In this interview, Lithuanian writer-director Marija Kavtaradze discusses her film Slow.
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Lithuanian writer-director Marija Kavtaradze’s second feature, Slow, is a tender, crushing film about two people in love who struggle to make their relationship work. Elena (Greta Grineviciute) and Dovydas (Kestutis Cicenas) are instantly smitten with each other but run into a roadblock when Dovydas clarifies that he’s asexual.
Kavtaradze told me that while writing, she “felt that [both characters] have this deep belief that they aren’t lovable, which they trigger even more in each other. [Elena] thinks, “Of course, he doesn’t desire me because I’m not lovable.” [Dovydas] thinks, “I can’t give her what she wants. I’m not enough.” If they could overcome their insecurities and preconceived notions about how a relationship should look, they might see alternate paths forward; instead, they try and fail to please each other while frequently neglecting their own needs.
Elena, a dancer, craves physical touch and desperately wants to feel sexually desired by her partner. To demonstrate this, Kavtaradze often depicts her body in closeup — during a massage, while dancing, as she socializes with friends. She uses touch and movement to express her feelings, so trusting Dovydas’s divergent love language is difficult.
Conflicting needs challenge the central relationship in Marija Kavtaradze’s film Slow
There’s also an element of body insecurity that becomes evident in a revealing scene at Elena’s mother’s house. After years of criticism from a cold parent, it’s no wonder Elena seeks validation as an adult and can’t accept that Dovydas’s lack of sexual interest is not a negative reflection on her.
In many ways, Dovydas is an excellent match for Elena. He’s emotionally intelligent, patient, and supportive. There are many lovely moments where he holds her hand or snuggles with her in bed. He does everything he can to show that he values her needs and is willing to compromise. However, he never explicitly states his boundaries regarding sex, which is probably why Elena is sometimes confused about his approach. My read is that Dovydas is open to having sex; it’s just not something he innately desires. Elena picks up on this, and her insecurities go into overdrive
During their second conversation, Dovdyas tells Elena that he learned sign language and ultimately became an interpreter because his asshole parents refused to help his deaf brother. They didn’t want him to learn ASL in hopes that he might conform to their hearing norms. Considering this ignorant approach, it’s not difficult to imagine them flippantly reacting to Dovydas’s asexuality as if it’s just a phase and not a core part of his identity.
Kavtaradze carefully considers her characters’ psychology in the film Slow
Given their respective childhoods, Dovydas and Elena harbour shame over their needs and thus struggle to express them. Without clear communication, they inadvertently trigger feelings of inadequacy in each other. When Elena initiates physical intimacy, Dovydas tries to accommodate, but she can’t get over his lack of passion. Her rejection makes Dovydas believe that no matter how hard he tries, he is innately incapable of pleasing her. This constant tension creates a cycle of unexpressed expectations and disappointments.
Despite the couple’s issues, Kavtaradze continuously emphasizes their bond with her blocking and shot selections, urging the viewer to carefully consider what’s preventing Elena and Dovydas from being together. Toward the end of the film, there’s a scene where they flirt in closeup as music thrums softly in the background. When the camera cuts to a medium shot, we see that they’re sitting at a table in front of a mirror in the middle of a crowded bar. Dovydas stands with his back to the camera, his face reflected in the mirror.
He backs away from Elena, who stays at the table, and they both sway to the music. As he moves further away, his reflection remains in the frame. They dance with each other from separate ends of the bar, but the mirror adds a feeling of closeness, bridging the distance between them. In this scene, they’re together but also apart: a perfect distillation of their relationship.
After their night out, Dovydas drunkenly introduces the idea of an open relationship. Elena brushes it off, and they never broach the subject again. If they could get over their fears and insecurities, alternate routes to happiness might exist. Unfortunately, they come to the relationship with baggage that isn’t so easy to discard.
An interview with Marija Kavtaradza about her film Slow
I spoke with Kavtaradze via Zoom when she was in the States for Slow’s NYC premiere on May 3. We discussed her writing process, character motivations, and how she depicts emotional closeness and distance on screen. As a filmmaker, she seems particularly interested in social issues and stigmatized topics. Slow deals with body image issues, asexuality, and deafness; her first feature, Summer Survivors (2018), focused on mental health. Both films have won several prizes — 3 Lithuanian Film Academy awards for Summer Survivors and Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Directing Award for Slow — and Kavtaradze is considered one of the most talented emerging filmmakers in Lithuania.
Seventh Row (7R): Were there any major differences in how you interpreted the characters vs. how the actors did?
Marija Kavtaradze: Early on, when I was still writing and we were improvising, Kestutis, who plays Dovydas, expressed anger and jealousy, which I liked. It was in the screenplay, but not on that scale. I realized it was an [important side] of Dovydas. When writing, I was maybe… not idealizing him, but I was afraid to make him too angry.
