The Waiting City
The Waiting City
R | 28 August 2010 (USA)
The Waiting City Trailers

An outwardly happy Australian couple journey to Calcutta to collect their adopted baby, but on arrival find that the arrangements have yet to be finalized. Soon, the intoxicating mystic power of the Indian city pulls them in separate and unexpected directions, and the vulnerability of their marriage begins to reveal itself.

Reviews
Interesteg

What makes it different from others?

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Ploydsge

just watch it!

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Konterr

Brilliant and touching

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Francene Odetta

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

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SnoopyStyle

Australian couple Fiona (Radha Mitchell) and Ben Simmons (Joel Edgerton) arrive in Calcutta to adopt and pick up Indian orphan Lakshmi. Fiona is frustrated by the waiting and the bureaucracy. Ben is a laid back musician who reconnects with Scarlett (Isabel Lucas). The couple fights about their different view points and the adoption. They decide to go find Lakshmi at the orphanage while they immerse themselves in the spirituality of India.The couple starts out as being unappealing and they never recover from that. She's a Type A, entitled westerner. He's uncaring and almost cold to her. The movie confronts that idea quickly. Ben is so clueless to her anxiety that it really frustrated me. The only thing saving Fiona is that she is obviously going to find enlightenment and salvation in the end. I don't like this couple and I stop caring about them.

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Sally Warner

A wonderful movie, uplifting and an inspiring human journey. Great photography lovely scenery and some not so lovely views of India. Fabulous and engrossing. A story of a couple looking to adopt a child from India and trying to find themselves. Joel Edgerton is wonderful as the person with "history" trying to fix up himself and his marriage with a child and he is hoping his wife will change once there is three of them. She is hoping to give him everything he wants to keep them together. Radha is wonderful as the person on the edge of everything. Just my kind of movie. I love a love story. I also liked Japanese Story, The Way Way Back, Secret Men's Business, and Walkabout. I hated No Country for Old Men (Senseless violence) and Burn before Reading (LSD dreams as a movie complete with paranoia).

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vikram-ry123

This post is about the movie The Waiting City, I just finished watching. It is a story of a mystic- love that how an Australian couple come to an unknown land to search for a baby to adopt and finally the couple discovered how much they love each other. They surprisingly become a part of the culture, faith and the society. I am surprised to see the acting of Radha Mitchell,and Joel Edgerton, they did very well. I see Indo-English corroborated films by Mira Nair,Deepa Mehta, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Vic Sarin, Wes Anderson and so many directors but Claire McCarthy, she really did a good work. No Indian film maker can think such movie to their point of view of Indian travelers. The cinematography of the movie is not satisfactory in the sense of motion picture. It seems like the film is made for television short screen. But overall the film scored very well. I see Samrat Chakrabarti in his other films but in The Waiting City he did very well as a porter. The same story and the same film could be more breath taking by working on the cogitate. Wish all the best for the future projects.

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Likes_Ninjas90

Ben Simmons (Joel Edgerton) and his wife Fiona (Radha Mitchell) are a married Australian couple travelling together through India. It is revealed that they are looking to adopt a child there since Fiona cannot have children of her own. Yet they find that the process is a troublesome one, regularly delayed by the paperwork. They stay in a hotel room, assisted by an Indian man named Krishna who provides them with advice on locations and attractions. Fiona though is regularly devoted to her work with her firm back home and seems less interested by the colourful surroundings, which frustrates Ben. Where she is far more city orientated, he seems to have a greater sense of the locations and the people. Their different attitudes come into conflict, particularly when a Ben meets Scarlett (Isabel Lucas), a girl he used to work with when he was still making music. These issues put a strain on Ben's marriage as he and his wife wait in their room for the agency to contact them.This is the fourth film written and directed by Australian filmmaker Claire McCarthy and it's a picture that vividly photographs India as a vibrant and deeply mystical place. The film was shot on location in India, mostly in Calcutta, and there is a commendable degree of verisimilitude in the way that the streets have been chaotically filmed by McCarthy and her cinematographer Denson Baker. The lanes that Joel and Fiona explore are trampled by hundreds of people at a time. Some of these people are children running along the streets. Others are just working adults, like the merchants that regularly try to coax Ben and Fiona into buying goods. There are strange abnormalities too, suggestive of the sense of mythology that has been etched into the city, like when Fiona is disorientated and thinks she is seeing a woman with many arms, only for a child being carried on her back to be revealed. It is because of the authenticity of the film's visuals that a palpable atmosphere surrounds the India's lower classes here.There are less impressive elements relating to the script though. The pacing of the narrative stammers into its second hour too slowly, mainly because of the film's tendency to move in tangents. The subplot involving Isabel Lucas's character Scarlett is a primary example. It raises speculation about Joel's commitment to his wife and there are some weighty tensions between them but it feels unresolved because the character Scarlett moves in and out of the picture. The film also has a weak grasp on the ideas of spirituality. At one point Fiona admits that she can feel the spirit of her deceased mother in the city. But a potentially interesting idea is a rather transparent one because it isn't reflected on ever again. In another scene Fiona does not take part in a ritual and it might have been more interesting if the dialogue made reflections on this after the film's rather tragic climax. In spite of these deficiencies there are two solid and likable performances here through Edgerton and Mitchell. Their roles are constructed to the point where one has to question what they see in each other. It is again never touched on but at least the frustrations and the emotions shared between them ring true. Lucas's part seems to be underwritten and her character is a mild distraction to the story.The Waiting City is a minor Australian picture that is rich in its atmosphere and sense of culture. Yet it is also marred by a problematic screenplay and uneven pacing. It wades through the tangents of the first act, towards a second half where the characters fail to reflect on what has really transformed their lives. In such a deeply spiritual place the film never seems quite as profound as it should be because both the characters and the audience remain as outsiders. There are questions over the relationship too, but both leads at least make them likable tourists, who only just skim on the surface of India.

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