Director Rachel Ward talks about why movie Palm Beach is personal and Bryan Brown’s anxiety
The new movie Palm Beach showcases the beauty of the peninsula, while also revealing the struggles many face — even the wealthy — as director Rachel Ward talks about her husband Bryan Brown’s battle with anxiety.
Director Rachel Ward’s new movie called Palm Beach which was filmed in the suburb of the same name feels very personal.
Not only does it star her husband and esteemed actor Bryan Brown, 72, and their daughter Matilda, 32, but also a whole host of their famous friends including Sam Neill, as well as Greta Scacchi, Richard E Grant, Jacqueline McKenzie and Heather Mitchell.
Palm Beach, or the adjoining suburb Whale Beach to be exact, was where Ward and Brown spent the first 11 years of their marriage, with their three young children Rosie, Matilda and Joe. She gave birth to all three children at Mona Vale Hospital.
They kept the “old fibro beach shack” in Whale Beach despite moving to the city more than 20 years ago.
Now their daughter Matilda, who has just given birth to her first baby, is in the process of moving into the property, “a full circle” of sorts, said English-born Ward, 61.
It’s evident that Ward’s links to the northern beaches run deep.
So, when she was looking for a paradise location for a new movie she knew where to go — Palm Beach. The movie was also partly funded by Destination NSW which must be delighted with how the northern beaches is portrayed and will be hoping for a new wave of tourists keen to visit the top end of the peninsula.
There’s also some serious real estate porn. The jaw-dropping home of Brown’s character and his wife, played by Greta Scacchi, is owned by architects Susan Rothwell and her husband, property developer Garry.
The couple own the 13-bed weekender, which has a terrace with stunning views of Pittwater, Barrenjoey Lighthouse and Palm Beach.
Ward, who wanted a “knockout” location and home which would give the audience a “cinematic experience”, asked the couple for permission to film the majority of scenes in their house.
“They as artists were keen to support the film industry and made it possible,” Ward said.
The aim was to make the audience “want the house, want the food, want the wine, want those soft furnishings”.
“It is unabashedly aspirational,” she said.
The film is set around a wealthy couple Brown and Scacchi who invite their old friends for the weekend to celebrate a milestone birthday, but secrets soon emerge.
Over the course of three days and a series of Instagrammable meals, boating trips on Pittwater, surfing at Palm Beach, a celebration dinner at The Boathouse, and lots of expensive champagne and fine wine, relationships begins to unravel.
It’s soon evident the men who have all had “successful” careers to varying degrees are struggling.
Ward said she and Brown had a weekend with friends in Wales where they were shocked to find that all the men had come a cropper in their twilight years.
She said the last quarter of a man’s life can be hard after they retire or are retrenched, and it’s a time when many can dwell on what they haven’t achieved, rather than on what they have.
Meanwhile, women seem to remain stoic and even happy with their lives, even if they have differed to how they thought they would.
Brown plays a not-so-successful band manager turned successful businessman in the movie who after selling his business is now adrift and depressed.
The character was based on one of their friends who found himself in that situation.
Brown too was able to draw on his own experience with anxiety, brought on after he nearly died from septicaemia.
At times it has been debilitating.
“The point of the film is that it doesn’t matter who you are, what you have achieved, how successful you are, it does not save you from major existential issues,” Ward said.
While the women in the film are also dealing with their own problems — a mother recovering from breast cancer, an ageing actress struggling to get work and one whose husband is distracted, they are dealing with them while also supporting their partners.
She said Brown’s bout of anxiety came as a surprise to her even though she had come across many “successful” needy people in her philanthropic work.
She said she would never have thought Brown as someone who would have suffered from anxiety as he had always been “very capable”.
“He can handle himself with almost anything,” she said.
“But men never want to be associated with not being able to handle things.”
She said his anxiety had a physical impact on him — he suffered from prostatitis, a painful condition that involves inflammation of the prostate and sometimes the areas around the prostate.
It took him some time to realise it was caused by his anxiety, not by a physical problem.
“It (anxiety) has such an impact, but it shows he’s as human as the next person,” she said,
As well as tackling some big issues in particular ones that the over 50s can relate, she also wanted to portray the middle classes.
She said Australian films tend to be based around outlaws and the underclass, but there was a large section of the population that was successful and sophisticated that should also be represented on the big screen.
She said filming a movie with some of their oldest friends was also a delight.
“We’ve been in this industry for 40 years,” she said. “There’s not too many of our vintage we don’t know very well.”
Palm Beach is in cinemas from August 8.
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