Wherever She Goes

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.

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.

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.

A partially fictionalised account of the childhood of Eileen Joyce, who would go on to be one of the greatest pianists of the 20th Century. It commences in her native Tasmania, where she's followed about by her beloved pet kangaroo, Twink. After learning to play the harmonica, she moves with her mother and brother to Western Australia to join her father who is labouring with very little success in the gold fields. The rest of the film depicts the grinding poverty of their existence, how Eileen loves the piano and is taught to play at Convent school, finally winning at a local music festival.

Suzanne Parrett gives a very likable, sympathetic, performance as the young Eileen, the early scenes being particularly charming, and there's no doubt that the film-makers' hearts were in the right place. But sad to say it all becomes increasingly slow and tedious, and it's hard to see the point of a biopic that ends abruptly just as its subject's life is becoming more interesting. The overall lack of imagination is perhaps reflected in the paucity of footage of Eileen Joyce herself, just a couple of brief extracts of her playing the Grieg Piano Concerto.

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!