John Curran’s Tracks opened in the UK last weekend, winning plaudits from the critics and drawing a reasonable number of cinemagoers.
Launched by eOne on 55 screens, the Outback adventure starring Mia Wasikowska as Robyn Davidson grossed £111,337 ($A205,000). That was below Curran’s The Painted Veil which opened with £261,130 at 140 locations, according to Screen Daily, which described Tracks’ per-screen average as solid.
The Daily Telegraph’s Robbie Collin found the film “welcoming, strange and therapeutically beautiful.” Echoing the widespread praise for Wasikowska’s performance, he said her character “could almost be the earthbound double of Sandra Bullock’s drifting astronaut in Gravity: life in space is impossible, but loneliness can be a comfort while it’s on your terms.”
The Independent’s Geoffrey Macnab opined, “Tracks is a stirring and beautifully shot account of the author Robyn Davidson's real-life journey by camel across the Australian outback.
“Mia Wasikowska is very well cast as Davidson, capturing her intrepid tomboy side and her sensitivity. At its best…Tracks has both lyricism and a real epic quality.”
The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw’s review was positive with one qualification as he observed, “Tracks is a good-looking movie, acted with intelligence and conviction, a road movie with no road – but also, perhaps, one with no great sense of narrative direction…. It is an attractive, heartfelt work, and Wasikowska carries it with grace.”
In Australia Tracks is coming to the end of its run having earned $2.3 million, below expectations given the mostly laudatory reviews, compelling narrative and Transmission’s extensive marketing campaign.
The Weinstein Co. will open the film in the US on May 23. TWC is also distributing Jonathan Teplitzky’s The Railway Man, which expanded from 26 to 156 screens last weekend and raked in $US578,000, which brings the total after three weekends to a decent $895,000.