Few actresses can get me as instantly excited about a film as Aussie actress Mia Wasikowska. I’ll see almost anything she’s in, though I’ll admit to being turned off her girl-gets-cancer-and-teaches-a-boy-life-lessons-before-dying teen romance Restless after ten minutes. (That genre needs to die, stat.)
Since 2011’s Jane Eyre, Wasikowska’s projects have been a bit hit-or-miss, though I really liked this year’s unjustly ignored Stoker, where she plays an outcast teen with an off-her-rocker mother (Nicole Kidman) and a budding desire for violence.
Tracks looks like a star vehicle for Wasikowska. An adaptation of adventurer Robyn Davidson’s memoir, which recounts her nine-month, 1700-mile journey across the Australian desert by camel, Tracks has received raves at festivals. Wasikowska plays Davidson and Adam Driver co-stars as a National Geographic photographer, as the trek was funded (reluctantly on Davidson’s part) by the magazine.
In the trailer, Davidson is told by men, “Your plan is ridiculous,” “You must be mad, girlie,” “You want to die out there or something?” With its lead sun-burned and dirt-streaked, the film looks like it’ll put forth an alternate vision of glamour — one that finds joy and meaning in solitude and self-sufficiency.
No U.S. release date has yet been annouced. The film will open in the U.K. on April 25, 2014.
Watch the Tracks trailer:
