Wish You Were Here

Logline: Four friends lose themselves in a carefree South-East Asian holiday. Only three come back.

Cast: Joel Edgerton, Felicity Price, Teresa Palmer, Antony Starr

Directed by: Kieran Darcy-Smith

This was intended to be my Monday review, but I decided to switch it up with my Friday because it is more fresh in my mind. If you tuned into the 2011 Academy Awards you might remember the Australian made movie Animal Kingdom that was nominated for Best Motion Picture. You may also be asking, what the hell does this have to do with anything? Well, the director of this movie had a role in Animal Kingdom and lately there have been a few movies generating some buzz that were made in Australia; this is one of them.

Summary

Couples Dave and Alice & Steph and Jeremy travel to Cambodia to get away from their normal everyday life. While they're there they wake up one morning and Jeremy is GONE. Literally no one has any idea where he could be and they actually end up having to return home to Australia without finding him. Kind of like The Hangover, right? Well, not really. This isn't a comedy and it's really dark. Secrets keep rising up about that night he went missing and conflict begins confusing the stories of all three people that returned.

Review

I was originally distasted by this movie due to the fact that not much happened. I still hold true to that thought, but I've since lightened up a bit.

I can spoil the first secret of the movie because it happens really early and it's crucial to my critique. Dave and Steph (yes, not Alice) slept with one another on the night of Jeremy's disappearance. To make things even more complicated, Steph is Alice's sister. AND if that wasn't bad enough, Dave and Alice have kids. Are you following? This is one hell of a dysfunctional situation. Much of the movie after that deals with that situation instead of the main problem at hand, Jeremy's disappearance. Subplots will be my TOTD, so more on that later. It doesn't help that these characters are hardly introduced before this secret. We get a scene of Alice and Dave conversing with their children at the dinner table, but that's it. So watching them deal with their situation is mainly carried by the powerhouse performances of Joel Edgerton and Felicity Price. They're both realllllllly good in this movie. 

One thing about Wish You Were Here was that it tried really hard to be a film festival movie. By this I mean that it tried really hard to be like those movies that come out of Sundance with artsy direction, capturing every emotion and making the audience visually understand what the characters are thinking. Some people love this type of filmmaking, others can't stand it. Me, I'm somewhere in the middle. If a story is fast-paced enough to keep me watching through the slow camera work I really don't mind. But if the story is slow along with the camera work, man, it's really hard to keep my attention. Wish You Were Here takes a loooonnnnggg time to develop through different plot/turning points. The premise is fantastic and I really wish they would have executed it better. One guy gone missing, 3 people holding deep and different secrets, the potential is extraordinary. Instead, Wish You Were Here plays it relatively safe and the secrets aren't that outstanding/surprising. It's actually kind of a let down.

Topic of the Day

Every movie needs subplots. If a movie doesn't have them, the audience doesn't have a chance to connect with the characters on an emotional level. In Wish You Were Here, the subplots are actually the main plot - as it regularly occurs in indie films. The first turning point of this movie is the discovery that Dave slept with Steph. I'm not so sure this was the right choice. With such a big problem at hand (Jeremy missing), much of the story is about the relationship between Dave and Alice going downhill instead of dealing with it. I'm not saying that the film didn't explore this aspect really well, it's just, with a premise like this that has sooooo much potential, the movie spent soooooo much time dealing with the first secret that it didn't have time to introduce new ones. Subplots are tricky and they need to be worked around perfectly if they're going to be the main turning points of the movie. Not often does the subplot become the most important (not saying that the main plot ever becomes unimportant), but when it does there better not be something the audience is more interested in than what is being portrayed.

Consensus

Wish You Were Here lacks good character introductions and relies on powerhouse acting and direction to make up for the lack of things happening. The subplot of Dave and Alice's relationship becomes the focal point of the movie, but there isn't much to care for them from in the start. It becomes frustrating that such a broad premise becomes overlapped by the problems pertaining to the first turning point for such a long time. In return, the ending feels rushed and empty. It's filmed well and the acting is amazing, but the story wasn't for me - the premise wasn't satisfied in my eyes. They could have done so much more with it.

5.5/10