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Peter Kerekes’ “Wishing on a Star” combines the old practice of astrology with the modern desire to travel, creating an unexpected reflection on human longing and the geography of hope. The film’s idea is bold: it suggests that our destinies could be altered not just by the alignment of the stars but also by where we are standing about them. The astrologer Luciana de Leoni, who works out of a towered villa in the Veneto region of Italy, is at the center of it all. She offers her clients’ desired trips with exactitude as cosmic prescriptions.
With a stunning act of domestic upheaval, the film makes its intentions clear: everyday items are transformed into change projectiles, including furniture flying through tower windows. This opening scene serves as both a metaphor and a manifesto. It is a violent ritual of renewal where the ordinary is literally cast out to make room for possibility. “We burn the old so the new can come,” Luciana says, suggesting that transformation necessitates movement through space and the courage to burn the familiar.
The hybrid documentary style reflects the liminality of its subject matter; it is neither completely factual nor entirely made up, and it exists in the same gray area between empirical truth and emotional reality where human beings frequently find themselves.
Architectural Echoes of Cosmic Aspirations
The turreted villa in Veneto is more than just a mere backdrop; it represents humankind’s constant striving for the sky. An astrologer who tries to map the intersection of celestial influence and earthly desire will find this baroque structure, with its worn elegance and defiant spire piercing the Italian sky, to be a fitting throne room. The castle, known as Aiello del Friuli, holds the weight of ages within its stone walls, but it also houses a modern business that rewrites destinies through careful relocation.
The film uses clear contrasts in its visuals. Kerekes uses close-up shots inside the villa that reflect the small, tight areas where his subjects live. Dreams are whispered, and cosmic coordinates are given out like forgiveness in the consultation room, complete with an antiquated computer and star charts.
The director’s camera patiently lingers in these spaces, allowing the baroque architecture to frame each human figure as if in a classic picture – small in comparison to the grandeur of their surroundings, yet crucial to the composition’s meaning.
The visual palette changes to reflect each seeker’s journey as the story goes beyond the house. Beirut’s sun-baked streets contrast sharply with Anchorage’s cool, clear light, and the beaches of Brazil sparkle with possibility.
Kerekes keeps a steady sense of visual restraint as if suggesting that even in these distant places, his subjects are still connected to their original lives by unseen bonds of family, responsibility, and fear. The film’s photography reflects the ongoing human conflict between the desire for transcendence and the grounded weight of the villa scenes.
The Cosmic Cartographer of Human Longing
A 63-year-old Neapolitan who uses astrology as a tool for geographical freedom, Luciana de Leoni is a peculiar synthesis of mysticism and pragmatism. Her presence in the film weights paradox; she is a woman who helps others create new destinies, but her dream of returning to Naples is still possible. This contradiction has a profound significance because it is a stark reminder that even those who control fate must struggle against its intransigent opposition to their wishes.
Through her practice, De Leoni’s theory becomes crystalline and complex. “You make your destiny; prewritten destiny does not exist,” she says, but she studies the stars that she believes affect human life. This seeming contradiction shows a deeper truth: perhaps the stars only serve as a framework for our courage to manifest rather than dictating our fate. Her strategy suggests that destiny necessitates active participation and readiness to put ourselves in the way of possibility.
Her practice combines old astrology with current map-making in a very interesting and accurate way. She turns birth charts and planetary positions into ex-act geographical coordinates while seated in front of her old computer. Each client’s birthday becomes a potential gateway for rebirth, and each latitude and longitude a potential site of transformation, according to her method, which combines ritual and science.
When clients can’t make their planned trips, she offers dry-wit alternatives, like a stuffed polar bear and ice cubes, to represent Alaska’s transformative potential, suggesting that perhaps the true journey is always internal, with the physical displacement merely a catalyst for mental movement.
De Leoni’s practice reveals the profound human need to believe that change is possible and that there is a coordinate of happiness somewhere on this planet if only we dare to seek it. In her consulting room, de Leoni works as an astrologer, a travel agent, and an existential therapist.
Constellations of Yearning: Portraits in Human Desire
We witness the complex dance of human desire through Kerekes’ portraits of those who seek. The identical twins Adriana and Giuliana, whose mirror existence contains a fascinating paradox, dressed in matching clothes while insisting on their differences, present a living metaphor for humanity’s simultaneous desire for connection and individuation.
