Last weekend, I was granted the formidable opportunity of venturing out to Park City, UT, a snowy chalet town that has been home to the Sundance Film Festival since the mid-1980s.
Of the 25 premiering films with distribution deals already sealed, I managed to check out two of them: the Australian mystery Wish You Were Here, and the American drama Middle of Nowhere.
Wish You Were Here (**1/2), from director Kieran Darcy-Smith, was an opening night selection, although I caught it at the packed 1,480-seat Eccles Theatre at 9 a.m. the next morning. Although the applause that followed the screening was polite, I was hesitant to join.
The film is an oddly paced although well-acted drama about two Australian couples who travel to a Cambodian coastal paradise, full of crystalline blue waters, bustling marketplaces and a steady supply of illegal substances. After one heady night at a rave, the male from the younger couple, Jeremy (Antony Starr), abruptly disappears.
Upon returning to their homes in Australia, the lives of Jeremy’s three travel companions unravel. His girlfriend, a petite firecracker named Steph (Teresa Palmer), is understandably worried, while married couple Dave (Joel Edgerton) and Alice (Felicity Price, the director’s true-life wife) can only speculate to their friend’s whereabouts and are becoming increasingly paranoid.
The performers are riveting, especially the bracing Price – who also served as the film’s co-writer – as the mother and schoolteacher who has her personal limits tested when she discovers a harsh reality from that fateful night.
However, Wish You Were Here is marred by its offbeat pacing and unconvincing plot developments. The only hints we’re given to Jeremy’s whereabouts are flickered on the screen in fleeting flashback sequences. These come up a few times early on and then recede as the story progresses. Without much exposition coming to the forefront, much of the drama stems from the sustained moping of the three central characters.
One of the film’s major plot developments (that I will not spoil), which creates a schism between Dave and Alice, isn’t convincing. Why this certain incident occurs is not explained well enough when it is introduced and the motive behind the event is seldom illuminated further as the story progresses. Overall, it’s a mixed bag which I doubt will garner similar acclaim to Animal Kingdom, the fine crime thriller starring Edgerton and Darcy-Smith that won raves at Sundance in 2010.
The second film I saw was the strongly acted, deeply moving drama Middle of Nowhere (***), from writer/director Ava DuVernay. DuVernay just picked up honours for directing the film at the end-of-festival awards – the same award that Sean Durkin received for Martha Marcy May Marlene, my favourite film of 2011.
Middle of Nowhere follows Ruby (the mesmerizing Emaytazy Corinealdi), a young nurse who drops out of medical school after her husband, Derek (Omari Hardwick) is incarcerated in a California prison – the crime he is tried for is never explained.
Derek is locked up for four years, but Ruby is the imprisoned soul whose journey propels the film. Beyond making the trip out to prison on visiting day, her week is mostly filled with looking after her sister’s young boy and sharing glances with a charming bus driver (David Oyelowo) who she slowly falls for.
Terrific, nuanced performances ground the film in a spare realism that works to highlights the universality of Ruby’s experience as a woman-in-waiting. After the screening, DuVernay spoke with the audience about trying to encapsulate the feelings that many women she knows have encountered as their loved ones await release from prison. Middle of Nowhere plays testament to that female vitality in affecting and insightful ways.
Moreover, the film is significant for allowing an audience to take an honest glimpse into the lives of African-Americans, who comprise nearly the entire cast. Film-fest favourites Precious and Pariah have paved way for a greater diversity of black voices in independent cinema, and DuVernay’s film only strengthens the trend further.
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