Feature by Will Davis
Snow Cake is directed by Welshman Marc Evans, who directed My Little Eye and Resurrection Man. He was the immediate first choice of producer Gina Carter (Heartlands, Bright Young Things):
‘I just immediately fell in love with the script and wanted to do it. And my very first thought was Marc. I went back the next day and had a meeting with Andrew. We talked about the script… Andrew asked me who did I think could direct it, and I said Marc. And Andrew said totally, Marc.’
Evans was very privileged indeed to be offered the helm:
‘I felt like this script was really a gift, that I had to look after it and not mess it up. Its got a real humanity to it.’
Carter concludes:
‘Whatever my original vision for the film was, what I’ve got is way beyond any vision I could have wished for.’
Snow Cake is Angela Pell’s first script, and incredibly was written in just two days. Pell decided to draw from her own experience with her seven-year-old son’s autism:
‘I did take on y own experience, because I live with autism and it is such a wonderful, surreal experience day to day. Thought that to put somebody in that situation would be such a great, fish-out-of-water story.’
The story of Snow Cake sees Alex, a cynical Brit coming to snowy Wawa to console the mother of a dead teenage girl to whom he gave a life just before the accident that killed her. He meets Linda, an autistic woman with a love of snow and sparkles:
‘From what I see of my son and from talking to other people, they (people with autism) actually experience life on a very heightened plane.’
The challenging role of Linda eventually went to Sigourney Weaver, who became involved in the project at the instigation of Alan Rickman, who plays Alex:
‘The dynamic between Alex and Linda is such an interesting one because he’s roamed the world and she’s always been in this house and this backyard and this little town. But I think in an odd way, they kind of surprise and give each other so much. She learns a lot from Alex and he learns a lot from her. It becomes a very interesting kind of “odd couple” situation for them.’
On the postponement of the production Weaver says:
‘I feel relieved that our production was postponed because in the end, I had almost a year to research this and I really needed that much (time).’
Weaver threw herself into researching the role, spending days at a specialist institute for autistic people and even living with one woman with autism for a number of days:
‘I just think often when you’re with someone on the spectrum, what they present to you is quite different from the way they are in private. This woman was generous enough to let me see both sides, or all the sides.’
On her character Weaver observes:
‘She (Linda) was refreshingly frank, she is very straightforward, up front about her feelings about things, (and) I think looks down on neuro-typical people as people who waste a lot of time with all this social rubbish.’
The set design was very important to Weaver, having come to understand that Linda’s obsession with sparkly objects was key to her motivation as a character:
‘Linda’s house was completely inspired by Temple Grandlin, who’s a very well known woman with autism in the States… she sat down with me and was the first person who told me about Wilson Bentley who’s obsessed with snow flakes and she said “you have to have a lot of snow flakes and sparkly things hanging around”. And I have all that information to our director Marc Evans and we have a wonderful set designer (Matthew Davies). It’s a totally sparkly set, I mean it’s heaven for Linda to be in that world.’
Autism, she explains, can be very varied, and there are many behavioural traits shared by both those who have it and those who don’t:
‘We all rock, we all bite our fingers. I’m quite shy, so when I read about Linda not wanting 300 people at her house, I can really relate! The thing I understood quite quickly is that we’re all on a spectrum.’
Weaver was particularly impressed by Pell’s empathetic portrayal of autism:
‘I think that’s what moved me most. It did not in any way try to oversimplify the situation and what that person is up against, although some of it is funny and there is a lot of joy in the script for Linda in the snow, and in the snowflakes. I don’t think it in any way underestimates the pain of what it must be like to have autism.’
Carrie-Anne Moss, who plays Linda’s neighbour, Maggie, agrees and believes the story offers a unique exploration of autism:
‘It’s going to be an education to people on one level, but it’s hugely entertaining and very funny and touching as well… I can only imagine that this story will give some people a lot of peace, people that are living with autism. There is something very conscious in this story about the experience of autism that takes it from the observer thinking “oh what a drag” to “maybe there’s something more to the experience than it being all bad and tragic.”’
Shot in Wawa, where the story is set, the film was supposed to be full of snowy images, but freak weather conditions meant that snow was in fact hard to come by. Weaver concludes:
‘I always imagined Linda’s world to be like a snow globe where the snow was plentiful and pure and went for miles. And of course we had just pathetic piles of snow and sometimes it wasn’t always clean! I felt like hanging onto the little remnants of snow that were left was much more real. I don’t think Linda differentiates between good snow and bad snow. It’s all snow and she loves it all. In an odd way, something we tried to avoid – lack of snow – ended up working for us.’
Source: production notes
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