DIRECTOR SHIRLEY BARRETT TALKS SOUTH SOLITARY
Some directors fear their productions will be plagued by unruly weather. Not so Shirley Barrett (Love Serenade), whose latest cinematic treat, South Solitary, is an understated romance set against the backdrop of a remote and tempestuous Tasmanian lighthouse island (actually shot in Cape Nelson, Victoria). No, Barrett feared it would be spoilt by the ‘inappropriate’ sunniness that saw its budget practically triple. “I wanted it to be an austere, sombre place…but I was nervous it would start to look idyllically beautiful,” she explains. Fortunately, the conditions worsened, allowing Barrett to complete her period piece about, “A small group of characters thrust together in adversity,” or, as she aptly boils it down to, “Little people on a big rock,” that could be blown off by the Roaring Forties at any moment. Turbulent climate aside, Barrett was also enamoured by the calamitous lifestyle led by lighthouse keepers. “They were happy places if it was the right combination of people,” she explains, “but small tensions could brew and erupt because there was no escape, no one else to alleviate things.” Indeed, while studying old lighthouse logbooks, Barrett discovered some fascinating accounts – petty conflicts over firewood, an entire lighthouse staff being forced by their unbearably rigid head keeper to seek immediate transfer and (most alarmingly), “People running amuck with shotguns.”
It seems inconceivable then that the film’s protagonist, the meek but kindly Meredith (Barrett’s long-time disciple, Miranda Otto), could endure such chaos. But Meredith’s arrival on Barrett’s fictitious island, in aid of her fastidious lighthouse keeper uncle, allowed Barrett to explore companionship. “Meredith had at one point done quite well for herself,” Barrett muses, “but having had an affair with a married man, having got pregnant, having had this disastrous abortion…she’s so reduced in her circumstances that all she can do is be an unpaid companion for her uncle. Her time on the island is spent desperately lurching towards anything that might be a companion, even her pet lamb. She’s desperate for affection and she’s rattling around wildly.” Although Meredith, who’s ‘adrift’ at the outset, inevitably finds romance, Barrett stresses South Solitary is a ‘slow burner’, not a ‘sparks-flying’ romance. “I’m a big fan of romance,” she says hesitantly, “but you have to be careful with how you resolve it as it can somehow be deflating to resolve it too completely. I feel this about the Pride and Prejudice television series, which I loved, but at the end when Mr Darcy and Elizabeth are on the coach and they are kissing and there’s wedding bells, somehow you feel a little abandoned, as the viewer, now that they are finally together. I didn’t want to have a pat ending…not that I’m at all saying Pride and Prejudice has a pat ending!” Ultimately, Barrett says South Solitary is about the small character incidents that offer the hope of romance and the idea that people, if forced together, can slowly come to, “Some kind of enjoyment of each other’s company.” “That’s what interested me,” she says. “The small oddities that happen in life…a collection of small moments that become something bigger.”
South Solitary opens in cinemas July 29. For your chance at a double pass, head to the Giveaways section now!
