Wherever She Goes

This is such a delightful film! Suzanne Parrett, as the young Eileen Joyce, is enchanting. This is a finely crafted film; the images, vernacular and social settings are iconic of Australia at that time, the middle 1920s. Each scene is beautifully composed and captures the landscape and characters perfectly. It is guaranteed to pull at your heartstrings as Eileen navigates through the minefield of adult skepticism in a tough economic environment. Hope is maintained by her meetings with a sympathetic swagman, an inspiring pianist in a piano shop and the rough but appreciative miners in Boulder. This wonderful film stands up there with A Bush Christmas, The Overlanders and Smiley as an Aussie classic.

I thought it was a great old Aussie classic, while it lacked the production of some more modern movies (apart from the special effects of the upside down camera shot towards the end) at least the camera people could hold the camera still enough to capture the dialogue and action. I saw some great old Aussie characters, some fantastic nostalgic palaverous dialogue and scenery that would be adored by Australians as they would, could and should. I see it as one of those stepping stones for the Aust film industry that has now made classic after classic. It's a bonza.

Though the film is derived from a book which itself is a highly fictionalised version of Eileen Joyce's life, this is an enjoyable and uplifting watch. For example in the film she has one brother, when in fact there were 7 children in that family, two of whom died early on.

Nothing much that happens in the film depicts precisely what happened to her in real life, but does act as a kind of parallel version. For example, the miners round up donations for her when she was a young girl in Boulder, on order to fund a trip to Perth were she can enrich her talents. In real life the West Australian Premier Phillip Collier conducted a similar donation champaign to help her future.

I found it interesting to hear the yesteryear versions of the Australian accent. The film skips from her being a young girl to 50+ years old, with the in between completely missing. I would have liked to see more of what happened after she left the country town and went to Perth. Well, one can always carry on and do some research about this highly talented woman!

It is difficult to understand why the producers of this film decided to make a fictionalised account of the life of this world famous pianist.It is dreary and boring and does the pianist little favours.

Heavy-handed, dreadfully dreary somewhat fictionalized account of the young Eileen Joyce's introduction to the world of music, her subsequent passion for it and how she struggled against enormous odds to become proficient on the piano. Lack of support from her near-penniless parents did not help matters. Indeed, the story of her battles to procure a piano for practicing on were heart-rending.

Produced with very little humour, and imbued with an intense feeling of pathos throughout, this tear-jerker of a film was not fun to watch.

Having said all that, I have nothing but praise for the actress, Suzanne Parrett, who played the part of the young Eileen Joyce, and who acquitted herself very well indeed in an extremely negative role.

I would much prefer to have seen a biopic that treated Eileen's early life more superficially, and dealt with more of her later successful career as one of the most popular concert pianists of her time.