7R: I sometimes wondered if Elena tried to make Dovydas jealous to provoke his anger because it made her feel wanted.
Marija Kavtaradze: I never thought she did it intentionally, but maybe. As you say, she does want some passion. This is a way for her to get it. At the same time, she’s afraid when he’s actually angry.
7R: I don’t know if I would call it a toxic relationship exactly, but how they communicate isn’t amazing. You can see how things would be so much better if they could honestly say how they feel.
Marija Kavtaradze: They start talking about an open relationship, but it never goes anywhere. They never seriously consider it. Their communication is very specific and not the most mature. I understand them because they’re mostly not even honest with themselves. When I was writing, I felt that they both had this deep belief that they weren’t lovable, which they triggered even more in each other. She thinks, “Of course, he doesn’t desire me because I’m not lovable.” He thinks, “I can’t give her what she wants. I’m not enough.”
7R: They have moments of great connection where you understand why they would work as a couple. But there are other times where they just heighten each other’s insecurities.
Marija Kavtaradze: That’s why I wanted to try to create the connection in a way that, even with the bad communication and insecurities, you still believe that they’re trying to make it work. It was interesting, looking for this balance between things going bad but not too bad. I would sometimes get so frustrated with them while writing that I would talk to my laptop like, “Just break up if you’re so unhappy. What the fuck?”
7R: Do you think Elena’s relationship with her mom factors into what she needs from a partner as an adult? I’m particularly thinking about the scene where she visits her mom with Dovydas.
Marija Kavtaradze: I felt a bit sorry for her in that scene. I didn’t want it to seem like her [relationship with her mother] explains everything” because I don’t think it does. But especially with her insecurities and body issues, we can see the connection. Her mother’s coldness, in some weird way, makes me like Elena more because she still has so much love and warmth… for her friends, and for Dovydas, in general. In a way, it explains some of what she needs from a partner. On the other hand, we have no idea about her father. If we want to psychoanalyze her, what’s the deal with that guy?
7R: Dovydas’s family seems warmer in comparison. There’s a nice anecdote about his mom taking him to McDonald’s when he was nervous as a child. But there’s also the story about his parents refusing to help his deaf brother learn sign language, so… it’s a mixed bag.
Marija Kavtaradze: The fact that Dovydas has a deaf brother came way later. I had the brother character, but he wasn’t his brother. It only clicked for me later. When I wrote the dialogue about his parents wanting his brother to change, I felt so bad for both of them. It also connects to Dovydas’s asexuality: people hope he can change. I think both Dovydas and Elena come from not the easiest parents, but… who does?
7R: Everyone’s parents are fucked up, some more than others.
Marija Kavtaradze: It’s funny because my mom is cool. We have a good relationship, but the mothers in my films are usually pretty evil. She’s a psychologist, so she gets it. She used to say, “Of course, it’s mother’s fault,” whenever my sister or I would complain.
7R: Did you feel any trepidation approaching stories about communities (Deaf, ACE) you don’t personally belong to? If so, how do you tell the story with care without letting fear stop you from trying?
Marija Kavtaradze: It’s stressful and scary. I constantly have to ask myself, “Can I do it?” because I will never know exactly what it means [to be deaf or asexual]. With all the best research in the world, I’ll never be able to truly understand it.
[Elena] is also an outsider. I try not to be as ignorant as she is, but I know what questions I would want to ask [in her position]. Balance was needed because I still needed that character and these topics to be represented well. I think the only way to do it is to involve people from the communities, which was helpful for me.
It still sometimes becomes paralyzing, though. I did most of the research before I started writing. At some point, I needed to stop worrying so I could progress. The brain works very differently when you research and write. When I write, I have to lie to myself and pretend I understand the characters completely. Even if it’s impossible, I feel like I do understand them.
It was also scary to take on the topic [of mental health issues] in my first film. I had a strong connection with it and knew a lot about it, but I was still scared of portraying it. In some ways, it was easier than with Slow because I had so many examples. There are a lot of films about mental health, so I knew what I liked and hated. In this case [with the topic of asexuality], there’s not as much representation.
7R: Todd in Bojack Horseman is the only character I can think of.
Marija Kavtaradze: I know there’s a character in Sex Education, too, but [that portrayal] got a lot of criticism.
7R: Even someone who doesn’t know a lot about asexuality can relate to the sadness of having a relationship fall apart because of immutable characteristics.
Marija Kavtaradze: Most relationships involve certain things you just have to accept about the other person. If it weren’t his asexuality, it would be something else.
7R: Aside from Dovydas’s asexuality, what do you see as the biggest roadblocks in his relationship with Elena in the film Slow?
Marija Kavtaradze: I think it’s their insecurities. It’s hard for them to accept the love that they get from each other. If they fully believed that the other person loves them the way they are and wants the best for them, the relationship would work. If Elena believed this, she would take Dovydas’s mention of an open relationship as a sign of love.
