Baker’s initial plan to simply produce alongside Johnson proved unsatisfying after he read the book and found himself ensnared. The idea of adapting Breath first came to producer Mark Johnson, who thought of Baker for the character of Sando, based on his heritage, history and love of surfing. (“I gently throttled her,” remembers Pikelet, as an older man in Winton’s book.) He put a number of other sex scenes aside, while toning down the ferocity with which Pikelet takes to his task. But for the film, Baker edited the sequences elliptically, not showing much at all. In the novel, Eva’s asphyxiophilia – or arousal through oxygen deprivation – is written as an eye-watering blow-by-blow account, with Pikelet describing the “evil, crinkly sound of the bag and the smeary film of her breath inside it”.
It confronts male identity and has its protagonist reckon with a fear of ordinariness and a very confused sexual awakening.īut in WA – where Winton lives and where nine of his texts are on the year 12 syllabus – Breath is known for one thing specifically: Eva’s dangerous infatuation with breath play, a taboo act that requires Pikelet to strangle or suffocate her during sex. Having been written by Winton, the novel has plenty of local lingo – “ducks nuts” gets a guernsey twice – and reflects warmly yet solemnly on the loss of innocence. She later raises the stakes in a manner that gives grave meaning to the title, pulling out a pink plastic bag and strap for Pikelet to affix to her head. When Sando and Loonie head off on a surfing adventure without Pikelet, the teen finds comfort in Eva’s bed. Coulter and Spence were both amateur actors selected for their surfing ability, captured stunningly by water cinematographer Rick Rifici. It follows Pikelet (Samson Coulter) and Loonie (Ben Spence) over a formative few years as they get taken in under the wing of the ageing surf legend Sando (Baker), and grow enraptured with Sando’s troubled wife, Eva (Elizabeth Debicki). Set in 1970s Western Australia and shot in the coastal town of Denmark, Baker’s flick hews closely to Winton’s text.
That’s where being the director is a bit more interesting, because you can flush out the nuance and the detail.” “Often it doesn’t matter how much you bring to it it’s just going to become what it is. Diplomatically, he doesn’t point fingers. “A lot of the roles that I’ve played, where they’re – on paper – only two dimensional they’re not that rich, it’s because they’re generally devices,” he explains.
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