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

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. My guest has made some pretty unusual films in the past.

It's been more than a decade now, but I think he came to most of our attention 10 years ago with dog tooth.

And of course, there's a lobster.

We had Colin here for that film.

And Killing Over's a new film, you may have heard about, is the favorite.

Of course, I'm talking to the director, Ego's Lanthamos.

Thanks so much for being here.

Thank you for inviting.

Well, we were talking a little bit before we got started about rehearsal.

And one of the things that seems interesting to me is that the actors are kind of playing against a kind of physical goal to just so the lines feel more natural to them.

Yeah, well, I mean, I think it does a lot of things when you work like that with actors.

I mean, I always try to have as much time as I can before we started filming with the actors.

And I learned through my theater years that I directed a few plays in the theater,

how to try and get to the goal that I have in mind with actors.

So we do a lot of physical games and exercises, and it serves a number of things, I think.

Well, one is that it creates a certain kind of synchronicity, a physical

synchronicity between the actors and they get familiar with each other and each other's

rhythm. They get comfortable with each other. And the other thing is they learn the text,

the dialogue through that process.

So they're not really focused on what the dialogue means and what the intention is.

They're just focused in trying to just say it, you know, whatever way it comes out.

...