CELESTE
***
Director: Ben Hackworth
Screenwriters: Ben Hackworth and Bille Brown
Principal cast:
Radha Mitchell
Thomas Cocquerel
Nadine Garner
Odessa Young
Emm Wiseman
Ashley Lyons
Country: Australia
Classification: M
Runtime: 105 mins.
Australian release date: 25 April 2019
Previewed at: Ritz Cinema, Sydney, on 8 April 2019.
Celeste, the sophomore feature from Queensland director Ben Hackworth, looks amazing and its location is absolutely extraordinary, but the script is messy and fails to make you engage with the characters in the frame. It’s an example of the adage, ‘never judge a book by its cover’. In the magnificent grounds of Paronella Park in North Queensland, we encounter the retired opera diva Celeste (Radha Mitchell), preparing to perform for the first time in 10 years after a hiatus caused by the death of her husband Mateo (Ashley Lyons). Surrounded by an exotic, verdant garden that resembles a Balinese landscape, she is faced with memories of the past when a young man, Jack (Thomas Cocquerel), shows up at the property, adding to her anxiety of a situation about which she is starting to have grave doubts. But the show must go on as the tickets are all sold.
Jack, owing money to a couple of thugs and needing to escape, is delighted when a letter arrives from Celeste inviting him to his childhood home. We learn that he is Celeste’s estranged stepson from Mateo’s first marriage and it is soon apparent that something is bothering both of them; there’s a sense of some unfinished business between them. Hovering over the proceedings, portraying a character whose origins are unclear, is Celeste’s assistant-slash-companion, Grace (Nadine Garner). She is determined the performance will go ahead and spends most of her time keeping Jack occupied and away from ‘Cel’, as her intimates call Celeste, so he winds up completing the building of the stage when the original contractors up and leave. Celeste, in the meantime, is having panic attacks and hitting the bottle pretty hard, while also seeking Jack’s company in an attempt to address whatever is hanging over them from the past. There’s an erotic tension between the pair that, like a tropical ulcer, needs to be incised. Complicating matters is Jack’s dalliance with local lass Rita (Odessa Young). As the big night approaches the tension increases and long supressed memories rise to the surface, revealing why Jack fled all those years ago.
Unfortunately, the problem with Celeste lies with Hackworth’s and the late Bille Brown’s screenplay and it overrides the technically competent aspects of the film. There’s not enough exposition of some of these people. While it’s fine to leave room for the viewer’s imagination to work, too little back-story can simply leave you in the dark. Credit must be paid to the cast, however, particularly Mitchell and Cocquerel who, although playing largely unlikeable characters, deliver some credibility to their roles. This is particularly hard for Mitchell, given that the diva never practises… after a decade of not singing? Both Garner and Young are also believable, but none of these portrayals is enough to sustain the muddy story, which gets lost amid the histrionics and borders on being pretentious. It’s a beautiful-looking film, though, and Katie Milwright’s camera has suitably captured the claustrophobic, almost hermetically sealed world of Celeste’s Paronella Park, so it may well increase tourism to the Innisfail park in FNQ, if nothing else.
Perhaps Odessa Young summed it up best when she said, the “internalisation of things in [Celeste] and the heat and the stickiness and the breeze and the smell of the sugar cane coming through creates an incredible atmosphere that you get lost in when you’re shooting. It’s like you’re a little bit drunk on the breeze. It’s an amazing location where it just kind of entrances you.” It’s hard not to feel that this intoxication might have gone to Ben Hackworth’s head, too.
Screenwriters: Ben Hackworth and Bille Brown
Principal cast:
Radha Mitchell
Thomas Cocquerel
Nadine Garner
Odessa Young
Emm Wiseman
Ashley Lyons
Country: Australia
Classification: M
Runtime: 105 mins.
Australian release date: 25 April 2019
Previewed at: Ritz Cinema, Sydney, on 8 April 2019.
Celeste, the sophomore feature from Queensland director Ben Hackworth, looks amazing and its location is absolutely extraordinary, but the script is messy and fails to make you engage with the characters in the frame. It’s an example of the adage, ‘never judge a book by its cover’. In the magnificent grounds of Paronella Park in North Queensland, we encounter the retired opera diva Celeste (Radha Mitchell), preparing to perform for the first time in 10 years after a hiatus caused by the death of her husband Mateo (Ashley Lyons). Surrounded by an exotic, verdant garden that resembles a Balinese landscape, she is faced with memories of the past when a young man, Jack (Thomas Cocquerel), shows up at the property, adding to her anxiety of a situation about which she is starting to have grave doubts. But the show must go on as the tickets are all sold.
Jack, owing money to a couple of thugs and needing to escape, is delighted when a letter arrives from Celeste inviting him to his childhood home. We learn that he is Celeste’s estranged stepson from Mateo’s first marriage and it is soon apparent that something is bothering both of them; there’s a sense of some unfinished business between them. Hovering over the proceedings, portraying a character whose origins are unclear, is Celeste’s assistant-slash-companion, Grace (Nadine Garner). She is determined the performance will go ahead and spends most of her time keeping Jack occupied and away from ‘Cel’, as her intimates call Celeste, so he winds up completing the building of the stage when the original contractors up and leave. Celeste, in the meantime, is having panic attacks and hitting the bottle pretty hard, while also seeking Jack’s company in an attempt to address whatever is hanging over them from the past. There’s an erotic tension between the pair that, like a tropical ulcer, needs to be incised. Complicating matters is Jack’s dalliance with local lass Rita (Odessa Young). As the big night approaches the tension increases and long supressed memories rise to the surface, revealing why Jack fled all those years ago.
Unfortunately, the problem with Celeste lies with Hackworth’s and the late Bille Brown’s screenplay and it overrides the technically competent aspects of the film. There’s not enough exposition of some of these people. While it’s fine to leave room for the viewer’s imagination to work, too little back-story can simply leave you in the dark. Credit must be paid to the cast, however, particularly Mitchell and Cocquerel who, although playing largely unlikeable characters, deliver some credibility to their roles. This is particularly hard for Mitchell, given that the diva never practises… after a decade of not singing? Both Garner and Young are also believable, but none of these portrayals is enough to sustain the muddy story, which gets lost amid the histrionics and borders on being pretentious. It’s a beautiful-looking film, though, and Katie Milwright’s camera has suitably captured the claustrophobic, almost hermetically sealed world of Celeste’s Paronella Park, so it may well increase tourism to the Innisfail park in FNQ, if nothing else.
Perhaps Odessa Young summed it up best when she said, the “internalisation of things in [Celeste] and the heat and the stickiness and the breeze and the smell of the sugar cane coming through creates an incredible atmosphere that you get lost in when you’re shooting. It’s like you’re a little bit drunk on the breeze. It’s an amazing location where it just kind of entrances you.” It’s hard not to feel that this intoxication might have gone to Ben Hackworth’s head, too.