From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell.

My guest has brought an interesting perspective to the American Southwest.

This is her second film, they're the writer.

She's the writer-director, Chloe Zauer, and the film is astonishing.

It's interesting, though, because you seem to look at the Southwest,

almost the way, Karostami might or something.

It doesn't feel as American as we're used to saying.

Maybe because I'm not American.

Well, there is that, but also you don't bring a perspective of having watched a bunch of movies about the American West, right?

Not really, because I think I've seen two Westerns before I made it right, and now I've seen four.

Which, you know, I realized there's great movies in that genre, and I just saw Jeremy Johnson, which I really, really like.

You know, so I'm going to watch more westerns,

but it was definitely more blank canvas to start.

Which is the way you treated it.

I mean, you treat it almost first and foremost in your movies

like a photographic subject, don't you?

I mean, you really love the look of the place.

Yeah, I do.

I mean, talk about seeing it for the first time and the first time you got out there.

You know, it actually wasn't the postcard romanticized version of what I thought it was going

...