Somersault : The Story


The Story

Anderson: “SOMERSAULT is about forgiveness; for Heidi to get to a point of self-forgiveness for her to move on. Underlying her behaviour is a level of guilt as well as fear and the need to survive. The falling out that she’s had with her mother, she sees as irredeemable and it’s really her relationship with Irene, and learning that Irene can still love her own son who has done something much more heinous than Heidi, and to hear from Irene that no matter what you’ve done your mother will want to see you. For her, that’s her path to redemption and self-forgiveness. It’s also a story about the experiences that we have with love that may not be about an ongoing relationship. They are often about understanding a bit more about another person and certainly understanding a bit more about ourselves. For Heidi and Joe, that interaction and the time they spend together is important for both of them in that sense.”

The key to SOMERSAULT is the connections people make in life and how they are changed by them. Shortland: “This film is inhabited by scared people, who all want to be loved; I wanted the viewer to be intimate with them. Sometimes the film is quite dark but then I think of Heidi and she is surrounded by light. She is a survivor, resilient and tough skinned. She expects to be hurt so nothing can harm her. In that way she is incredibly calm and serene. She is a lazy, dreamy adolescent tripping up the back steps and into a sequence of bad decisions that propel her out of the family home and into the wider world.”