Music in film
Each of my films so far have started at some point with me hearing a song and from that I know exactly what the film will be like; seeing images, scenes in front of me. But, in my last films I didn't use those songs in the film itself, I just listened to them with headphones during the shoot. With SISI & I, we wrote the songs into the script, hoping that - despite the time in which the film is set - it would work in conjunction with the rather modern costumes and the rough 16mm film look, to actually use them.
So when the editor laid out "Glory Box" by Portishead to go with the images from the first scenes in the film, I knew it had to be just that. Oddly enough, "Glory Box" was also the first track that stuck when I was writing it. Strange because when the song came out in the '90s, I thought Portishead was stupid, too commercial, we called it commercial music back then. When I was just starting to think about the Sisi idea, I happened to hear it on the radio and immediately saw Irma, the relationship with her mother and with Sisi, the first scene in front of me, Irma's development in the film.
Other songs come from the Él label, which I love. I actually always wanted to do a musical with this music, from the Would-Be-Goods, for example. And then I wanted to use something from my Berlin days in the '90s, bands you might have forgotten, like the "Poptarts," in addition to well-known pieces. And the Japanese girl punk band "Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her".
There is a performance by the singer Nico, whom I adore, where she holds a Chanel compact in her hand on stage and sings into the mirror instead of into the audience. During the makeup scene at the end of my film, in which Sisi is seen reflected several times in different mirrors, Sisi reminded me of Nico. And that's how the piece came about.
All the songs in the film are favorites of mine. The only thing that was essential in the selection was that only women's voices should be heard in the film.
The End
When you write a screenplay, the characters in it develop their own logic. It doesn't matter whether they were once real characters or invented fictional characters. And in this film's own logic, the character of Irma in SISI & I simply had to develop in exactly this direction and end up the way she does in the film. There was no other possibility.
