Just as her second directorial effort premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival this week, Mia Wasikowska’s first directorial project can now be seen online. Wasikowska, who has starred as the titular characters in “Alice in Wonderland” and “Jane Eyre,” has dipped her toes into short film directing twice now; can a feature be far behind?
“Madly,” which is now playing at Tribeca, is an anthology of short films devoted to love, directed and written by Wasikowska, Gael García Bernal, Sebastian Silva, Anurag Kashyap, Sion Sono and Natasha Khan. According to the festival description, the “six stories in ‘Madly’ portray contemporary love in all its glorious, sad, ecstatic, empowering and erotic manifestations.”
“Madly” is Wasikoswka’s second adventure as a film director. The first was a short called “Long Clear View,” an adaptation of a short story by Tim Winton, which Wasikoswka adapted herself as well.
The short is a part of a larger anthology called “The Turning,” which includes short films by fellow Australians, all adapted from Winton’s stories. According to the film’s official synopsis, “The linking and overlapping stories explore the extraordinary turning points in ordinary people’s lives in a stunning portrait of a small coastal community. As characters face second thoughts and regret, relationships irretrievably alter, resolves are made or broken, and lives change direction forever. This watershed film reinterprets and re-imagines the work for the screen.”
“Long Clear View,” Wasikowska’s entry into the anthology, tells of a recurring Winton character named Vic Lang. The short follows his younger years, exploring peculiar habits, social anxieties and fixation on his father’s rifle. “I was interested in the perspective of a young person and the way their imagination can heighten things and change the reality of instances in our lives,” Wasikoswka said about the story.
“The Turning” first premiered in 2013 at the Melbourne International Film Festival. You can watch a clip of “Long Clear View” below and catch the whole anthology, which also features Cate Blanchett, Rose Byrne, Hugo Weaving and Miranda Otto, streaming on WeAreColony.
[via Press materials]
Originally published at blogs.indiewire.com on April 20, 2016.
