The director of critically acclaimed and AFI-winning film The Year My Voice Broke has returned to Australian shores to shoot his latest offering.
London-based John Duigan, who also directed Sirens and Flirting, is again teaming up with long-time collaborator Geoff Burton for Careless Love, which began shooting across Sydney yesterday.
Burton, who usually shoots Duigan’s films but is only taking on producing duties due to other commitments, told IF the independent feature was taking on “a more interesting production model”.
“It’s a more ensemble sort-of-film rather than your usual big budget/big crew pictures that we do,” the former ACS cinematographer of the year said.
The crew will include those who have worked with the pair over the years such as first assistant P.J. Voeten and production designer Colin Gibson, as well as newcomers who were “just very keen with the opportunity to work with a master filmmaker like John Duigan”.
“John proposed this about a year ago knowing that I was pursuing this kind of model myself.”
Burton's long-term assistant – cinematographer Kathryn Milliss – will instead shoot the film.
The drama, funded by private investors, is set in the aftermath of the world financial crisis when many have lost their jobs and many others, their homes.
Written by Duigan about two years ago, the story centres around Linh (Nammi Le), a Vietnamese-Australian university student from a remote country town who is studying at Sydney University.
Her father, in the building trade, lost his job and the family’s home is likely to be repossessed.
Linh starts working three nights a week as an escort, sending money home and also using it to avoid getting into debt through her university course.
She believes she can separate her normal life from her work, and the film focuses on the challenges involved establishing an identity independently of how others – and society – perceive us.
When her carefully partitioned worlds threaten to collide, Linh’s life becomes ever more tenuous.
Burton said it would strike a chord with Australian audiences.
“Many more recent Australian films rightly or wrongly are genre-based in the way their stories are told – and that’s for good commercial purposes – but John’s films are always very personal and often very left of field,” said Burton, who is producing alongside Duigan and Jenny Day.
“Its style is very European so there’s no reason why it won’t get an extensive European release.
“Any English-speaking story is universal even though it’s told in an interesting and different way.”
He said casting by Anousha Zarkesh (Tomorrow, When The War Began, The Reef) was important due to the list of young actors required.
“We’ll be presenting a lot of new faces in this film,” Burton said.
“John’s great skill is in discovering and developing young talent, like Noah Taylor and Ben Mendelsohn [who both appeared in 1987’s The Year My Voice Broke, which won an AFI for best film].”
The six-week Red digital shoot will take place in and around Sydney, including at Waverley Cemetery, Kings Cross and Coogee.