Top End Wedding

I saw the premiere of this file at Sundance, and it's a great film. It follows a lot of the traditional Rom-Com formula, but does it very well-the right mix of funny & touching, but never getting sappy. It uses a "road trip" plot device, that allows for some spectacular cinematography of Austraila's Northern Territories and islands. The music in the film is outstanding! (I hope the soundtrack gets released...) A really fun, well-done movie, and if it gets picked up for distribution in the US I think will perform well here. This was easily one of my favorite films so far at Sundance this year!

'Top End Wedding' is from the director of 'The Sapphires' and also stars Tapsell, this time as Lauren, an up-&-coming lawyer from Adelaide. She gets engaged to Ned (Lee), which sets in motion a whirlwind trip to Darwin to try and pull together a wedding in 10 days before she's required back at work, thanks to her demanding boss Ms Hampton (Fox).

Back in Darwin, we meet Lauren's Dad, Trevor (Higginson) and the twist that her Mum, Daphne (Yovich), has left to find her roots. This "mystery" forces Lauren and Ned on a roadtrip to find her, and allows us to see the spectacular scenery in Kakadu and Katherine, as well as eventually, the Tiwi Islands. There's plenty of funny moments along the way and interesting characters.

As well as the great settings, there's also some emotional reunions for Lauren and Daphne with their people and country on the Tiwi Islands - it's all handled really well and is very touching. It's fantastic to see Aboriginal actors and Australian settings on film - I wish there was more. Overall, a lovely film in terms of story, music, characters and settings.

Why does this earn a special space in my heart? It is a romantic comedy after all, deliberately designed to be discarded. The genre is defined by the attractiveness of a superficial love; the easy way problems are resolved and the balance of designed soulmates restored.

This film follows the mandated pattern: love, some misunderstanding of clumsiness that separates the lovers, a public pronouncement of love with cheering bystanders, happy ending - often a wedding and dancing. You have to have some strong comedic, but identifiably human characters. This serves that pattern well.

But it also has a few important differences. The first is the in your face charm of the land. I am immigrating to Australia so this grabs me deeper than it will you, dear reader. But it will likely grab you too, because the rom-com device here is place-as-heart. That is usually impossible to convey cinematically: vistas are containers, situations within which you place the characters and their emotions. Even Takashi Miike's 'The Bird People in China' or the obverse film, Zhang Yimou's obverse 'Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles' can only use place as space, and then only to annotate, even when they use the mystery of place and people.

Here you have a device no other place has: the people and the place share an identity. I don't know how well this would be conveyed to someone who knows nothing of the Aborigines, but the movie completely captures the notion by bringing souls to a physical place in the context of life commitment. The driver of 'place' as an agent is largely implied, making it so much stronger.

But there's also a more intriguing notion of love than usual. As with the standard rom-com model, it is the man that is the lead and the woman that acquiesces or not. But here the guy has some novel metaphors. Here he is already committed beyond the happy closeness of an early relationship and he explains why: his life is a room half filled with boxes that mean ('contain') little and he wants the rest to be full of flowers and jewels. This is after the metaphor is set up by someone in the parallel romance. And it becomes a complaint in the big breakup scene.

But the metaphor is strange enough that it steps out of the rom-com genre far enough to register as human; love for someone coming as much from the pull of attraction (and this woman is attractive) as from the innate need for companionship.

Miranda Tapsell leads us on a merry dance through all of the Northern Territory's most famous and scenic sights, from Nitmilik Gorge to Kakadu to the Tiwi Islands. There are credits to the Northern Territory Tourist Bureau, and they more than got their money's worth.

The story line is a bit predictable, but it is told with enthusiastic good nature and has a couple of less obvious twists that overall it hung together well enough that I didn't mind. It is the Miranda show and she inhabits the character so easily I wonder whether aspects of it might be slightly autobiographical. Gwilym Lee as fiancé Ned is a pleasant, slightly uncomfortable fish out of water in what to him must be such a strange environment. The extras, Aboriginal people in various places and particularly on the Tiwi Islands, give it a goodly dollop of authenticity and provides a reflective backdrop for many of the story's aspects.

In some ways, it's a bit like a visual equivalent of a musical - a not terribly plausible or important story that ties together not songs but images and impressions of Australia's Top End and the people that live there. If you've never been, this might just inspire you to go.

This film was even better than I'd hoped for, and I smiled through much of the movie - and left feeling great! A truly uplifting romcom showcasing some unique parts of Australia that I now really want to explore! Excellent soundtrack. Definitely go and see it!