The Waiting City

Touted as the first Australian film to be entirely filmed in India, The Waiting City (2009) is Claire McCarthy's first major film. McCarthy wrote and directed the film after travelling to Calcutta with her sister. Whatever the motivation for the film, I'm excited to see what McCarthy produces after The Waiting City, as I believe time will only add to quite an elegant filmmaker. The film follows the story of Fiona Simmons (Radha Mitchell) and her husband Ben (Joel Edgerton), as they travel to Calcutta to collect the daughter they have adopted. Due to a series of administrative delays, the two are trapped in an interlude where they are forced to look at their relationship. With a flamboyant cast of Indian characters supporting them, led by their Driver, Bell Boy and Manservant, Krishna (Samrat Chakrabarti).

After seeing the trailer for the film, I had no intention of seeing it as the storyline looked overdone and clichéd, as if someone had taken any film about a struggling married couple and thrown them in India. However when I saw the director and main performers would be introducing the film, I ambled to the cinema with no real expectations. What I will say about the film is that I hated the first quarter. The writing horrifically clunky and reads very much like a student film. What irks me about McCarthy is that she seems to have the most eloquent understanding of people and is able to bring forward tiny details without making them too overt, Fiona's slight comments and comportment when she first arrives in India is so telling of her 'uptight' character. This quaint writing talent is then juxtaposed, and in my mind totally dwarfed, by a need to be very obvious with what is happening in the minds of characters. A story that is so based in a sense of reality and detail, and realistic self-discovery has the propensity to force characters to become caricatures; Fiona juggling telephones, Ben's artistic need to join everyone he meets in song. A businesswoman and an artist in a relationship, the Odd Couple theme music isn't required to get across the point that they're very different. Similarly some of the religious messages seem a tad misguided and only occasionally less than awkward.

The other problem with the film is this unnecessary secondary story-arc, Ben struggling to find his feet between being a real adult, and his drug-fueled musician past. This, coupled with the stunning Scarlet (Isabel Lucas) brings tension to Fiona and Ben's relationship. Isabel Lucas was in Transformers 2. I am still not entirely convinced that Isabel Lucas is not actually a robot, because she is not an actress. Harsh as that is, I can honestly track my enjoyment of The Waiting City by if Isabel Lucas is onscreen and/or talking. Mitchell, on the other hand, really gains momentum in the film.

Once the very pretty Scarlet takes a backseat role the film really begins to warm up, and finds its heart. To be clear, this isn't a film about overseas adoption, thank god, nor is it a film about India. The apolitical nature of the script allows the viewer to absorb some stunning scenic shots, and the interactions between Fiona and Ben, which really begin to gain strength in both their performances as their story progresses. The film actually contains a few narrative surprises that I honestly didn’t see coming, which was considerate. What could have been a very stale and overdone narrative really took on a life of its own.

While the emotional climax occurs when Ben sings what is possibly the hokiest first-draft of a teenage girl's poem to her crush is cringe-worthy, but on the whole the film embraces tiny, endearing moments that are far more powerful than the overt. I'm curious to see where McCarthy will go from here, in a waiting city of my own.