Dionne Edwards on Pretty Red Dress: “As we grow older, our innocent curiosities are met with opposition, causing us to stop exploring”

Dionne Edwards’ debut feature Pretty Red Dress challenges the notion that grit and glamour are polar opposites. Instead, it sees them as two sides of the same coin, as manifest in the character of Travis Clarke (Natey Jones). 

Freshly released from a stint behind bars, Travis returns to his south London council estate to resume life alongside his partner Candice (Alexandra Burke) and their teenage daughter Kenisha (Temilola Olatunbosun), but he’s soon embarking on a secret journey of self-discovery that threatens to tear his family apart. Refreshingly, Pretty Red Dress explores a sexual fluidity that Black characters have rarely been afforded on the big screen.

In this candid conversation, the Bristol-born director opens up about the 10-year journey that proceeded her big break, and the constraints that society puts on achieving self-acceptance.

How did the idea for Pretty Red Dress come about?

Pretty Red Dress has existed in my head for around 10 years. I was working as a cinema usher at the time and I started playing around with the idea of this character (Travis) who was grappling with secrets rooted in a fear of disappointing his family and community.

I’ve heard the film described as a ‘breath of fresh air’, which is flattering, but I wasn’t motivated to make this film because there was a gap in the market. I was just really excited about the character and went from there.

Film critics have struggled to liken it to any other films in their reviews. Were there any that inspired this project? 

I’ve heard critics make the comparison to the film Kinky Boots (2005), which is on my list of films to watch but I haven’t actually seen it. Pretty Red Dress’s texture borrows from films like Babylon (1980) and Saturday Night Fever (1977), but the story itself wasn’t inspired by any one film.

I was pulling from little innocuous things I’d seen as a child. A big part of childhood is trying to replicate the routines of our parents – so naturally cross-dressing comes into the picture. I remember some of my boy cousins really enjoyed putting on nail varnish when they were around five years old. But as you grow older, those innocent curiosities are met with opposition, causing us to stop ourselves from exploring things that we might be interested in.

Were you thinking of any particular community when you made the film?

I write for myself first and foremost. It’s always therapeutic to write about an area of life that I’m really interested in learning about. Pretty Red Dress might speak more to the Black community, but it could just as easily be about a German or Middle Eastern family. The journey of self-acceptance is universal so I hope that it connects with as many people as possible.

Have you come across any misconceptions in the discourse around the film?

There seems to be a belief that Pretty Red Dress is a film made to tie in to the social and political discussions that are happening today around identity. It’s an understandable connection to make, but when I came up with the idea in 2013 it came from a place of feeling and emotion rather than trying to make any kind of public declaration. However, people are welcome to their own interpretations.

Are you aware of the criticism that Travis’s character is underwritten?

Yes, I’ve heard people say that they wish that we went ‘deeper’ with his character, and a lot of that stems from wanting a definitive reason for Travis’s actions. They wanted to know what drove him to do this. Maybe elsewhere there’s a version of this story where there’s a defining event in Travis’s childhood that made him this way, but that wasn’t a story that I was interested in telling. Life isn’t necessarily that neat and doesn’t always give us those answers. I understand that it’s something that people might be frustrated with, but the intention was not to spoon-feed.

I enjoy wearing men’s clothing, as do many women, but men are demonised for doing the same thing. Why? That’s a question that people have to reconcile within themselves. I had a conversation with someone who said that they would understand playing a serial killer more than he would the character of Travis. This is where we’re still at as a society. 

Society can condition us to internalise the belief that our very being is criminal. We start to pre-empt negative reactions to our vulnerability and shut off from allowing those moments for ourselves.

There is strong language in the film that wouldn’t be considered politically correct. Were you wary of receiving a backlash? 

When I’m writing characters I make sure that I don’t judge or censor anything because I want them to be as real as possible. 

The world has become somewhat performative in recent years as people have become fearful of their words being twisted and used against them. Pretty Red Dress was about showing what conversations look like behind closed doors. For example, Candice doesn’t handle Travis’s journey with the most sensitivity at first because she’s trying to figure out her place in all of this. At the end of the day she’s flawed, but so are all of us.  

Is it fair to say that you made a deliberate choice to go against the grain of the grey visual language typically used in urban-based London films?

Colour is really important to my process of creating a mood and feeling. I was born in Bristol, but I spent most of my formative years in east London, before finally relocating to south London. There’s something about the Norwood area that I just find so beautiful. Tower blocks have become a kind of symbol of the Black British and working-class in the UK, but I wanted to show all of the awesome red brick, low-rise houses and expansive green spaces.

Was the up-close and personal feel of the film by design or dictated by time and financial constraints?

To be honest it was a mixture of both. I really wanted the audience to sit with this family and take in everything from their perspective, so that close-up and personal feel was essential. However, Covid restrictions were in full effect when we were filming in 2021, which meant that we had to be more resourceful and make the most of limitations. I’ve received a lot of feedback saying that the film was an authentic reflection of south London, which is great, but the truth is that I wanted to capture so much more. 

This is not a promotion that you would have welcomed for the film, but its release has coincided with the recent death of Tina Turner, a singer who is heavily referenced throughout. How has that made you feel?

It was very sad because I’d always hoped that she’d get to see the film, and even if she didn’t like it, I wanted to see her reaction. She was very kind to allow us to use her songs and everything. Tina Turner has always been very present in my life and her greatest hits album never stopped playing in our car. I‘ve always been in awe of her. 

She has this very overt femininity, but also a fierceness when she’s performing. It’s a mix of masculine and feminine energies that perfectly encapsulated our grit-and-glamour ethos. This film doesn’t exist without her. I’d rather that she’d be here with us watching the film, but she’s left an amazing legacy.

Pretty Red Dress is in cinemas, including BFI Southbank, on 16 June 2023 and BFI Blu-ray from 7 August 2023.