Norwegian director Mona Fastvold is the first Scandinavian filmmaker commissioned to make a short film for Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales. With Discipline, she explores structure and girlhood within the confines of a boarding school in Northern Italy. We speak to Fastvold about the power of clothing, working with puppets and her own uniform
For Norwegian writer-director Mona Fastvold, clothes are crucial. Not only on screen (“A costume has to carry the history of a character,” she notes), but in life. “People say, ‘Oh, I’m not interested in fashion’,” she says, inadvertently calling back to an iconic scene in The Devil Wears Prada. “But everyone is interested in fashion. We all wear clothes, and it’s always a choice what you’re wearing. For me, it’s also crucial because it affects how you’re sitting and standing, how you are being perceived and how it feels on your body as well.” In her films – most recently, the bombastic Shaker Movement musical drama The Testament of Ann Lee – costumes are “a big part of character building”. No detail is overlooked, down to the subtle distressing of a sleeve. “I take great pleasure in it, too,” she says. “I’m an aesthete. I love, love obsessive, beautifully made things.”
BTS from 'Discipline' by Mona Fastvold for Miu Miu Women's Tales . Photo: M+M productions - courtesy of Miu Miu
And so, her latest project, taken on amidst the promotion of The Testament of Ann Lee, was a pure delight. Conceived, written and directed by Fastvold, Discipline is the 31st short film in Women’s Tales, Miu Miu’s 16-year project in which female directors from all over the globe are given a set budget and free reign to bring a story (or in Fastvold’s case, a “tone poem”) to screen. Joining a roster of previous participants that includes Lynn Ramsay, Miranda July and Chloë Sevigny, Fastvold is the first Scandinavian filmmaker to be commissioned for Women’s Tales.
For Fastvold, whose relationship with Miu Miu and Prada well predates this project (she can often be spotted wearing both Milanese houses' looks on red carpets and describes her relationship with Miuccia Prada as one long “wonderful conversation”), taking on the project was a “no-brainer”. “It’s so wonderful to do something truly creative,” she says, noting that she brought all of her collaborators from her recent feature along for the ride. “It was just really nice for all of us to take a little break and do something truly creative and playful together.” It’s telling that Fastvold, a woman who is never not working and is also raising a 11-year-old daughter with her partner and fellow filmmaker Brady Corbet, sees creating a short film as a “break”.