I always found it interesting that she tells him she wants to be exclusive, and he tells her they should discuss an open relationship. You would imagine a reverse, right? But they are guessing what the other person wants and trying [to accommodate] instead of being honest.
7R: There were three years between casting and shooting for the film Slow. What happened during that time?
Marija Kavtaradze: I needed to know who my cast was once I had a first or second draft because it would help me with rewrites. I like to write the first draft quickly, but it will take me a few years to work on it. The pandemic happened shortly after I started writing in the summer of 2019, but it didn’t really interrupt my timeline.
It also took some time because it’s a three-country production, so the financing [was more complicated]. I’d say it was pretty smooth in terms of the way we wanted it to happen, though.
7R: Did you always know you wanted to shoot the film Slow on 16mm? Did you get any pushback?
Marija Kavtaradze: When I wrote my first draft, I knew this was a 16mm film. I didn’t have pushback, but we planned to try it and see [during] the test shoot what we needed to do for our financing. I had never worked with film before, so I didn’t know what to expect. We fell even more in love with it after the test.
7R: Shooting on film makes all the closeups of dancing and touch feel even more tactile.
Marija Kavtaradze: Film is also a body. It feels different than digital because you can actually touch and see it. It’s never going to be perfect.
7R: Since movement is such an important part of the film Slow, how did you think about blocking and shooting? Walk me through your process.
Marija Kavtaradze: We started during rehearsals and, at the same time, talked to the cinematographer about movements we imagined and camera [placement]. Mostly, we tried to follow the actors to see how the scene looked, how they wanted to move, and which part of the room they wanted to be in. The camera would follow later.
With the movement and dance, we had one rule: we’re not making a dance film. We tried to treat the dance scenes as normal scenes. Like, OK, “What is this about? How is [Elena] feeling?” Even when there’s a lot of movement, we still concentrate more on her with closeups that show emotion. I had a really nice experience working with a choreographer [Anna Vnuk], another first experience for me. At first, we would look for the movement with the actors, and then the camera would join in a little later.
The same was true with intimacy scenes. We had intimacy coordinators, so there was a lot of help figuring out the right movements. When I was writing, the characters led the way and told me what to do. When we were filming, the actors did. They were so attached to their characters and so into the process that I could trust them. I just had to capture their movements instead of telling them exactly where to be.
7R: How do you visually balance connection and distance with the characters in the film Slow? I love your use of POV shots through windows and mirrors.
Marija Kavtaradze: While we were filming, we found that the most romantic shots were ones where we used long lenses. So we’re pretty far away, not right up in their faces. But we can see them very closely. When [Dovydas] says, “Let’s go to McDonald’s,” or the shot with the flowers, or some shots of them in a car… those are all shot like that. I don’t feel I’m interfering with the camera, but I still see the closeness.
Those other shots that you mentioned come from wanting to show that there’s already a sense of doubt between them. Although the shot with the mirror still feels very intimate even though it’s farther away. They’re in synchronic movements, so it’s still very much about the connection.
7R: Can you talk about your approach to sound design in the film Slow? I like the way you used sound to bridge scenes. Sometimes, a diegetic sound from the future would creep into a past scene and vice versa. This happened in your first feature, Summer Survivors, too.
Marija Kavtaradze: Those two films were very different experiences. With [Summer Survivors], I physically spent a lot of time in the sound studio because we were trying to make the sound mirror the inner feelings and moods of the character. With [Slow], I had less time. I worked on it in Spain because it’s a co-production, and that’s where my sound designer was. What I like about sound and what I say to sound designers is that we’re not always looking for logic. If I establish a rule [within the world of the film], I care that it’s consistent so that I don’t get lost. But in general, I want emotion to [take precedence over] logic with sound.
As you mentioned, sometimes the sound will linger or begin earlier. In the bar dance scene, we should hear more atmospheric sounds from the room, but I just wanted them to be [immersed in] the music. It can become cheesy or too much like a music video, but each scene, each moment, is a new creation. It’s not like we have to [take this approach] with all of them.
Related reading/listening to Marija Kavtaradze’s film Slow
More films featuring sign language: Read our review of the Oscar-winning film CODA.
Listen to our podcast on The Sound of Metal, in which Riz Ahmed plays a man losing his hearing and learning how to integrate into the Deaf Community.
More films about intimacy issues & terrible parents: Read our review of Anne Sewitsky’s Homesick, about a woman with self-esteem issues because of her parents who gets into an inappropriate romantic relationship. You can also read our interview with Sewitsky and lead actress Ine Wilmann. The film is newly available on VOD in North America.
More 2SLGBTQIA+ coverage: Read all of our 2SLGBTQIA+ film coverage.
