Quaint is written all over the Peter Kerekes documentary, Wishing on a Star. From the old and decrepit villa in Aiello del Friuli near the bay of Venetian Lagoon, its 63-year-old resident Luciana de Leoni d’Asparedo, her practice of astrology that peculiarly offers travel as a panacea for planetary problems to an identical pair of twins, and a butcher and an undertaker who are her clients, among many others.
The Italy-Croatia-Austria-Slovakia-Czech Republic co-production was shot over a long period of seven years, premiered at the Venice Film Festival last year and then travelled further to Toronto and Marrakech. Kerekes offers just the right mix of the fantastic and the real. On the one end are Luciana’s quirky clients, full of human frailties and vulnerabilities, be it on issues that are personal, familial or professional, matters of loveless marriage or coming of age, a domineering mother or a tricky father-daughter relationship. On the other hand is her fanciful remedy of assigning them a birthday trip so that their stars get rightly aligned under a benevolent sky. “The birthday represents a rebirth every year,” she asserts. So she helps people to get reborn under the perfect celestial positioning. The idea is to let go of the old to embrace the new which is what she and her family do every first of January.
Kerekes was initially resistant to the idea of making a film on what he calls a “tabloid topic." But when he met Luciana he was fascinated by her work process, and the transformative impact she had on the clients consulting with her that helped bring hope and happiness to them. In that sense, she came across as more of a therapist to him than an astrologer. It's a similar picture of hers that we get to encounter in the documentary. The technique she adopts is one of a kind. Studying the orientation of planets and satellites and other astral objects, the earthly longitudes and latitudes, along with the travel deals available online, she could assign the village or town next door or far-flung Beirut and Taipei, London, Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paolo, to people so that they make a trip to return in the pink of their horoscopic health. If they are unable to afford to go all the way to say Alaska, a home remedy is also available—recreating the place within your own four walls complete with a stuffed polar bear and snow. “If you can’t go there physically, go virtually,” she advises.
Far-fetched and fun? Yes, indeed, with some wonderful music to boot. But there’s also something philosophical at the film’s heart. Don’t they say that you have to travel away from home to find yourself? It’s precisely what Luciana is making people do. There’s also the warm, fuzzy and poignant—not sentimental, mind you—core that comes into play here in the light of Luciana’s own struggles, dreams and desires, to sell her home to get back to her native place, Naples. She is at service for the wish-fulfilment of others but is not quite able to help herself.
“My goal was to combine the cinematic feel of a fiction film with the ability to capture real emotions from real people,” says Kerekes in a statement. Wishing on a Star is ultimately about the search for happiness that helps us all keep the faith in life. According to Luciana human beings are not puppets on a string because in that case life would become unbearable. “Pre-written fate doesn’t exist,” she says, “We make our own destiny.” So, irrespective of whether someone believes in astrology or not, that sure does make sense and resonates deeply as an empowering idea.