''Doing Time for Patsy Cline'' is a 1997 Australian film starring
Miranda Otto
Miranda Otto (born 16 December 1967) is an Australian actress. She is the daughter of actors Barry and Lindsay Otto and the paternal half-sister of actress Gracie Otto. Otto began her acting career in 1986 at age 18 and appeared in a variety of ...
,
Richard Roxburgh
Richard Roxburgh (born 23 January 1962) is an Australian actor, writer, producer, and director. He is the recipient of a number of accolades across film, television, and theatre, including three AACTA Awards (including AFI), three Logie Awards, ...
, and
Matt Day
Matthew Day (born 28 September 1971) is an Australian actor and filmmaker.
Early life
Day was born in Melbourne, Victoria. When he was 11 years old, he went to live in the United States with his father, a newspaper correspondent, where he b ...
, and directed by
Chris Kennedy.
Plot
Following a passion for
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...
, Ralph leaves his father's sheep farm in a remote Australian town, armed with a guitar and a plane ticket to
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the List of muni ...
. He hopes to hitchhike to
Sydney Airport
Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport (colloquially Mascot Airport, Kingsford Smith Airport, or Sydney Airport; ; ) is an international airport in Sydney, Australia, located 8 km (5 mi) south of the Sydney central business district, in the ...
where his take-off into a successful country/western singing career will hopefully begin.
However, fate and his naivety find him hitchhiking with a psychotic drug thief named Boyd, and Boyd's mesmerising girlfriend, Patsy. The plot then splits into a series of parallels, flash forwards and flashbacks. One depicts Ralph's imprisonment after being framed for drug trafficking. The other follows the dramatic ascent of his career to hype status and the pairing between the dynamic Patsy and himself. Both paths eventually lead him home, with Ralph consequently being more mature and adjusted, and with a bag full of experiences. At the end of the film, it is stated that Patsy dies in a plane crash.
Cast
Reception
Box office
''Doing Time for Patsy Cline'' grossed $671,639 at the box office in Australia, which is equivalent to £710,760.53 British pounds or $940,295 dollars, in 2009.
Reviews
The film received generally positive reviews. ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' criticized the film's editing and "jarring leaps in time", but praised the film's performances, especially that of Roxburgh.
Awards
The film received many award nominations including ten
AFI Award
The Australian Film Institute (AFI) was founded in 1958 as a non-profit organisation devoted to developing an active film culture in Australia and fostering engagement between the general public and the Australian film industry. It is responsi ...
nominations for 1997. It won an Australian Writer's Guild Award for Best Original Screenplay. The film won four
Australian Film Institute Awards
The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards, known as the AACTA Awards, are presented annually by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA). The awards recognise excellence in the film and television industry, ...
including Best Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Original Music Score, and Best Costume Design. It also won an award of distinction for production design. It won three Australian Film Critics' Awards, including Best Actor, Best Musical Score and Best Cinematography. It also won a San Diego Film Festival Award for Best Original Script and a
Melbourne International Film Festival
The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) is an annual film festival held over three weeks in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded in 1952 and is one of the oldest film festivals in the world following the founding of the Venice Film Fest ...
Award for Most Popular Australian Film.
IMDb-Awards won by Doing Time For Patsy Cline
Retrieved 20 December 2007.
See also
* Patsy Cline
Patsy is a given name often used as a diminutive of the feminine given name Patricia or sometimes the masculine name Patrick, or occasionally other names containing the syllable "Pat" (such as Cleopatra, Patience, Patrice, or Patricia). Among I ...
References
External links
*
*
''Doing Time for Patsy Cline''
at Oz Movies
*
*
*
*
at the Oz Film Database
''Doing Time for Patsy Cline''
at The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
{{AACTAAward BestMusicScore 1980-1999
1997 films
Australian drama films
1997 drama films
Films scored by Peter Best (composer)
1990s English-language films