As is the case with family, you can’t choose your neighbours.
Director Milena Bennett and actor partner Harry Greenwood discovered as much when they moved into Marrickville in the early 2010s and found themselves next to a “particularly intense” elderly Portuguese man.
Such was his presence, Bennett was one day driven to knock on his door after not hearing the usual mix of sounds that she had become accustomed to, a visit that proved to be a turning point in their relationship.
“He was like, ‘Oh, have you come to check on me?’ and when I told him I had, he was just so happy,” she said.
“He couldn’t quite believe I had done that.”
Their at-times tumultuous relationship is at the heart of Cactus, a short she wrote alongside Greenwood and directed across four and a half days in Marrickville in November last year.
The film stars Tiarnie Coupland as Grace, a 20-something that experiences instant friction when she meets her elderly Portuguese neighbour Mr Rodriguez (Antonio Goncalves). However, their mutual dislike soon grows into a bond of respect and understanding after an unexpected encounter forces them to connect.
Joining Coupland and Goncalves in the cast are Greenwood, Jenna Owen, Wesley Senna Cortes, and Luis Santos.
Produced by Harriet Dixon-Smith and executive produced by Fiona Nix, Cactus will screen at CinefestOZ this month after having its world premiere at Dances With Films in LA in June.
According to Bennett, the film is about how she pictured the real-life friendship with her neighbour progressing had he not moved to a nursing home soon after their encounter and passed away.
“You really felt his presence when it was gone,” she said.
“Even though he could be annoying, when he wasn’t there, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to miss that’.”
For Greenwood, the film is a reminder of how important it can be to check in on people, as well as the sense of community that comes from building relationships.
“He was a cat breeder that had a lot of cats and then as he got older, he became unable to look after them, so when we moved in, part of us building a relationship with him had to do with the fact we had to start helping him deal with the cats,” he said.
“We became interwoven in each other’s lives in that way and so we always felt a little bit of guilt that we never went and visited [him]. When we found out he passed away, it was a weird, sad moment.”
While Bennett and Greenwood had previously collaborated as actor-director on the former’s 2021 short The Listening, Cactus marks the first time they have written together.
The pair, who have been together for the past 15 years, worked on the script out of Australians in Film’s Los Angeles working space, Charlie’s, before shelving the project on account of the pandemic.
After realising the themes of connection were becoming more relevant amid the restrictions, they picked up where they left off, with Greenwood getting Dixon-Smith on board after telling her about the project on the way back from filming Jenny Hicks’ short The Stranger in 2020.
Bennett, who has previously helmed shorts The Listening and A Day in Your Life, said while they had been told the concept could work as a feature, she was happy for it to be a standalone story.
“We have other things that we’d like to make a feature,” she said.
“I think this was just a little story about something we’ve experienced that we wanted to bring to life, but that’s not going to go anywhere else.”
Projects in the works for the couple include a supernatural thriller that Greenwood is writing and Bennett will direct about a young girl from a country town that works in the local abattoir.
The actor and writer, known for his performances across Carnifex, The Clearing, and Wakefield, has also penned a novel that he plans to turn into a screenplay, the details of which are still under wraps.
He said they were inspired to make “super low-budget micro features”.
“For me, that’s the most exciting work going around because it’s fully creative and under your control,” he said.
“You don’t have to listen to other people as much you can really make something that you want to make.”