Kin has had its name changed to The Wedding Party, and it has been announced that it will open the Melbourne International Film Festival next month. Three new articles have new quotes and details about the film, although unfortunately nothing from/much about Isabel. Confirmation is given that Isabel will be back in Australia next month for the premiere of the film though!

The Wedding Party to open MIFF
Amanda Jane’s comedy The Wedding Party (previously known as Kin) will open this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival.

“We had the title in the back of our minds for a lonn time, as an alternative title. We decided to change it because the film is entertaining, fun, and we wanted a title that suited those aspects more. It’s full of music, a fantastic cast and great comic actors,” writer/director Amanda Jane told Encore.

Produced by Nicole Minchin (ABC TV’s Lowdown), The Wedding Party received support from the MIFF Premiere Fund.

The film is set for distribution by Arkles Entertainment. When the company shut down its New Zealand operation in early March, MD John Davies told Encore that “Arkles Australia remains and goes on, and The Wedding Party is still contracted with us. We are in the market for a partner on it”. Encore understands negotiations are still taking place.

Isabel Lucas plays Ana Petrov, a beautiful young woman who flees Russia, desperate to stay in Australia with the man she loves. It’s a story about the Thompsons, a family whose individual love lives range from deviant to delicious to downright desperate. The youngest son, Steve (Josh Lawson), agrees to marry Ana for cash, but when his plans for a secret registry affair are discovered by his family, Steve finds himself at the centre of the world’s most farcical wedding.

Running from July 22 – August 8, the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival will be the 59th edition and the last for director Richard Moore, who will be relocating to Queensland in late August to become head of screen culture at Screen Queensland.

Moore told Encore that part of his plans is to bring together the Brisbane Film Festival – which will now take place in November – and the Asia Pacific Screen Awards – which were launched in 2007 and meant to coincide with the SPAA Conference on the Gold Coast, until the producers’ event moved to Sydney in 2009.

Rom com a surprise festival opener
THE Australian romantic comedy The Wedding Party has come from the clouds to be named the opening night film of the Melbourne International Film Festival.

The debut feature by Amanda Jane has had a low profile largely because it is a low-budget feature in a genre that is particularly risky. Then there’s the fact the film was known by another name, Kin, for most of its life. “I’m really happy with the new title,” Jane says. “I think it represents what the film is about, the fun and family idiosyncrasies in a wedding.” The Wedding Party stars Josh Lawson (who has already made a couple of US movies) and Isabel Lucas as the bride and groom, surrounded by a solid comic cast including Steve Bisley, Rhonda Burchmore, Adam Zwar, Geoff Paine, Heather Mitchell, Bill Hunter and a couple of Carlton footballers, such as Chris Judd. They filmed scenes at Carlton’s training session and at an MCG blockbuster last year between the Blues and Collingwood, which Jane describes as spectacular on the big screen. MIFF opens on July 22 and its program will be available on July 7.

City stars in a marriage of comedy, drama and chaos

IT WAS originally called Kin, but people kept mishearing the title, thinking it was Kim or King. So now it’s known as The Wedding Party, and it’s getting a launch that its makers say they can hardly believe. The romantic comedy, set in Melbourne, has been chosen as the opening-night film for this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival.

The Wedding Party is the work of a trio of local filmmakers – director Amanda Jane, scriptwriter Christine Bartlett and producer Nicole Minchin – making their feature debut.

The cast is led by Isabel Lucas (Transformers) and Josh Lawson (The Librarians, Thank God You’re Here). Lucas and Lawson are both working in Los Angeles at the moment, but will be back for the MIFF red-carpet premiere next month at the Regent Theatre.

The idea for the movie, Bartlett recalls, grew from a desire to make an ensemble work exploring the nature of romance, sex and love, ”within the confines of one fairly confused family”. The characters at the centre of the film, the Thompsons, have ”a complicated relationship with honesty, whether it’s telling the truth to themselves, or to each other”.

The youngest son, Steve (Lawson), is deep in debt. He tries to solve the problem by entering into a marriage of convenience, for a fee, with a Russian girl, Ana (Lucas). But when the rest of the family becomes involved in his plans, chaos follows, and any notion of convenience is well and truly out the window.

For Jane, whose favourite director is James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News), the task was to establish ”a balance between comedy and drama”, and make a film that was ”entertaining and accessible to a commercial audience, but which had plenty of layers”.

A sense of the location is an important part of the film. ”Melbourne is like a character, in a way,” says Minchin, ”and the city really comes to life on the screen.” The filmmakers were delighted to get permission to film at the MCG during a packed Carlton-Collingwood game: in the movie, the match is a source of both affirmation and angst for the hapless Thompsons, whose loyalties are split down the middle.

The full festival program will be announced on July 6. MIFF runs from July 22 to August 8.