Sundance Film Festival Review: 'Wish You Had Been Here'

Superbly shot with an unforgettable, tough-guy-meets-vulnerable-father performance from Joel Edgerton, "Wish You Had Been Here" keeps threatening to become first-rate mystery tale about secrets, lies and sex. Its story flits backwards and forwards over time, unspooling an account in regards to a Cambodian holiday gone bad and also the implications of the ecstasy-fueled party that leaves one guy missing and also the lives of his vacation mates in shambles. But you will find a couple of weakly attracted figures along with a rushed ending that leaves the timeline-hopping plot strands within an unfulfilling motion picture heap. Everything designed for an entertaining opening towards the 2012 Sundance Film Festival on Thursday (The month of january 19), only one that left us itchiness for many truly great festival films dads and moms in the future. Edgerton plays Dork, an Australian boat builder and father of two, who jets off and away to Southeast Asia together with his pregnant wife, Alice (Felicity Cost), her sister, Steph (Teresa Palmer) and Stephs boyfriend, Jeremy (Antony Starr). They tour Cambodias cities, beaches and flea marketplaces. The handheld camera work and rocking score alllow for a compelling travelogue during these opening moments. One evening, though, they pop pills (save, sensibly, for Alice, who heads to mattress early). The following day Jeremy is finished, and also the remaining three are forever transformed. Just what happened on that drug-addled evening may be the mystery in the centre of Wish You Had Been Here, and first-time author/director Kieran Darcy-Cruz skillfully develops suspense as secrets are revealed through flashbacks and emotional, present-day confessions. Dork clearly knows a lot more than he initially allows on by what happened in Cambodia, and Edgerton perfectly conveys, frequently with one glance because the camera stays locked on his gaze, the extent of his anxiety-ridden guilt. Cost, too (a family member unknown on American shores), provides a layered, affecting performance as she discovers, together with the crowd, the brutal facts at the middle of the film. Palmer, though, is offered little to utilize within the script, an issue not just of character but of storytelling, since her actions are extremely integral to driving the drama forward. Yet Wish You Had Been Here still handles to become a taut mystery until, that's, the flicks final act, as Darcy-Cruz rushes to wrap everything up, departing plot holes aplenty along with a healthy dose of confusion. We wont give anything away, but we'll say this. When the training of films like Night time Express, Brokedown Structure and Go back to Paradise werent already obvious, let Wish You Had Been Here function as the final word: travel abroad for that cities, beaches and flea marketplaces and skip the drugs.