First Published via HUB Magazine when I was Culture Editor.
Date Published: 14th October 2022.
As soon as I saw the trailer, I knew it was going to be corny, but as Kate Winslet says in The Holiday (Nancy Meyers, 2006), “I like corny, I’m looking for corny in my life”. Ticket to Paradise (Ol Parker, 2022) is unapologetically corny. While it is easy to dismiss a corny film, I found that this film moved me deeply.
This film follows the bickering divorced couple (played by Julia Roberts and George Clooney), who come together to stop their daughter’s wedding. While they continue to argue throughout the film, their love for each other is increasingly apparent to the audience. Ticket to Paradise plays with the fine line between love and hate, juxtaposing their displays of love in private settings with competitive hatred when in public.
It’s interesting to see Lucas Bravo play a comedic role rather than the swoony romantic role he played in Emily in Paris. While here he was merely a side character playing Roberts’ rebound boyfriend, he still managed to bring life and humour to the performance. I was also pleasantly surprised by Kaitlyn Dever and Maxime Bouttier, as this was the first film of theirs that I have seen and do not disappoint.
The film is set in Bali, making the cinematography breathtaking in every scene. However, those are not the shots that stood out to me. Instead, it was the lonely bar scene. Clooney sits at a bar with a neon bar backdrop, with only him and one bartender there. At this moment where the audience truly sees how lonely Clooney is.
Whereas Roberts is peacefully asleep, Clooney is awake and frequenting a bar – having just realised that his ex-wife has finally moved on. When his daughter’s best friend approaches him, he describes how his marriage ended. The director portrays this change of emotion from the cold, lonely wide shot to a brighter shot featuring more close-ups. Clooney brilliantly conveys all the emotions of a divorce. This was the first time that I wept. This scene reminded me of the ending of Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach, 2019). There is something truly moving about seeing two divorced people with love still in their hearts.
Ticket to Paradise is a story about falling back in love. The film begins with the characters discussing their divorce, with side characters asking about their divorce and current relationship. This film asks why the good stuff should be left for later when you could do it now instead. This is incredibly different from the real world, where two people would have to discuss what getting back together would entail.
This film maintains a similar concept to the one shown in Marriage Story. In the beginning, Scarlet Johansson and Adam Driver read out letters to the audience that they refuse read to each other, whether out of embarrassment or pride is unclear and frankly unimportant. This allows the audience to understand the full picture of their relationship and grow close to the couple themselves. Towards the film’s closing, Driver finds their son reading Johansson’s letter and even begins to cry when he reads that she still loves him. This full-circle moment allows Johansson and Driver to become civil and loving parents even if they are not together anymore.
Both films have the reoccurring blue imagery, whether that’s the blue sea in Ticket to Paradise and his blue shirt or the blue walls and Driver’s blue shirt in the letter scene of Marriage Story. This blue could represent the calm that comes with finally having closure, whether that is restarting their relationship, such as in the former or remaining civil such as in the latter film.
The mother’s feelings are equally important in both films, with both films reflecting on how the mothers feel as if they have lost themselves to motherhood. Johansson’s character emphasises that she feels lost in Driver’s life, reduced to simply a wife and mother rather than a person. Roberts leaves Clooney, also fearing the loss of individuality that comes with being a wife and mother.
This concept has begun to be touched more in films, with one of the most obvious being Lili Reinhart’s performance in Look Both Ways (Wanuri Kahiu, 2022). These characters have felt so absorbed by motherhood that they are no longer a person, only a mother. While that sentiment is strongly felt, it is essential to note this does not define their love for their children. The love for their child that brings Clooney and Roberts back together. Ticket to Paradise emphasises the importance of communication in a marriage. Both parents were struggling with parenthood and having a partner. Neither wanted to stress their partner, leading both to crumble and break. This is reflected in the symbolism of the dream house burning, which they believed to show the lack of love in their marriage instead playing the part of the stress they both felt.
I believe that Ticket to Paradise, through the electric chemistry between Roberts and Clooney, the remarkable cinematography, and the perfect balance of comedy and romance, is one of my favourite releases this year.
References
Baumbach, Noah. Marriage Story. Netflix, 2019.
Fleming, Andrew. Emily in Paris. Netflix, 2020.
Kahiu, Wanuri. Look Both Ways. Netflix, 2022.
Parker, Ol. Ticket to Paradise. Universal Pictures, 2022.
Meyers, Nancy. The Holiday. Universal Pictures, 2006.
Skye Collacott Williamson 