Tagline: Love can turn you upside down.
Heidi is a beautiful teen. After a “misunderstanding” with her mother, she runs away from home and ends up at a ski-resort, where everyone comes on to her. With her innocence at stake, she learns about the true meaning of life, love and happiness.
“Somersault” is the story of a young girl’s sensory journey through which she learns the true meaning of love, family and friendship. Living with her mother, sixteen year old Heidi (heart-wrenchingly played by Abbie Cornish in a breakthrough role) looks to short-lived sexual encounters for the physical and emotional contact she craves.
Fleeing Canberra for Jindabyne, she meets Joe (played by Sam Worthington who delivers an outstanding performance), the son of a wealthy local farmer that leads to a developing romance in all its complexity. However Joe’s relationship with Heidi challenges his ideas of sexuality, class and his future. Illuminated by the lives of others and the power of forgiveness, Heidi discovers she is more than she had realised. Like no other Australian film you will see this year, “Somersault” marks.
Reviews: Somersault Leaps into the UK
Cate Shortland’s feature debut SOMERSAULT opened last weekend in the UK, scoring the second highest screen average of any new film on British screens that week.
The film’s producer, Anthony Anderson, said he is very pleased with the result. “The UK is a tough market to crack, with so many new films arriving each week. It outperformed new Hollywood films such as Kinsey opening at the same time. The UK distributor, Metrodome, have handled this film with great care, ensuring it stands out”
It is No 8 of all films screening in London’s West End, just behind Million Dollar Baby. In it’s first 3 days in Britain, Somersault has taken £42,802 (AUD$104,000) at the box office.
As well as a strong presence of posters on the London underground, the film received mainly strong reviews, especially from Time Out – Film of the Week; Sunday Times “evocative and honest”; Daily Express “acutely observed and well acted, [it] gets under the skin and haunts the memory”; Mail on Sunday “Shortland’s film is great”; Daily Star “Abbie Cornish is clearly headed for stardom”; the FT “Shortland gives us an Australia we have never seen before”; and the Evening Standard “well-written, well-played and full of atmosphere … a highly promising first film and we are certain to hear more of both Shortland and Cornish”. The Sunday Observer said “The performances are uniformly good … and the film is presumably intended as an antidote to the false bonhomie of life in Neighbours’s Ramsey Street.”
Director Cate Shortland attended a gala opening of the film at The Barbican Centre in London. Somersault, which won 13 AFI awards, has also been invited to screen later this month at New York’s prestigious New Directors, New Films festival, prior to its US release in September. The film won the Angel Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival, and has recently collected trophies at Miami International Film Festival and the Ljubljana International Film Festival in Slovenia.
Sydney Morning Herald Review – 10th September 2004
Director Cate Shortland has been shepherding Somersault through the international film festival circuit since May. The haunting Australian drama premiered at Cannes, then screened in Sydney, Melbourne and Edinburgh. Next up are Toronto, Vancouver and Tokyo. Such recognition shows the Bondi filmmaker’s first feature, which stars rising actress Abbie Cornish as a 16-year-old learning some tough lessons about love in a snowfields service town, has struck a chord.
The vulnerable heroine’s confusion between sex and intimacy has moved audiences.The vulnerable heroine’s confusion between sex and intimacy has moved audiences. Viewers have often been just as impressed by the film’s evocative wintry feel and the intense performances of Cornish and Sam Worthington (Gettin’ Square).
For a country that regularly features outback landscapes in its films, Somersault is rare in that it is mostly set in Jindabyne. For a country that has produced a series of often parochial comedies recently, it’s a risky and heartfelt drama.
“It’s been amazing because I’ve met such good people,” Shortland says of the film’s festival life.
“Edinburgh was really good because I got to see some films and met people from all over the world. And went to some good parties.”
The writer-director says she has become less anxious as the film is seen by more people.
“When I went to Cannes, I still was really attached to the film,” she says. “It really felt like a part of me. Whereas now I can watch it and appreciate the audience a bit more; I’m not just freaking out about the film.”
Shortland says that wherever Somersault has screened the audience has responded to the two central characters, Heidi (Cornish) and Joe (Worthington), and asked questions about their lives after the film.
“They were really intrigued about that relationship and those two people,” she says. “Also, people have really responded to the whole look of the film – that it was shot in the Snowy Mountains. They didn’t know that Australia had [that type of] country.”
The real test will come when Somersault hits Australian cinemas on Thursday. Shortland hopes the buzz has not created the expectation that it will save the struggling domestic film industry. “We just wanted to make a beautiful film that affected people,” she says. “You just want people to see something different and think about it and for it to have an effect on them.”
It has taken Shortland eight years to get Somersault to the screen between making shorts and episodes of The Secret Life of Us, Bad Cop, Bad Cop and MDA for television.
The script was often tucked way in a drawer for extended periods before it burst back to life thanks to the intensive Aurora script development workshop. The program provided mentoring from screenwriters Rob Festinger (In the Bedroom) and Alison Tilson (Japanese Story) and later writer-directors Jane Campion (The Piano) and Chris Noonan (Babe).
Somersault’s subject matter is close to Shortland’s heart.
“To be completely honest with another person – to let them see your vulnerabilities, to let them see what you’re scared of, to let them see your dreams – is really hard,” she says. “Because people now just go to pubs and drink and then go home and have sex, they don’t really know each other.
“I’m not making a value judgement on that, because that can be great and it’s a part of growing up. But it can also be really damaging.”
Shortland wanted to shoot the sex scenes in the film so that viewers empathised with Heidi rather than have them become 9 1/2 Weeks-style titillation.
“When Heidi is on the screen you want the audience to be incredibly intimate with her and feel everything she’s feeling,” she says.
“It’s almost like the film, when she’s on the screen, is from her perspective. That’s why the sex scenes are quite raw.”
Shortland says Worthington tried harder than anybody to land the role of Joe, then worked with a voice coach and a choreographer to nail the character of a rich landowner’s son.
The actor says he was useless in the first audition, but went for a drink with Shortland and fell in love with her ideas for the film.
“I trusted Cate knew what she was doing and I trusted Abbie was strong enough to hold this movie,” he says. “And she’s a beautiful girl. It’s not that hard to fall in love with her.”
When he saw Somersault for the first time, Worthington thought it was both a poetic piece of storytelling and a rich visual experience. As for Cornish?
“I didn’t get to see a lot of Abbie’s stuff until it was first put together,” he says. “There’s a performance there that just blows you away.”
These production notes provided by Magnolia Pictures.
Somersault
Starring: Abbie Cornish, Sam Worthington, Lynette Curran, Erik Thomson, Hollie Andrew, Leah Purcell, Olivia Pigeot, Blake Pittman
Directed by: Cate Shortland
Screenplay by: Cate Shortland
Release Date: October 28, 2005
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Studio: Magnolia Pictures
Boox Office Totals
Domestic: $92,214 (6.2%)
Foreign: $1,390,102 (93.8%)
Total: $1,482,316 (Worldwide)