Movie Spotlight: Elysia

The film opens at a funeral. There’s no backstory, no two-weeks-ago. Elysia is already there, already in the middle of it, and then a long-lost relative arrives with information that reframes everything she thought she knew about how her father died.

David Terrell Green wrote and directed Elysia. The in medias res opening was a deliberate choice: he points to Casino Royale, how the pursuit at that film’s start drops you into a character before you’ve had time to process who he is. “We don’t have to spend time explaining what happened before,” Green says. “We can fill in the blanks and run with the characters.” The grief is the starting gun.

Two sides of the same coin

Green’s father passed away, and afterward he started hearing stories from people who had known him -- funny moments, things he never knew. It left him frustrated. Why does it take someone being gone to learn who they were? That experience lives in the film. Elysia is confused, frustrated, vulnerable, and the way the revelation reaches her makes each of those things worse. “The plot engine and emotional wound are two sides of the same coin,” Green says.

Proverbs 14:10

At the top of the film, a verse: “The heart knows its own bitterness and no stranger shares its joy.” Green took it as the film’s framework. Grief handled badly -- impulsively, dangerously -- is the risk Elysia faces. The film isn’t about whether she’ll feel what she feels. It’s about what she’ll do with it. She is given a choice.

The world without the lore dump

Green names specific moments when talking about how the film builds its world. Janine burning a picture while crying. The police speaking to Dante and barely acknowledging Elysia. Enzo never shown directly, but Cross shown instead. “That’s a moment,” he says, and repeats it for each one. The danger, the relationships, the stakes -- all of it is built in those gaps, not in explanations. “That’s how you set up a world without lore dumping in such a short time.”

Something is wrong

Green mentions David Lynch -- not because the films resemble each other, but because Lynch is a model for something else. “You can tell by looking at his work how much it means to him,” he says. “I want to embrace the weird more in my career.” Elysia’s gritty look and color grade are part of that. Green is direct about what he wanted from the visual approach: “It makes you feel like something is wrong.”

What to know before you press play

Green kept asking himself one question while making the film: how would I actually feel if this happened to me? “If I knew I was being lied to by my Mother, I would want to get to the bottom of this,” he says. “If I learned what she learned, I would scream for help.” He’s modest about what he wants from an audience. “I just hope you enjoy it,” he says. “The fact someone is watching it gives me hope to keep trying.”

Drama

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Streaming now on Relay.