Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger
Starring: Keisha Castle-Hughes, Toni Collette, Essie Davis, Danielle Catanzariti
Director: Cathy Randall
Genre: Coming of Age Comedy
Release Date: 20th March 2008
HEY HEY IT'S ESTHER BLUEBURGER - a smart, rueful and dead-on portrait of life's unending quest to fit in... and the girl who solves it by completely breaking out - introduces a feisty outsider hero unlike any other seen on screen.
For one thing, Esther Blueburger is not a boy.
For another, she is not remotely like your typical teenager.
And she is not trying to win a dance contest or navigate the drug world or vie for the love of some star athlete.
Instead, Esther Blueburger is seeking something far more ambitious, essential and exhilarating - to defy the chaos, unfairness and absurdity of the world with her irresistible and indestructible urge to be herself.
Esther Blueburger's (DANIELLE CANTANZARITI) quest begins the day she meets Sunni (KEISHA CASTLE-HUGHES), the effortlessly cool girl who is everything Esther thinks she wants to be. With the help of Sunni, Esther goes AWOL from her ordinary life - secretly busting out of her cold, repressive private school to clandestinely attend Sunni's edgy, forbidden public school as a Swedish exchange student.
Esther also leaves behind her blithely malfunctioning nuclear family - her flummoxed mother Grace Blueburger (ESSIE DAVIS), her sentimental father Osmond Blueburger (RUSSELL DYKSTRA) and her mad genius twin brother Jacob Blueburger (CHRISTIAN BYERS) - to hang out with Sunni's far breezier and super-hip single mom Mary (TONI COLLETTE).
Esther embraces her masquerade and enthusiastically crosses over into an alternate, new world in which everything in her life has become reversed. Once bullied, Esther is now in charge. Once the reject, Esther dives boldly into sexual experimentation. Once the angelic daughter, Esther defiantly shakes up her bewildered family.
But when one of Esther's two very disparate worlds is suddenly shattered, she must find a way to bring together all the conflicting dualities of her life - public and private, real and fantastical, ugly and beautiful, the desire to be cool and the need to be loved - while finally and fully embracing the wonderful weirdness and ecstatic bliss of being Esther Blueburger.
At once a sharp modern comedy about family and identity and a fable rife with incandescent memories of the perils of adolescence, HEY HEY IT'S ESTHER BLUEBURGER marks the feature debut of a fresh new voice Cathy Randall. The first time writer-director creates an original visual universe for Esther in which a series of unexpected occurrences - a Bat Mitzvah party that becomes an occasion for break dancing, a bracingly silent family shrink visit in which no one can think of a thing to say, a sexual initiation that becomes a surreal song and dance number in a neon-lit alley trash bin - that display the vivid essence of a skewed world in which this young heroine nevertheless finds a way to make the best of things in her evolving world. Esther may be able to transform her new high heel shoes into flashy ruby slippers with glue and red sequins, but she discovers that it is not quite so easy to finally become a woman.
HEY HEY IT'S ESTHER BLUEBURGER introduces Danielle Catanzariti in the title role of Esther Blueburger and stars Keisha Castle-Hughes (Academy AwardŽ nominee for Whale Rider), Essie Davis (The Girl With the Pearl Earring), Russell Dykstra (Romulus My Father), Christian Byers (December Boys) and Toni Collette (Academy AwardŽ nominee for Sixth Sense).
The producer is Miriam Stein, and the executive producers are Heather Ogilvie, Stephen Hays, Peter Graham, Anton Rosenberg and Toni Collette.
The director of photography is Australian Cinematographers Society Gold Award-winning Anna Howard, the editor is Australian Film Institute award-winning Dany Cooper, the production designer was AFI nominated Nell Hanson, and the sound designer was Liam Egan. Guy Gross, who previously scored The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, composed the original music.
