Arriving in Calcutta sans some of their luggage, high-powered lawyer Fiona (Radha Mitchell) and her laid-back musician hubby Ben (Joel Edgerton) quickly get a taste of what it’s like to operate on Indian time. After getting little satisfaction at the baggage claim (“This is India,” a tired worker proclaims), they face an irritating wait for their hotel-dispatched driver, Krishna (Samrat Chakrabarti).

Things don’t go smoothly with the adoption, either. As the agency continues to put off their appointment, long-unresolved relationship issues start to surface. Fiona and Ben ultimately grate on each other’s nerves to the point of separation.

As the pic progresses, the way the multiple themes of McCarthy’s script play out starts to feel overly schematic and often forced. Moreover, the information slowly revealed about the couple’s past and personal secrets might have had more impact if incorporated earlier on.

Mitchell, also credited as an executive producer, nails the character of an abrasive Type A personality gradually accepting her lack of control. Likewise, Edgerton credibly plays the initially more passive partner who progressively develops maturity and strength. Thus, it’s even more of a shame when McCarthy ends several intense emotional scenes between the two by resorting to visual cliches.

Standout lensing by Denson Baker modulates from an intimate semi-verite style within the closed confines of the couple’s luxury hotel to a more distanced, observational stance as they move outside. A DV camera into which they separately express their hopes and fears about parenthood becomes a dramatic marker in their relationship.

The rest of the strong tech package makes Calcutta palpable.

Source: variety.com

By this description alone, you understand this is no “Monsoon Wedding” or even “City of Joy.” While the film’s grip on a viewer dramatically increases as the story moves deeper and deeper into an experience that exposes a couple’s troubled relationship, McCarthy makes no concessions to commercial considerations. The film is solely designed for festivals and art venues but word of mouth should help “The Waiting City” reach a receptive audience.

Radha Mitchell and Joel Edgerton play a 30-something Australian couple, who comes to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) to claim an adopted daughter, Lakshmi. Red tape delays things so they are forced to wait in this exotic and often trying city.

The wife, a lawyer, juggles her mobile phone and laptop so that it’s like she never left the office. The husband is a musician so with an adventurous spirit and guitar in hand he makes friends easily in the city. His running into a pretty fellow musician (Isabel Lucas) causes displeasure in his wife, the first notable crack in the happy-couple facade.

Kolkata with its frustrations, alien customs and thousands of gods put the couple’s relationship to a test. Long-ignored resentments, hidden feelings and one very bad secret bubble to the surface.

Mother India herself seems to challenge the newcomers. A hotel worker (Samrat Chakrabarti), who befriends them, doesn’t even disguise his concern about a white couple adopting an Indian child or about the wife’s lack of religious faith. A clear-headed nun (Tilotamma Shome) demonstrates her love for the child is equal to theirs.

A trip to their daughter’s hometown and a first encounter with Lakshmi herself puts further stress on their stability. Are they even suitable as a couple, much less parents?

When one is surrounded by gods and devotion, Western dismissal seems shallow. In Kolkata, a filthy river is holy and a Catholic orphanage thinks nothing of closing to celebrate a Moslem holiday. The culture is steeped in belief. When life hangs in the balance in this place, unbelief is no help.

The film is not without its touristic elements. The director and her cinematographer, Denson Baker, aren’t going to pass up the opportunity to show the glories and the muck of this ancient city. Bureaucracy, lost luggage, destitute beggars, upset bowels and a snake assail the visitors.

Yet McCarthy is not about to fetishize poverty or celebrate the exotic. India offers the couple a different way to look at everything. It invigorates them. Their former life has become the dream and the intense experience of India is now the reality.

It comes as no surprise to learn that McCarthy has worked in orphanages and the slums of India so hers is both an insider and an outsider’s viewpoint. This attitude informs every frame of this fascinating drama, a welcome addition to the new Australian cinema.

Source: hollywoodreporter.com

To adopt a child is to wait, and to wait in a city far from home can be an exciting thing – or a test of all one’s resources. In the case of Claire McCarthy’s epic, glistening new feature, those on hold are a young Australian couple, Fiona (Radha Mitchell) and Ben (Joel Edgerton), who arrive in Kolkata to claim their adopted child.

Outwardly happy and connected, Ben and Fiona are nonplussed when they discover that their adoption arrangements have hit some bureaucratic snags, even when their Western-style problem-solving skills prove ineffective at helping the situation along. As they dig in for a long wait, they comfort themselves with the assurance that their new daughter Lakshmi, whose picture they have cherished for months, will still be theirs. So, they wait: Fiona works from her laptop while Ben ventures out into the city in search of new experiences and friends. One of these new-found acquaintances is Scarlett (Isabel Lucas), a girl whose easy acclimatization to the rhythms of Kolkata seems to match Ben’s own.

As time passes, it also seems to intensify, and the couple respond very differently to the chaos, colour and allure of the city around them. Frustrated by the delays surrounding matters they assumed to be solved, Ben and Fiona inevitably turn on each other, and are forced to confront their differences, long-held resentments and secrets. The hoped-for break in the adoption proceedings does come, but by then there is a question of whether their shattered relationship can, or even should, continue.

But Kolkata doesn’t just take, it gives, and McCarthy’s deep personal knowledge of the city and its gifts is woven into every strand of the story’s fabric. Edgerton and Mitchell provide beautifully articulated performances, ably supported by Lucas, Samrat Chakraborty as Krishna, a hotel worker they befriend, and Tilotamma Shome as Sister Tessila, a compassionate nun from the adoption centre. Cinematographer Denson Baker’s stunning photography captures the vibrant Kolkata with a rich complexity that does true justice to the city and those waiting people within it.