Kieran Darcy-Smith Wish You Were Here

Wish You Were Here

Cast: Joel Edgerton, Teresa Palmer, Felicity Price, Antony Starr
Director: Kieran Darcy-Smith
Genre: Psychological Drama, Mystery
Rated: M
Running Time: 93 minutes

Synopsis: Four friends - husband and wife Dave and Alice, and Alice's sister Steph and her new boyfriend Jeremy - lose themselves in the fun of a carefree South East Asian holiday. Only three return home. Dave and Alice come back to their young family desperate for answers about Jeremy's mysterious disappearance. When Steph returns not long after, a nasty secret is revealed about the night her boyfriend went missing. But it is only the first of many. Who amongst them knows what happened on that fateful night when they were dancing under a full moon in Cambodia?

Release Date: April 26, 2012
Website: www.wishyouwereherethefilm.com

About the Production

Wish You Were Here is the passion project of award-winning writer/director Kieran Darcy-Smith, celebrated actor/ playwright Felicity Price and acclaimed producer Angie Fielder. Between them the team has won numerous international awards for their work and their films have screened in prestigious film festivals all over the world including Sundance, Venice and Berlin. They are recognised as one of the most promising creative teams to emerge in the Australian film industry in recent years.

In 2009 Wish You Were Here was selected for the prestigious Aurora Script Development Program, the screenplay hothouse that includes The Black Balloon (Berlinale), Somersault (Cannes) and recent Sundance hit Animal Kingdom in its alumni.

Director's Statement - Kieran Darcy-Smith
For years I have been fascinated by the idea of unexplained disappearance. The extraordinary vacuum opened up for those left behind. The unknown. The possibilities. What if I were to fake my own death? Or I'm held prisoner in a basement for thirty years? Perhaps simply snuffed to dust in an instant by some catastrophe, natural or otherwise. And the world at home carries on... I'm a grainy photograph... What have I left behind me? And the notion of truth…

I guess I've always been a romantic - with essentially simplistic, almost naïve notions of truth and honesty. But have I always upheld these ideals? Do I have a threshold?

Wish You Were Here has become my opportunity to step into the shoes of others - but always with a clear mirror held up to myself. As writers, Felicity and I have plumbed our characters for credibility and humanity. Our intention has always been that our audience walks away from the film with a feeling of - 'My God. That could so easily have been you or me...'

The film opens with colour, energy and music; life, love, travel, smiles, sunshine and abandon. It kicks us immediately into a world we want to be in, and with people we like. People just like us. But there's a problem. Something has happened... And we stay with these people as they navigate a very complicated crisis… The narrative plays out from shifting points of view as we track concurrently the story of a likeable young family under pressure, a marriage tested, a disappearance, one man's suppression of the truth, the repercussions of his decision and the necessity, for everyone, for the truth to come out into the open. And so 'truth' (as well as being our key theme) has become a directorial by-word. My absolute priority, from script to screen, is truth. Truth of performance, of character, and of story.

Contemporary Danish cinema has been of significant influence in terms of developing the screenplay and an approach to performance. Susanne Bier (After the Wedding, Brothers), Thomas Vinterberg (Festen) and Lars Von Trier (Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark) in particular. These filmmakers share an emphasis on relatable, contemporary, ordinary human beings in crisis, distinguished by performances captured in an extremely realistic and accessible way. There's a keen awareness of story momentum and audience engagement, with a focus on character and story. The technical and aesthetic considerations have been employed so as not to draw attention to themselves but rather to faithfully service the capturing of the performances in as real, unaffected and accessible a way as possible. Eye-level, fly-on-thewall, visceral human stuff.

Other key influences include: Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Todd Field's In The Bedroom, Ray Lawrence's Lantana, Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, Michael Haneke's Hidden and Ben Gilmour's Son Of a Lion. The film has been shot on location, using available light, practicals and flexible low-key lighting states. Securing cinematic locations with interesting sources of available light was key to achieving the low-key, atmospheric lighting. Camerawork is predominantly hand-held, though steady, with only a small handful of judiciously considered tracks or precision camera moves to underline key dramatic moments. The focus was on capturing truthful performances, and so the camera remained free and spontaneous. Darren Aronofsky, when discussing The Wrestler, talks of approaching his drama as a 'pro-active documentary' (as opposed to actual vérité documentary, which is entirely reactive). It's an approach to blocking, coverage and lighting that allows for spontaneity and freedom in performance. Looks and feels real, but in reality very carefully prepped and rehearsed. Wherever possible we shot on longer lenses, framing for depth. Dirty, almost voyeuristic framings, with as little depth of field as the format would allow. Intimate over-shoulder set-ups on close-ups so that we're right in the heads of these people. For the more intense or active scenes we shot on wider lenses, keeping things mobile, working around the actors' spontaneity. We used a small and flexible crew, with few people actually on set at any time. The focus throughout was to provide an open, intimate and creative environment so as to best capture truth and spontaneity as it played out. By the end of the film we should feel genuine sympathy for - and empathy towards - all of the major characters no matter how flawed their choices or actions.

With regard to design: real real real. Lived in, textured, warm and relatable. Nothing deliberate. Plenty of colour. The idea was to present an unaffected world with natural sunlight and natural colours. Again, shooting whenever possible with available light/practicals. Sun flare and other 'noise' was encouraged. A busy, interesting frame. Wardrobe wasn't ironed to within an inch of its life. There were no builds, no sets or studio. The stylistic approach has been very deliberately developed so as to be symbiotic with a low budget production methodology. The ideas here were very carefully considered as part of a practical approach to ensure the film stands out as fresh, authentic, original, gripping and - ultimately - emotionally moving.