By Travis Johnson
Following on from his recent feature film, The Dream Children, which is currently making the festival rounds, director Robert Chuter wanted to tackle something a bit different. The result is the upcoming film, The Hidden Well, which is now shooting in Victoria. Starring actor Michael Maxwell Loder (Remnant, The Briefcase Phenomenon), The Hidden Well is not a traditional narrative feature but a portmanteau film encompassing five separate vignettes which are “…interconnected not by character, not by plot… but by style and style alone.”
“I like playing with structure and I think audiences are always keen for a change of pace,” Chuter explains. “I am not sure it’s a portmanteau film in the literal sense. A portmanteau, by its definition, is the blending of two elements or qualities and these films don’t really exist in the same universe nor do they share characters, not in that Pulp Fiction sort of way. But they do stylistically – the use of motifs and devices for example and I guess that is where the term is perhaps, accurate. I am a huge fan of the ‘Cities of Love’ films such as Paris Je’ Taime, New York, I Love You, etc. and of course, the Robert Connolly epic, The Turning. That was truly cinematic and the kind of ambitious filmmaking that makes you excited as an Aussie in the same field. Where that film was a mosaic, The Hidden Well is more of a moving collage.”
“Having five stories in chapters to tell in the one feature film is a daunting task but a really exciting one too,” Loder adds. “Each one is so different and confronting yet all have a stylised connection that I think audiences will find engrossing. For any actor the rare opportunity to play in multiple skins is wonderful. And to do it in the one feature film is even better.”
The five vignettes cover a lot of narrative ground, dealing with a couple trying for a child, another couple looking for connection, a confused young man facing a cruel proposition, a woman seeking her estranged father, and more. “All five chapters in The Hidden Well except one are adapted from short plays I’ve had associations with,” Chuter says. “And all of them were well-received when they were produced. After reading through them, I thought they would work cinematically – there was something visual, something intimate and yet challenging about each of them – big themes in intimate settings and one after the other, they all seemed to flow. There was no one single ‘genesis’ as such, it just revealed itself organically.”
Thus, the stories contained in the film share no narrative links, existing alongside each other separately but linked via the stylistic choices Chuter and his team bring to their interpretation. Still, there are themes that reoccur within each part. “I would say it’s about the handling of seemingly simple dilemmas that turn out to have life-changing consequences.” Chuter says. “In each of the stories,we have characters that can handle large, complex problems, but it is the domestic situations that could be their undoing: do I get an IVF test or am I scared of the results? Do I ask that person out today or tomorrow? Who was that guy I just met? Each of these simple questions could be the undoing of otherwise brilliant people. Essentially following Aristotle’s theory about tragedy inspiring pity and fear as we watch people like us – or better than ourselves – fall to nothing. When it’s by something that happens everyday, whether by fate or otherwise, it’s a pretty provocative thought – it is the simple things in life that have the most gravitas.”
“As Robert said, he has a real passion for European cinema, so there are many themes/motifs within this film which are linked by the human condition.” Loder says. “These are very specific to each story and each character. The overarching theme is in the stylistic framework and the way cinematographer Rudi Siira shoots it.”
“I’m hoping that each story inspires discussion, not just about the fate of the characters, but of where each of them might be heading in life.” Chuter reflects. “Each of the films are left open-ended so I’m letting the audience connect the dots.”
Says Loder, “I hope that it is as potent and interesting when you watch it again years later. Art for me is all about leaving something for someone to pick up, something that forms connections to a feeling, to themselves, their friends and their families and how it forms our identity and relationship to the world around us and how our lives are affected when fate intervenes.”
For more information on The Hidden Well, check out the film’s official Facebook page.
.
