Taglines: Everybody’s looking for something.
There’s little wonder in the working-class lives of Bill, Eileen, and their three grown daughters. They’re lonely Londoners. Nadia, a cafe waitress, places personal ads, looking for love; Debbie, a single mom, entertains men at the hair salon after hours; her son spends part of the weekend with her ex, a man with a hair-trigger temper.
Molly is expecting her first baby and its father acts as if the responsibility is too much for him. Eileen is bitter, complaining about her husband and the dog next door; Bill’s a doormat. His West Indian neighbor offers him a drink; her own grown son locks himself in his room most of the time. Will anyone connect during this Guy Fawkes weekend?
Wonderland is a 1999 drama film about the lives of a London couple, their three adult daughters and absent son. Directed by Michael Winterbottom, the film stars Jack Shepherd, Kika Markham, Shirley Henderson, Gina McKee, Molly Parker, John Simm, and Stuart Townsend. The film was entered into the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.
The film’s French writer, Laurence Coriat, was previously a psychology student. Winterbottom said that the script began similar to Short Cuts and “the connections between the stories were purely down to geography” but was rewritten so that “the story of one sister tells you something about the other two.” Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt had previously only worked on documentaries and news footage.
The film has both realist and impressionist elements.[5] Time lapse photography is used to give moments of accelerated motion as the characters are followed, which Winterbottom said was inspired by Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express and gave an impressionistic feeling, “a rush of poignant colours and noise”, and other footage is filmed on grainy hand-held 16mm cameras, giving a realist “fly-on-the-wall” feeling. The sex scenes are realistic and awkward – the scene between Nadia and Tim features no music, which highlights the sounds of kissing and rustling.
A small crew was used, with only natural lighting and no sound boom. A pub scene was shot with real people in the background, near closing time, and the café where Nadia works is a real small café in Soho. People alone in London crowds were picked out and filmed to make the audience speculate about their stories. The scenes where Dan takes his son to a football match were filmed at Selhurst Park, the ground of Crystal Palace in a 1–1 draw against Birmingham City on 6 February 1999. Senses of Cinema said that the editing was “immaculate and exciting”.
Wonderland (2000)
Directed by: Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Ian Hart, Shirley Henderson, Kika Markham, Gina McKee, Molly Parker, Jack Shepherd, John Simm, Stuart Townsend, Enzo Cilenti, Sarah-Jane Potts
Screenplay by: Laurence Coriat
Production Design by: Mark Tildesley
Cinematography by: Sean Bobbitt
Film Editing by: Trevor Waite
Costume Design by: Natalie Ward
Makeup Department: Konnie Daniel
Music by: Michael Nyman
MPAA Rating: R for some strong sexuality, and for language.
Distributed by: USA Films
Release Date: July 28, 2000
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