Wishing on a Star
(Italy/Slovakia/Czech Republic/Austria/Croatia, 99 min.)
Dir. Peter Kerekes
Programme: TIFF Docs (North American premiere)
Wishing on a Star will have you hooked from the opening frames as a chair goes sailing through a castle’s second floor window. It crashes to the ground, quickly followed by a bed frame, some end tables, and other odds and ends that residents are clearing out from a cluttered room. Some eclectic music jangles onto the soundtrack as the inhabitants of Aiello del Friuli, a castle near the Venetian Lagoon, undertake spring cleaning. The time is right for them to dust off their lives and make fresh starts.
This peculiar tone sets the scene for audiences to meet the woman who rules the roost at Aiello del Friuli. Luciana de Leoni d’Asparedo, a 63-year-old Neapolitan astrology, has a way of reading the stars that demands her clients to undertake very specific quests at very specific moments. Slovak director Peter Kerekes observes d’Asparedo in action as she reads the star signs and gets a vibe for her clients’ wishes.
Told mostly in playful shot/reverse shot fashion, the film unfolds with Luciana on one side of her computer and her clients on the other. Most people who visit Luciana are looking for love, and she advises them when and where to make the move when the moon is right.
What’s peculiar about Luciana ’s approach, however, is that she assigns her wishers a journey. She might tell them to get to Anchorage, Alaska on such and such a day if they want to find love, or they might need to hitch a flight to the South Pacific without haste to make things right. For others looking to repair strained familial relations or gain independence, they might find the answer in a noodle shop in Taiwan or a beach in Barbados. For people who can’t make the trip, Luciana drolly advises them to bring the destination to them, which relocates a person mentally to situate themselves on the exact longitude or latitude where the stars’ energy will be in alignment with their needs.
Some of the star-seekers that Kerekes finds have downright odd requests. Twin sisters, for example, visit Luciana because one of them wants the other to have a baby so she can raise a child without enduring childbirth. The astrology, whose job is equal parts travel agent and therapist as well, sends the women to Beirut on the hunt for babymaker. Kerekes follows them to Lebanon for the trip and captures their adventure with an offbeat eye. Wishing on a Star cautions audiences to embrace the strange and go along for the journey.
Kerekes moves outside the castle as the film weaves between the astrological counselling and the luminaries in action. The film observes a funeral director and a new hire strike up a relationship. Night after night, his controlling mother enquires about his love life over rigatoni, and thwarts his plan to follow-through with Luciana’s advice that he’ll find love on a beach in Barbados. His mother insists they visit a sad grey beach nearby instead. A few longitude lines away, another of Luciana’s star-seekers takes a leap of faith to escape her overbearing mother. She eats cake with some curious sheep before taking a swim that lands her in a police car. As the cops natter away about the woman’s mental health, she looks confidently transformed after taking the plunge.
Kerekes captures the story with a great sense of play, offering moments of deadpan humour as he travels with Luciana’s clients to faraway places. The astrologer’s line of work inevitably invites a certain kind of personality to read the stars, too, which affords the documentary a rich cast of characters to aid the suspension of belief. There’s a remarkable sense of openness, too, as the participants invite the cameras along for these intimately personal quests and explore the boundaries of their comfort zones. All the elements align here to create an offbeat journey that’s as open of heart as it is of mind.
The film rewards audiences who, like the seekers in Luciana’s network, have faith in the stars. Whether one believes in astrology or not, Wishing on a Star considers how a reading of the cosmos can inspire us to enrich our lives. The jovial Italian astrology knows that people sometimes just need a nudge and an empathetic ear. The film should inspire audiences to have a test of faith and embrace the journey ahead. It’s in the stars.
