WISH YOU WERE HERE (M) is a superb collaboration between talented spouses lead actress Felicity Price and director Kieran Darcy-Smith. Both are credited with the sparkling screenplay which focuses on four friends – husband and wife Dave and Alice (Joel Edgerton and Felicity Price), Alice’s sister, Steph (Teresa Palmer) and her boyfriend Jeremy (Antony Starr) – who have a hedonistic holiday together in Cambodia.

Heaven turns to hell when Jeremy goes missing and the other three return home harbouring secrets of what went awry.

Very much a paradise lost scenario, with temptation throwing the couple into turmoil, truth and trust torn asunder, the world rent irrevocably from a pleasant past to an uncertain future.

Joel Edgerton is brilliant as Dave, another top notch performance from an actor who continues to grow and prosper, and Felicity Price matches him perfectly – there is a palpable truth in their relationship and an honesty that plays out as they traverse the moral morass that engulfs them.

Production values are top notch with the Cambodian footage full of energy and abandon, and Sydney too shot with natural light and genuine location.

WISH YOU WERE HERE makes you glad that you are not (really there), but delivers a visceral, vibrant, volt charging vicarious journey that is all too credible and real and close.

© Richard Cotter

24th April, 2012

Tags- Sydney Movie Reviews- WISH YOU WERE HERE, Felicity Price, Kieran Darcy-Smith, Joel Edgerton, Teresa Palmer, Anthony Starr, Sydney Arts Guide, Richard Cotter