‘Wishing On A Star’: Tallinn Review

Dir: Peter Kerekes. Italy/Slovakia/Czech Republic/Austria/Croatia. 2024. 99mins.

Some folks imagine that destiny is written within the stars. Astrologer Lucianna de Leoni, figuring out of a baroque and barely down-at-heel turreted villa within the Veneto area of Italy, takes a extra versatile strategy. To grasp their desires (of affection, wealth, or only a new begin) she sends her purchasers on a rigorously calibrated birthday journey, for them to be reborn beneath a brand new sky. The most recent movie from Slovak director Peter Kerekes (107 Moms, Velvet Terrorists) Wishing On A Star is a heat, eccentric and ceaselessly amusing documentary hybrid that maps the journeys of Lucianna and her consumer as they pursue their desires.

Heat, eccentric and ceaselessly amusing

This movie appears like an outlier within the present non-fiction panorama which, maybe understandably, appears dominated by the crushing horrors of latest life. With its quirky, bigger than life characters, jaunty music and eye for absurdity, Wishing On A Star is reminiscent in tone to a few of the extra droll episodes of the BBC documentary collection Fashionable Occasions. The movie, which screens in Tallinn having premiered in Venice might be a gorgeous proposition for documentary specialist distributors in search of offbeat non-fiction crowd-pleasers.

Lucianna is an enormous believer in new beginnings, each for her purchasers and for her instant household. A terrific opening shot exhibits a chair chucked via the window on the very high of the tower that looms over her dwelling. It’s adopted by numerous different bits of furnishings, a frying pan and a few ornaments. It’s the brand new 12 months, and Lucianna, her husband and daughter burn their discarded possessions in a ritual bonfire: “We burn the previous so the brand new can come.”

She interrogates her household over their needs for the approaching 12 months. Her placid husband is pleased with issues the best way they’re; her daughter would really like a brand new job. Lucianna, nonetheless, has grander ambitions – she want to relocate again to Naples, the town of her delivery. However whereas Lucianna is within the wish-granting enterprise, her personal desires have, till now, been positioned on a back-burner.

Purchasers additionally share their hopes for the long run, and Lucianna squints at her star charts and a map of the world. She’s half astrologer, half journey agent. And, when wanted, she’s additionally a counsellor, providing sage recommendation to the ladies – and they’re nearly all ladies – who pay for her bespoke companies.

A pair of bickering similar twins, Adriana and Giuliana, who’ve interlinked needs for every others’ futures, are despatched to Beirut, the place they proceed to argue however attain an accord over the massive query of motherhood. Giovanni, a lonely undertaker, would really like a spouse and a household, if solely to appease his overbearing mom. Lucianna suggests Brazil as his birthday astrological revamp and, in setting the wheels in movement for his journey, Giovanni stumbles right into a relationship with the feminine undertaker who he recruits to run his enterprise whereas he’s away. It quickly turns into clear, nonetheless, that Giovanni’s dangerous romantic luck has nothing to do along with his horoscope and all the pieces to do along with his relationship along with his stifling and judgemental dad or mum.

Elsewhere, a younger mom of two hopes for the rekindling of her chilly and distant husband’s affections. Lucianna appears to be like uncertain and suggests Anchorage in Alaska. The girl settles for a stuffed polar bear and a washing-up bowl filled with ice cubes in her front room in its place. 

The traces between fiction and non-fiction are intentionally blurred – there are clearly components and conditions which might be scripted and arrange, however Kerekes has no management on how a state of affairs will play out as soon as he has skilled his digital camera onto it. The outcome generally is a little episodic – the chapter coping with Giovanni is closed quite despondently and abruptly for instance. However the stars align neatly for a closing sequence that sees Luciana take her personal birthday journey – to Naples, the place else?