Looking for Alibrandi wasn’t just a book you were forced to read in high school – although it understandably formed part of English curriculum. The novel by Melina Marchetta was also a no-brainer to adapt into a film, which was released on May 4, 2000. Twenty-five years later, the movie continues to offer audiences fresh insights into its themes.
The story follows Josephine Alibrandi (played by Pia Miranda), a 17-year-old with Italian heritage who’s in her final year at an exclusive Sydney girls’ high school. If studying for Year 12 exams wasn’t hard enough, that same year, she meets her father for the first time, continues to butt heads with her single mum, struggles with her immigrant roots, falls in love and loses one of her best friends to suicide.
It’s a year of hard truths, which is what resonated with so many readers and viewers.
Miranda tells WHO the hype around the film is still alive and well, even a quarter of a century on.
“A lot of people think I wrote it – people are always congratulating me on the street on my book! They’re like, ‘What was your thinking behind John Barton’s character?’” she laughs. “I’m very close with Melina, who wrote the book, and
I think we have been on that journey together, with all its highs and lows. It’s been a really special experience.”
The film was an overnight success, something Miranda and her on-screen love interest, Kick Gurry, saw coming.
“I do remember that scene where it’s the ‘Have a Say Day’ at the Opera House – Kick and I grew up in Melbourne so we didn’t have it on our curriculum, we didn’t know what it was. So we walk out and someone goes, ‘Oh my God, that’s Josie and Jacob,’ and everyone started screaming and people were crying and I was like, ‘What’s happening?’ and Kick goes, ‘I think this is going to be really big.’ And I went, ‘So do I.’ That was the moment that he and I were like, ‘We’ve got to stick together!’”
They stuck together post-production, too. “We’re very good friends – we did go through something together, and we’re very brother and sister in our relationship, so that’s nice,” Miranda says.
Greta Scacchi, 65, who played Josie’s Italian-Australian mother, Christina, was a huge get for Marchetta and the film’s director, Kate Woods. She’d already starred in the Oscar-winning Emma opposite Gwyneth Paltrow, plus 1990 legal thriller Presumed Innocent with Harrison Ford. Just like the big-budget films she was used to, this script sung to her, too.
“There are times in your career when you’re being bombarded with scripts and it’s rare to read one where it all just zings, but this one just flew off the page,” Scacchi told The Daily Telegraph, adding that its cast had the talent to match.
At the time, Miranda and Gurry were in their mid-twenties. “The shoot of Alibrandi went like a dream,” Scacchi recalled. “Pia and Kick were perfect casting! These two smart, young actors knew their roles inside out and inhabited them completely. It made it so easy to play with them.”
Easy? Maybe for a pro like Scacchi. Miranda says she was “so nervous” on set. “I always thought they were going to fire me, even though we’d been in pre-production and rehearsing for almost a year. I was lucky that I had Kick, because he and I knew each other from drama class, when we were young, so we were kind of going through this together. That got me through – and the director was so supportive.”
So was her on-screen father, acclaimed Australian actor Anthony LaPaglia.
Now a mother herself, Miranda is excited to show the next generation the film that made her a household name, specifically her daughter, Lily, 14, and son, James, 11.
“My son saw it on one of the streamers – the trailer was playing and he was like, ‘I know her,’ and I went, ‘Do you?’ Because I’m so young in it, he went, ‘Is that you?!’ I think my daughter will watch it sometime soon – I’m super excited for her to watch it.”
Stream Looking for Alibrandi now on Prime Video from $6.58/month with a 30-day free trial. Subscribe here.
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