version of us. So it just felt natural and inevitable in some way, like it was flowing and leading towards this point. 

It seems like a very freeing moment.
Miranda: Yes! And then, in terms of the video and the vignettes, this song has a very clear narrative I think. It's probably the most on-the-nose song we've ever written. And the rest of the album that we're writing is exactly the same. I feel like we used to be very committed to metaphors and meta type storytelling. Thinking ‘I can't write about this guy very clearly, because then he'll know that I wrote that. And I also want to seem deeper. I want to seem more like a real storyteller, where I can tell the story within a story within a story, but really it’s about the guy that fucked me over last week’. So now we’re more like ‘well, this is what happened’ and there's no shame in that. Marina also says that in the movie. She's lying there and goes ‘I'm not embarrassed to say how it is and be authentic’.
Elektra: Yeah, and so back to the vignettes.
Miranda: Yes, anyway, so the song was clearly about what it was about, and we worked [on the video] with our friend and collaborator Zoe Chait. We were straightaway discussing how, in the process of trying to get love, you start focusing more on yourself and your own defects. Like self-improvement: ‘how can I be better or more fit or more attractive or more loveable?’ And then that kind of creates this weird echo chamber, where you start unravelling and losing yourself. So these vignettes were more or less like these three different expressions of a woman trying to perfect herself and then it just kind of spirals out of control in an absurd way.
Elektra: The vignettes are this other reality of a woman trying to clean, perfect, and alter herself to be loved, whilst in the real world you have two musicians who are, at the same time, just trying to deal with a music career and a music video or whatever, who are also texting and trying to thirst trap a guy into texting back.
Miranda: It's like that high-level, low-level kind of concept.

I love those moments where you're pressing your face up against the glass and distorting your image in that way.
Elektra: Yeah, that's the cleaning and self-perfection gone awry to the point where you're just completely surrendering into annihilation of some sort. I don't know if you see it in the video, but she's trying to clean this glass screen and then she's like ‘fuck it, mess, mess, I’m doomed’. 

And so you guys have been working on the rest of the album too. Is that going to come out this year do you think?
Miranda: Yeah, I think it's going to be an EP. Long lead, it’s going to be an album, but I think we're going to start off with an EP. And then we have a bunch of remixes coming out on June 2, which is really cool. Musicians, producers, artists, pop stars, who have done their own remixes of our song, which is really exciting. And then we have another single [‘You’re the One’] coming out in July, with another music video, which is the complete opposite to what we just did. Way more romantic and storytelling, with an indie short kind of vibe.
Elektra: We're just kind of doing everything feels good.
Miranda: Yeah, without trying to have too much of a high-level concept.
Elektra: And then we've written a lot of songs in the past few months. So, we're going to kill some darlings and pick the ones that we love the most and finish them. 

Amazing. I think it's a really cool idea to give over a song to the vision of other creatives and let them interpret it through their own lens. So I'm excited to listen to the remixes. 
Elektra: And also knowing that these three girls, individually, felt they related so much to the song.
Miranda: And they all kind of picked one sentence, or one line from the song that they worked with. Cecile pickled ‘I’m bored by your music’ and then Clea picked ‘I made you dinner’ and that sort of domesticated thing. And then Banoffee wanted to make it into a dance floor anthem. So she took it in a majorly different direction.
Elektra: It was sort of like channelling heartbreak in three different ways: sexy, depressing, and dance floor.
Miranda: So, yeah, and then early July we put out the new single and a new visual treat. Then, our plan is to put out the next single—the lead single from the EP—in September and just keep going and keep loving it. I know that it's such a buzzword, but just keep being grateful.

Music is so powerful! I feel like it's very special that you guys are able to create that together and just have fun with your freedom of creative expression through that medium.
Elektra: Yeah, I feel like every time I'm in the studio now and every time we're writing or recording, I honestly just feel like, ‘wow, I get to do this for a living. And I have for so many years’. That truly is a blessing. I didn't used to see it that way because of my own immaturity, but I really do feel that it's a blessing. And I'm also grateful for our family and our parents, that that opportunity was given to us and encouraged in us. They showed us that it was something you can actually do as a life.
Miranda: Yeah, I mean I don't really know how to do anything else. I believe in myself that I could do other things and I probably will. But I do feel like music is one of the things that I know how to do.
Elektra: Sometimes I feel like my way of seeing the world means that when I get subjected to a lot of routine, or I’m around people who have very routine lives, I feel like a failure. And I feel like the odd one out, pretending like I can assimilate to that. But deep down inside, I'm screaming [because] I hate routine. How could you possibly know what you’ll feel tomorrow? Even with child rearing and being around a lot of people with children, I worry for myself that when I have a child, I won’t be able to keep a routine and keep the same thing going on every day.

