My first film script: Jonquille
- Natasha Langridge-Thorpe
- May 9, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 15, 2022
Jonquille (2017) is a short, fictional film that explores the five stages of grief. The audience follow protagonist, Francis, as he reminiscences about his deceased wife, Daphne. This was also the first script that I had written that got turned into a short film. It was based on an exercise in which the film crew would receive a haiku that they somehow needed to incorporate into the finished product. The haiku we received was about love and as someone who had not tackled the romance genre due to my personal preferences, I knew that this was going to be a challenge.
The World of the Story
To structure the world of the story, I created a presentation using some of the photographs from our pre viz shoot.
The title of the script comes from the word 'daffodil' in french which translates to Jonquille. The daffodil is symbolic of Daphne's presence and is the singular flower that the script refers to when Francis is in the garden. The daffodil is also symbolic of rebirth and new beginnings that relate it to Francis's acceptance.
I wanted the setting for the script to be in Francis's house/garden because I wanted to highlight that Daphne's presence is missing from his everyday life. The idea of 'pairs' was also something that I wanted to get across within the story to emphasise how alone Francis is and feels without her.
The bed was also an important piece of symbolism, especially for Francis's acceptance. The fact that he continues to imagine Daphne on the other side of the bed after she has passed, shows that he is in the denial stage of grief. This also makes him more depressed when he has to face a reality that she is not a part of anymore.
Francis is back in his bed at the end of the script, but this time he has reached the acceptance stage of grief. He shows this by moving to the middle of the bed and smiling. Francis has not forgotten Daphne, but he has learnt to live without her physical presence in his life.
Characters
Francis & Daphne
There is no dialogue in the script, but I decided to create a scene with dialogue for the actors during the audition process so that they could have a better idea of how their characters behaved.
I also created a monologue for Francis when he is reflecting on Daphne's death.
The relationship between these characters is intrinsic to the emotional impact that I wanted the film to have. In the final script, I wanted to present the relationship between Francis and Daphne without the use of dialogue. Therefore, I focused on the actions of the characters to tell the story. For example, the transition from Francis's anger to his composed dance sequence with Daphne . This shows how much Francis depends on Daphne throughout his life as she guides him into the next stage of grief.
Grief is something that I am fortunate enough to not be familiar with in my life at the moment, so writing this script required a lot of research into how grief can effect people in different ways. I was able to follow the five stages of grief model and incorporate it into the script for Francis's journey to eventual acceptance.
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