Article - Daily Telegraph 1 April 04

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1267&storyid=1129804

 
Points of an Australian love triangle

April 1, 2004

Shine'S writer brought Adam Garcia back home, reports MICHAEL BODEY.


It's an unlikely career move for two gorgeous young actors based in London 
to move to the sleepy rural Victorian town of Daylesford to shoot a film. 

Both Adam Garcia and Amelia Warner have so much ahead of them, most of it in Hollywood. 

But Love's Brother, a gentle script by Jan Sardi, the screenwriter of Shine, was 
enough to bring them both across the world. 

And it wasn't that hard for either of them, particularly the Australian, Garcia. 
"I've always loved working in Australia anyway, ever since Bootmen , which was an 
easy job," Garcia says. 

"I pretty much signed on for Love's Brother just after I opened Bootmen. 
I liked it and said to Jan 'If you want to use me then I'll do it.'" 

Sardi, making his feature directing debut, did want Garcia, but it took him about 
three years to finally move the project into gear. 

"I would have gone anywhere in the world to do it," Warner says. 

The Brit, who was infamously married to Colin Farrell for five months in 2001, adds: 
"I really like the script, so it wasn't like 'Ooh, I'm having to go to Australia to 
make a film.' I really wanted to make that film." 

It's a film that, on face value, might not have appealed to the 21-year-old actress or 
the 30-year-old Aussie. After all, they weren't part of the 1950s immigration rush to 
Australia on which the film is based. 

Garcia and Cold Mountain's Giovanni Ribisi star as brothers, Gino and Angelo, one of 
whom entices, through sneaky means, a beautiful Italian woman (Warner) to Australia. 

Warner's Rosetta is duped into believing she's venturing to the foreign land to wed 
the handsome Gino, not Ribisi's introspective Angelo. 

It's an old-fashioned, romantic story given great warmth, particularly by The Lord of 
the Rings' Oscar-winning cinematographer, Andrew Lesnie. And it recounts a time and place of 
which Sardi had first-hand knowledge. 

The director wasn't required to do much to convince Warner to star after her London 
audition, she says. 

"He didn't need to with the script because the script was just so complete and was so 
clear," she says. 

Nor were there any qualms about working with a novice director, Garcia adds. 

"Not for me. I mainly work with first-time directors anyway, so it's nothing," he says. 

Warner notes: "If someone's written it, I tend to be more nervous when somebody else 
comes in to direct because you don't know how far it's going to move from what you read 
and how much it's going to change." 

Garcia says: "The film is very much like Jan's personality; he's very gentle, peaceful and 
sweet-natured, a kind and generous man and that's what the script was like." 

With both stars ascending, it's difficult to perceive what Love's Brother will do for 
either career. 

Garcia, who has been teetering on the brink of stardom since his US debut in the hit 
Coyote Ugly, is just glad he didn't have to take his shirt off and play the romantic 
lead again. He's mostly had to endure such roles since his transition from music 
theatre to film. Not that he's bad at them. 

"Yeah, when I started out I was just the stupid, goofy sidekick in [stage shows] Hot 
Shoe Shuffle and Grease but after Saturday Night Fever, I was the romantic lead guy, 
which I'm not very interested in or good at," he says. "So I've kind of managed to do 
different things." 

But Garcia says he selected Love's Brother simply for the experience he knew it would 
provide. 

"It's one of those things where, and I think Amelia will be the same, where you don't 
really make choices where you think 'Ooh, will that get me this or that?' It's really 
about the experience," he says. 

And the experience in Daylesford was most pleasant, with cast and crew camped around an 
"exquisite" lake. 

"The attitude was very much 'Let's enjoy this, let's tell the story'," says Warner, who 
has just finished the drama Winter Passing with Ed Harris and Will Ferrell. 

"Sometimes you work on things that stress you out and you look back and think 'Was that the 
film we were making?' I never felt that pressure on this film. There was never any drama or 
stress." 

Garcia says he put his knowledge of Australia to good use during filming. "I got to bore 
Amelia and Giovanni and [co-star] Silvia [De Santis] with Australian bird life and bush 
nature and flora and fauna tips," he smiles. "I know a bit of it, the rest I made up. They 
didn't know."