Subtitling a movie is a curiously precise skill. More than merely running a script through Google Translate and spitting the text out onto the screen, the subtitler must ensure the viewer’s eye can skip across the text, grasping meaning and nuance in a jiffy as the action moves on.

Likewise, the viewer must trust that, although we know we are often missing the full poetry of the original language, we have been furnished with enough of the dialogue to go with the flow. All of this is especially pivotal in comedy, where a line that lands a second too early or a few frames too late could wreck the joke. Where context is everything, and native-language speakers will always have the punchline advantage.

So what happens when the film you are asked to subtitle has been improvised entirely in a made-up language, and the filmmakers are giving you free rein over the jokes?

Enter English writer and actress Julia Davis. The cult comedy genius (Camping, Nighty Night) was invited to translate Nude Tuesday, a bonkers new farce about troubled 40-somethings Laura (Jackie van Beek, The Breaker Upperers) and Bruno (Damon Herriman, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood), who are looking to rekindle their long-extinguished flame. Bruno’s mother shouts them a getaway to a retreat run by sexual-healing guru Bjorg Rassmussen (Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords and What We Do in the Shadows fame).

A New Zealand-Australian co-production, Nude Tuesday is set in an unnamed Pacific nation with its own, somewhat Scandi-inspired language. It’s possible to speak certain words by the time the credits roll: “Tula” means thank you. Even the film’s soundtrack features covers in the film’s tongue, including gibberish versions of Talking Heads’ ‘Road to Nowhere’, The Zombies’ ‘Time of the Season’ and the Kenny and Dolly classic, ‘Islands in the Stream’.

The film is directed by Armağan Ballantyne, who developed the story with scriptwriter van Beek. The latter is a tireless multi-hyphenate who co-wrote, directed and starred in The Breaker Upperers with her friend Madeleine Sami, but is likely best known to Letterboxd members as Deacon’s human familiar in the original What We Do in the Shadows—another product of the ridiculously close-knit New Zealand comedy scene. (It’s true what they say: practically everybody is related downunder—the spouses of both van Beek and Clement pop up in Nude Tuesday.)

I have many questions about translating this mystery language and the very fine art of subtitle timing. When you were first contacted about this job, what were your thoughts?
Julia Davis: Well, I was just so flattered because I can’t remember if, before that point, I’d been in touch with Jackie and Madeleine, because I was a massive fan of The Breaker Upperers and I’d also seen them in other things. So many people here love What We Do in the Shadows, so I couldn’t believe that her and Armağan had asked me to even be part of this thing. She said, “We’ve made this weird film in a made-up language, do you fancy doing the subtitles?” And I just said, “Yeah,” without seeing it or having any idea what it was.

What is it about this particular Kiwi comedy sensibility that you’re drawn to, in comparison to—let’s be honest—the best comedy scene in the world, which you yourself are a member of? I mean, British comedy is just extraordinary.
Yeah, it’s funny, isn’t it? I always find everywhere else more glamorous than here, more exciting, and you just go, ‘Oh my God, I’d love to work with those people’. I think it’s the small, subtle, naturalistic, maybe the improvised feeling as well. I mean, it’s just an oddness. It’s probably not as cynical as some British stuff. The Breaker Upperers was so heartwarming. I think, certainly, things I do are always just so brutal. I never set out for them to be that way. It just seems to happen.

Maybe it’s a non-meanness? Which is not necessarily kindness. It’s not necessarily kind comedy, but it’s not mean comedy.
Yeah, yeah. It’s definitely of its own thing. You can just tell immediately the flavor of it is not like anything else.

So then you get a copy of the film and, what? Did you sit and watch it straight through, no subtitles, no script?
Yeah, exactly. I just watched the film all the way through with nothing. And first of all, I sort of wrote back and I went, “Well, you could sort of get the story even without [subtitles], so are you sure you need to do this?” “Yeah, yeah, go for it. Have a go.” What was funny though, is I remember Jackie saying, “I reckon it’ll take you a couple of weeks or something to do it.” And it literally took me about three months because… First of all, I’m a real technophobe, so I was having real trouble with trying to get things onto the screen and all this kind of boring stuff which, luckily, they let me just do all by hand in the end, or typed up, or whatever it was.

But the problem I was having was the timings of each speech and so I would try and construct a joke or whatever, and then it would just be too many words on the screen. There seemed to be a kind of average of… I don’t know if it was five words, but they said that in general audiences can’t read that many subtitles. So [it was] all these slightly technical things at first. I think a few weeks in I was like, “I just can’t do it. This is too hard.”