There are perhaps no better examples of this complexity. Their journey to Beirut has a special weight because one twin wants the other to have a child she can raise. This desire raises important questions about who we are, how much control we should have over our bodies and the limits of sisterly love.
The undertaker, Giovanni, presents existential irony in a different light. While seeking to start a new life, a man who guides others through death finds himself drawn into the maternal influence. His planned journey to Brazil never happens, but fate — or perhaps mere chance — brings an unexpected romance with a coworker. The poetry of this development suggests that sometimes our destined paths lie not in faraway coordinates but in the very orbit we seek to escape.
The side stories have their pull: a young mother seeking comfort from a distant husband is given coordinates to Anchorage, Alaska, a prescription whose cosmic irony is not lost on the watcher. She sets up a miniature version of Alaska in her living room, complete with a stuffed polar bear and ice cubes, to illustrate our compromises between our dreams and realities when we cannot make the journey.
Other characters move through the story like comets: a woman caring for her sick mother has a life-changing swim that leads to police involvement; another struggles with family ghosts that haunt her love life. Each case study becomes a meditation on the nature of change – how we seek it, fear it, and sometimes even find it in the act of seeking. These tales imply that transformation frequently occurs in the space made by our desire rather than in its fulfillment.
Cartographies of Faith: Between Stars and Self-Determination
Throwing furniture out of windows and burning possessions is transformed into a primal ritual of unburdening in “Wishing on a Star,” a violent poetry of renewal that mirrors humanity’s ongoing fight to let go of its past.
This opening metaphor runs throughout the film’s philosophical undertow, suggesting that transformation requires not just addition but subtraction, not just transformation but jettison. The flames burning the discarded things act as a funeral pyre and a place for new beginnings, where the ashes of the past can create something new.
The film’s main idea is that you can change your destiny by changing where you are located. This presents an interesting conflict between fate and free will. The coordinates Luciana gives become more than just mere points on a map; they become nodes of possibility where the exactitude of latitude and longitude meet the enigmatic mathematics of fate. In this case, the stars above act as cosmic partners in human agency rather than as the final arbiter of destiny.
The relationship between the stars’ impact and our choices leads to a thought-provoking question in the film: Can we believe in both fate and free will at the same time? The answer seems to be in the space between constellations, that huge darkness where human will create its star of meaning.
Choreography of the Uncertain: Kerekes’s Dance with Reality
Peter Kerekes orchestrates his documentary hybrid with the delicate touch of a quantum physicist, knowing that the mere act of observation changes the reality being observed. His camera acts as both a witness and a catalyst, maintaining a safe distance while being a part of the transformation process it records.
In a cinematic liminal space where truth and construction become indistinguishable, the scripted elements blend seamlessly into spontaneous discoveries, much like the practice of astrology itself.
The way the film is made reflects its main themes. Cheerful music breaks up quiet times, creating a rhythm that suggests the cyclical motion of celestial bodies. The editing adopts a deliberate episodic structure, each client’s story acting as a separate orbital path around the central gravitational force of Luciana’s practice. These separate stories are connected through similar visuals and themes.
In its execution, Kerekes’ treatment of place is especially profound. With a fluidity that suggests the collapse of physical distance under the weight of human desire, the camera goes from the small confines of consultation rooms to the vast expanses of global destinations. To create a cohesive aesthetic universe where Beirut, Brazil, and the Veneto region exist as coordinates on a map of possibility rather than mere geographical locations, each new setting is captured with a distinctive visual signature while maintaining the film’s overall contemplative tone.
The Review
Wishing on a Star
A profound meditation on human agency and cosmic possibility, "Wishing on a Star" goes beyond its seemingly lighthearted premise. Kerekes uses astrology as a lens through which to study our ongoing search for transformation, not as a subject of belief or skepticism. The film shows that perhaps our true coordinates lie not in faraway stars or foreign places but in the courage to imagine ourselves anew.
PROS
- Masterful blend of documentary and scripted elements
- Deep philosophical exploration of fate and free will
- Rich character studies, particularly Luciana de Leoni
- Nuanced handling of astrology without judgment
CONS
- Pacing may feel slow for some viewers
- Complex narrative structure might confuse casual viewers
- Some storylines left unresolved
