The Goddess of 1967
| The Goddess of 1967 | |
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| Directed by | Clara Law |
| Starring |
Rose Byrne Rikiya Kurokawa |
| Cinematography | Dion Beebe |
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Release date
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Running time
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119 minutes |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English / Japanese |
The Goddess of 1967 is a 2000 Australian film directed by Macau-born Australian Clara Law, who wrote the script with her husband (and previous script collaborator) Eddie Ling-Ching Fong. The film is about a rich young Japanese man (Rikiya Kurokawa), who travels to Australia with the intention of buying a Citroën DS car (the goddess of the film's title - nicknamed the Déesse, after its initials in French, déesse being French for "goddess") that he has found for sale on the net. Once there things do not quite go as planned ... and he ends up on a road journey with a blind girl (Rose Byrne).
The film was partly filmed in and around Lightning Ridge in New South Wales, Australia.
It won several awards, including Best Actress for Rose Byrne at the 2000 Venice Film Festival and best director at the Chicago Film Festival.
The song from the dance scene between BG and JM is Walk-Don't Run (the 1964 version) by The Ventures. The song is not included on the film's soundtrack, which contains the score by Jen Anderson.
The storyline opens in Tokyo where JM (Rikiya Kurokawa), a rich young IT worker and sometime computer hacker, is attempting to purchase a 1967 model Citroën DS, or Goddess, as it is known to French car aficionados. JM lives in a pristine but unfriendly hi-tech apartment. The smog filled city is blue-grey and bleak. He rarely speaks to his live-in girlfriend and is preoccupied with other possessions—his latest snorkeling gear as well as the pet snakes and other exotic reptiles he keeps in the flat. After tracing, on the Internet, a perfectly restored Citroën owned by a couple in Australia, JM abandons his job and flies out to purchase the rare car, which he thinks can fill the emptiness in his life.
No one meets JM at the airport but he eventually finds the home where the car is located and meets BG (Rose Byrne), a blind and emotionally unstable young woman. BG, who is minding a young child, explains that the couple did not actually own the Citroën and that the husband shot his wife and then killed himself after a violent argument over money. She shows him the car and tells him, after he has test driven it, that she can take him to its real owner, who is somewhere in the outback, a five-day drive away. Intoxicated by the vehicle, JM agrees. BG abandons the young child at the blood-splattered house, instructing her not to trust anyone.
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Wikipedia