And then once they helped me out with the technical side of it and going, “Just don’t worry about it. Just keep going and try and get the story out that you want,” then that made me feel a bit freer. It turned into this kind of exam or something for a while!

Had you done any subtitling before?
No. No.

And so this was all new to you, learning about not just the fun of creating a comedy script out of this made-up language, but also the timing of when the punchline lands?
Yeah, yeah, totally.

At first they were saying to me, “Try as many versions as you want, you could set it in outer space. It could be another planet. It could be this, it could be that.” And I was like, “I’ll try that.” And after a while I said, “I just can’t. My imagination will only go to a certain place and it’s not that. I can’t see how I can put this on another planet.” I mean, someone could.

It is weird because I never felt like I’d really finished. I felt like I could have carried on and on and on trying to refine it. There was a point where I was worried that I hadn’t put any of the emotional stuff into it and that it was all just this rude stuff. And I was like, “Are you sure we shouldn’t just pull back a bit on that…”

How much freedom were you given? I heard a rumor that Jackie found out a specific aspect of her character from watching your version (no spoilers!). And I was fascinated by Laura’s corporate work presentation at the beginning of the film, about the sexy diapers for adults, because in that scene we don’t have a visual cue for what she’s talking about. Talk me through that.
I remember that being one of the hardest scenes, actually, now you say that. Because I remember sort of watching it over and over again myself, thinking, “What is the product? What is this about?!” The more we talk about it, the more I realize I didn’t really analyze it at the time! I think I tried something about cheese for a while. What’s so weird is, what you’re saying—I still don’t know what [the product originally was]. I mean, maybe I’ll never know!

I wanted to ask you about crafting the story of this relationship guru who turns out to be a cult leader, and how you approached the character of Bjorg through the words he deploys on his followers.
It’s so much down to Jemaine’s performance, as in trying to get a feel of the sort of mood of what he’s trying to say. There was that thing with him where he was the one person who occasionally spoke in English, where he says “maximum arousal”, so that obviously affected those subtitles.

I’d forgotten that. Now I’ve got that voice in my head. I can’t cope.
I know. He does such a brilliant, specific style. I think there was a point where we first see him and I can’t remember what I’d originally done, but I think it was too stupid. They said to me, “Can you try something to make him a little bit more attractive or something?” Because sometimes I would listen to the made-up language and almost try and do words connected to those sounds. I remember writing something about frogs and stuff in that section and then sort of thought, ‘Oh, no. This isn’t going to work. I need to kind of go against [the language].’ It’s just such a bizarre thing.

You’ve mentioned you like this very specific kind of Kiwi comedy. What else do you love? What’s a film that, when it comes on the television, you just have to drop everything and watch, or that perhaps comforted you through the pandemic?
I still love Bridesmaids so much. That film! I love Kristen Wiig. I love all those people. I’m a big fan of Step Brothers as well. Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly. I like quite stupid things, but I’ll watch some sort of tragic Bergman as well—but that wouldn’t have got me through the pandemic. It’s got to be comedy stuff.

I know and love that film and it’s weirdly the one that I thought of the most when I watched Nude Tuesday.
Oh, wow. Well I would say that film so encapsulates what I love and maybe what made me think, ‘Oh, I’d like to try and make something like that.’ I’ve made short films, but I’ve never made a film. So yeah, I would say something with that feel. The sensibility. That sort of comedy-tragedy-type feel.

Last question: we’re in an industry that praises certain beauty standards, and this is a film where so many different types of bodies are just casually naked on screen. I found it so wonderful seeing that. In your career, I don’t know whether you’ve had a lot of nudity to deal with, or experience with intimacy coordinators, but what was your experience of watching all of these bodies and trying to sort of thread that needle of comedy without making fun of bodies?
My honest thing was like, ‘Oh my god, I just cannot believe that they’ve just so fucking gone for it. It’s incredible.’ So that was the first reaction, and then, towards the end the film’s quite moving, isn’t it? I was actually crying at quite a lot of bits, because it is, it’s kind of incredible. I hate those kinds of Hollywood things like, “Oh, it’s so brave,” or whatever, so I don’t mean it’s brave in that way.

Interestingly, I think in Together, one of the first shots is of a woman who’s got a top on and then no knickers, just bush. I remember thinking, ‘That’s so cool. That’s really good.’ And then obviously you’ve got people like Lena Dunham, who did Girls. But yeah, I think some of it is funny because they’re just having these types of conversations or Bjorg’s naked and arguing with his ex-wife. I like the way they’re just doing their thing, getting on the coach, sitting on the coach. It treads that line well, doesn’t it?