The Heartbreak Tour

Writer & Director: Ben Chessel
Producers: Joanna Werner & Jason Byrne
Cast: Toby Schmitz, Caroline Craig, Nathaniel Dean, Alexandra Schepisi, Anthony Hayes
Runtime: 52 minutes
Country: Australia
Language: English

They embark on a tour, in Ryan’s shithouse car, to their personal emotional sacred sites, the venues of their great romantic disasters. They visit whichever place is next, whichever is closest, in a random wander across the city and through their twenties. Much of the story unfolds inthe past but it quickly becomes clear that we need to ask, which past? Everybody’s version, even of exactly the same events, proves to be subjective and contradictory. It’s not as important to understand exactly what happened in the past as it is to understand why each of them tells the story that way.

Ryan is the champion of melancholy and defends their right to revel in sadness. Jack maneuvers through the complex landscape with ease. But Jack’s ex-boyfriend Nick is also a player and the events of the night of their break-up become the territory of a battle between them for control of the past. Carmen finds the group, which has been her home for so long, is becoming claustrophobic and Tim hates the game and wants to go home. The car is a bubble, the entire world for them that night as they wander across the map of their memories. Memory provides a way in which we can almost time travel, especially when we combine it with the power of place.

They visit their own emotional sacred sites and tell the stories of their group of friends. As the night gets older old lies are exposed and confessions are made which throws the world of the car into crisis, a coming of age crisis. Some things have to be broken before they can be mended again. But their emotional time travelling might just help them sort it out and the inside of their darker emotions might just help them make it through the long dark night of their twenties.