Gorgeous and challenging, September Says is a film designed to divide audiences. Shot on 16mm and then 35mm after a pivotal plot point, Ariane Labed’s debut feature possesses a dreamy, hypnotic quality that can be interrupted by placing its young characters in peril, or by inserting sounds so painful that cinemagoers have to cover their ears. At the press screening, there were a handful of walkouts. Still, those who stayed, stayed with purpose: it’s a rich, rewarding film. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry,” Labed tells me. “I did it on purpose, it’s true. I wanted people to feel the tension in their guts, in their body. I wanted you to have a physical reaction.”

As an actor, Labed is no stranger to provocative material. Starting out in the so-called “Greek New Wave”, Labed was catapulted to arthouse notoriety by depicting oddballs for Athina Rachel Tsangari (Attenberg, The Capsule) and Yorgos Lanthimos (Alps, The Lobster). She’s since been established as a comic fit for esoteric filmmakers like Guy Maddin, Jasmila Žbanić, and Peter Strickland, or as a dramatic voice for distinct auteurs like Joanna Hogg, Richard Linklater and Brady Corbet. If you’ve seen The Brutalist, then you’ll have spotted Labed delivering the lengthy monologue that dominates the coda.

Still, it’s not all perfect for Labed, who adapted the script for September Says from Daisy Johnson’s 2020 novel Sisters but stays behind the camera. “The fact that I’m an actor influences the way I write, the way I direct, the way I choose to be,” the 40-year-old French actor and now feature filmmaker tells me. “I’ve been offered parts where it’s just the girlfriend of the hero. Now I’m getting older, it’s the mother. It’s things like that I’m tired of. What attracted me to Daisy’s book was the complex female characters.”

In terms of complexity, September Says truly delivers: it’s impossible to determine whether the core family unit are positive, negative, overwhelmingly toxic, or something many of us could aspire to. Raised by their single mother Sheela (Rakhee Thakrar), 15-year-old July (Mia Tharia) and 16-year-old September (Pascale Kann) are an unhealthily close duo who do everything together, including imitate animals, share excruciating secrets, and perform dares that ultimately lead to Cronenbergian body-horror sequences. Even if it’s through trauma bonding, the core trio are also an example of what it means to love someone unconditionally.

“I’m not interested in telling an audience what’s right or wrong,” says Labed. “What interests me is that a family can be the place where you feel the safest and warmest, and like you’re in a nest. It’s also the place where people have so much power on you, they can destroy you.” She adds, “The rule I had was that I didn’t want to create more of the male gaze. That was important for a film talking about sexuality and desire – especially for the girls.”

Separated by 10 months in age, July and September differ in their approach to the world. Nervous and vulnerable to bullies at school, July relies on her older, bolder sister (September proudly displays armpit hair to outraged classmates) for protection. Following an act of violence that results in July’s suspension, the family move from Oxford to a family home in Ireland where Sheela, a non-judgemental but loving single mother, knows her children are to some extent uncontrollable. After all, in an early scene, Sheela dresses them up as the haunted twins from The Shining – an act of foreshadowing for the duo’s ability to fend for themselves.

Labed tells me that in September Says, the male characters serve the female characters’ storylines, rather than the other way round, which means that boys and men enter the film and swiftly leave. “The mother is the character I changed the most from the book,” Labed explains. “I didn’t want to just have a mother. We needed space to explore her situation.” She refers to a minor male character whose sole contribution to the plot is for Sheela to have a one-night stand and reveal her inner monologue.

A family can be the place where you feel the safest and warmest, and like you’re in a nest. It’s also the place where people have so much power on you, they can destroy you

“The sex scene is the most political scene in the film,” says Labed. “I really wanted to have an adult sex scene that’s not glamourised, that’s very straightforward and simple, that’s without penetration or naked bodies, that’s very practical and funny, and that’s completely from the female point of view. We are in her head. That was very important to me. I’ve done many sex scenes as an actor, and I’ve been asked to do things that I think are ridiculous. So that’s me trying to create another kind of image, and to talk about sexuality differently in cinema.”

Throughout her film work, Labed has often worked as a dancer, a skill that led to developing a body language for July and September: even if they don’t look alike, their synchronised movements and playful growls suggest they might be telepathic. “I used the things that worked for me as an actor, and so I gave this physicality to this family,” says Labed, who played a gymnast in Alps and a ballerina in L’Opéra. “Most importantly, we had fun while doing it. I can’t imagine making films without having fun – even though I’ve been through that, and it’s terrible.”

It isn’t a coincidence that Labed was cast by Hogg as a director in The Souvenir and The Souvenir Part II. She alludes to two features she tried, or perhaps is still trying, to make, while it was her 2019 short Olla that led to Johnson’s novel being sent her way. Whatever her next project is, she’d like for it to be shot on celluloid again, and she jokes that it’ll have a Brady Corbet cameo to return the favour for being cast in The Brutalist. I ask about her speech in The Brutalist as the older Zsófia: online, people can’t agree on whether she’s genuinely speaking for an uncle who can no longer talk. “It’s a very honest speech,” says Labed. “It’s her uncle’s view on the world. They’re almost, maybe, Brady’s words.”

Either way, like The Brutalist, September Says is a film that allows viewers to furiously argue with each other afterwards, provided they stay to the end. Again, Labed is unapologetic: after calling the film “provocative”, she retracts her wording. “I’m not trying to please everyone, even though I hope I do that,” she says. “I keep the audience involved. Even the ending is up to the audience. For me, it’s an invitation. It’s being generous. Some people might say, ‘Oh, leave me alone.’ So, of course, people react violently to it. But that’s the film I wanted to do. I couldn’t have done it differently.”

September Says is out in UK cinemas now