But I also feel like every parent is different and every child is different. You don’t always necessarily have to follow a rigid routine. And probably being okay with change is a good thing. I mean, this is something I’ve found as a fellow Gemini is that being okay with adapting to things changing has been a blessing in motherhood, because even if you do have certain routines in place, those routines change all the time. Your child is growing and suddenly their nap schedule shifts completely, so you have to be able to just go with the flow of that. 
Miranda: I also feel like finding the things that you can control is important. Like if having your coffee a certain way, or doing your writing in the morning, or doing your face massage, or whatever it is that you're doing—those little things that you can control—if you can keep them on a routine, then yes, everything else in the world will change and everything else will go up and down, but you can find a little sense rhythm. I've noticed that a lot with our father. He has been touring constantly for the last forty years, but he still has his routine every day, which he does wherever he is. He does his yoga, he does his meditation, he does his reading, no matter where he is. And I feel like that is, for a changing world and with children or music or whatever, if you can find those little things that are your tokens, your constants, then you can survive anything.

Yeah, I feel like my dad is exactly the same actually. He has always worked for himself, but he has those little anchors throughout his day that are always the same, even though every day looks really different. I think that’s true of any creative practice really, because each day is often so different. But if you have those little anchors, it sort of establishes a feeling of routine, even if the whole day doesn’t follow a particular routine. And I was going to say Miranda that I feel like motherhood is one of the most creative things of all—creating life and giving birth. I have felt so creatively inspired since becoming a mum. And you were saying before that music is all you know how to do, but I feel like you have also been through this different kind of creative journey over the past few years. So it's really interesting that you’ve both had that. You stepped away from making music together and embarked on these different creative paths, then you came back to the creative practice of making music together because it's fun and an enjoyable thing to do.
Miranda: Yeah, I mean of course becoming a mother has probably been the most strange and bewildering and creative journey that I've been on. It’s humbling to say the least. And also, there's nothing that makes me more grateful than being through the first year of motherhood. Because you undeniably have to get some perspective on what's important and what you have time for. Health and very practical things become extremely important. So yeah, absolutely, it's hard not to come out of it feeling humbled. I also feel very humbled by the human body and by the rhythm of nature and sort of surrendering to those rhythms of nature and the body—going back to the movie.
Elektra: Seeing as [Gio] is Miranda’s child and not my child, but me being somewhat of a co-parent in a way, [I’ve noticed that] because a child takes up most of your day and their needs are higher in the hierarchy, [it means] that when you do have moments to yourself, you take those moments a lot more seriously. So all of a sudden now, whenever I'm doing something, like if I'm on a plane or on the bus, I appreciate it. Miranda and a few other friends who have had babies recently all say to me ‘savour every moment you have’. So now when I sit on a plane and I’m so uncomfortable, I think of my girlfriends and think ‘How can I make this a deluxe moment for Elektra?’ So I’ll order a glass of wine and sit down with my notebook to start writing lyrics or a short story. And I have the best time. Even walking down the street somewhere, in every moment I’m so excited to just be. But, at the same time, I’m looking forward to motherhood so much.
Miranda: Elektra was in Paris a few months ago and then she was in London, doing this solo Euro trip. And I was really like ‘Elektra, enjoy every glass of wine, enjoy every moment.’ Then, on my end, [I’ve also realised] that we don't have time to procrastinate. We just need to finish what we need to finish because time is finite. 

On that note, are you guys in Stockholm at the moment for work?
Miranda: We’re in Stockholm seeing family and also for meetings. Now, post pandemic, we’re trying to find a flow of coming here. And then we're going to be Euro-tripping a little bit for the next few months. We’re going to Paris, Italy, and London.

Amazing! Well, thank you for introducing me to this wonderful film. It's been such a pleasure to finally watch it. Just before we wrap up, do you guys have a favourite scene, moment, or exchange in the film? I think one of mine is the vignette of the girls walking arm-in-arm, dancing to Françoise Hardy. 
Elektra: That’s probably one of the most iconic moments from the film. But I do think that the scene with the most power is the one where Marina is standing on the rooftop with her father and talking about the building of ruins. That was probably, in terms of the writing, the most impactful scene for me.
Miranda: And for me, it was her dancing in the room when her dad has just died. Because it’s so counterintuitive that you would put on ‘Be Bop Kid’ when your dad dies. But that was just her way of processing and coming to terms with it. 

fin.

Attenberg is available to stream via Mubi

The video for ‘You’re the One’ dropped this month
and you can follow Say Lou Lou on Apple Music or Spotify for upcoming releases

 
Photographs by Rory van Millingen
Fashion by Alexis Asquith