Coober Pedy provides a dramatic backdrop for new film Limbo

Limbo, a moody police procedural, is one thing of a swansong in style for author and director Ivan Sen, who has helped pioneer an period of Australian display screen noir that blends the toughness of the outback with the aptitude of a western.

His breakout 2013 movie Thriller Highway ­– starring Aaron Pedersen as Detective Jay Swan, the rough-around-the-edges Indigenous man who is aware of his group – was so widespread it turned a three-season ABC TV sequence, and in addition led to the 2016 spin-off movie Goldstone, with Jacki Weaver. Final 12 months got here the 2022 prequel, Thriller Highway: Origin, introducing the gifted Mark Coles Smith as Jay Swan. Sen didn’t write it however he was govt producer.

“Personally, it [the police procedural] isn’t one thing that I’m going to maintain pursuing – it was form of good to try this however I feel I’ll perhaps let it go along with this movie and get again extra into the straight drama world,” Sen says. “I feel in case you are speaking procedurals and police in a rural space, there are limitations creatively which are put upon you.”

He goes out on a excessive creative be aware with Limbo, a trendy, stand-alone character research and homicide thriller a few jaded detective, Travis Hurley (Simon Baker), who arrives within the outback city of Limbo to research the cold-case homicide of an Aboriginal lady 20 years earlier.

“I don’t know if Travis is a hero or anti-hero. That’s not likely the purpose,” Sen says. “He’s a person in search of salvation and finds himself in a scenario to do one thing about it.”

Sen, who’s dedicated to telling Indigenous tales, has spent the previous decade exploring outback noir on display screen with nice success. He and fellow Indigenous filmmaker Warwick Thornton (Candy Nation, Firebite) have made black cinema extra mainstream, regardless that Sen by no means shies away from the tensions between black and white Australians in a rustic city.

“I’m from the nation and I simply write what I do know just about, in addition to being influenced by analysis and different individuals’s experiences,” he says. “However primarily Jay Swan, the Indigenous detective, has come from me. I used to be going to be a cop after highschool and utilized after Yr 12 and I didn’t get in.”

Sen visited Coober Pedy some years in the past and instantly determined to make use of it as a backdrop. He doesn’t write first after which discover a place for a setting; he wrote Limbo with Coober Pedy in thoughts.

“Particularly the underground dwelling expertise and the tradition inside it,” he says. “So it was one thing I had deliberate from the very starting – and I really known as the movie Limbo, which has this connection to the expertise of being not far sufficient above floor to be heaven or far sufficient underground to be hell.”

A dramatic stage: Ivan Sen wrote Limbo with Coober Pedy in thoughts. Picture provided

The movie was shot in black and white partly for technical causes – Sen isn’t a fan of digital color – however primarily as a result of Coober Pedy’s huge expanses of white floor supplied a dramatic stage that gave pictures and characters a powerful presence.

“There aren’t many locations in Australia the place you possibly can shoot in black and white correctly, with a full tonal vary. However Coober Pedy is certainly one of only a few.”

He’s not shocked by the worldwide recognition of Coober Pedy as a location, or {that a} workforce of United States celebrities – together with disgraced bike owner Lance Armstrong and Bruce Willis’s daughter, Tallulah – are at present there filming the fact present Stars on Mars, with Star Trek’s William Shatner as their host.

“There have been numerous productions on the market which have used the moonscape and the desert,” Sen says. “It’s large enough [to host film productions] and folks follow themselves quite a bit. We had no issues aside from the climate; it was very windy.”

His portrayal of the uneasy tolerance between black and white individuals, and their mutual acknowledgement of their completely different lives, comes straight from expertise, and he remembers watching related interactions as he was rising up.

“Most [of the interactions] are fairly informal, besides there’s a historical past there. There’s a area there they usually negotiate their interactions on that area.”

Limbo is a stark thriller that unfolds with out flourish, and Sen is extra happy with it than the rest he has finished. He likes the dramatic aesthetic, and in addition valued working with Baker, a dedicated Australian actor who has a excessive profile abroad from movies like The Satan Wears Prada, with Meryl Streep, however who chooses unbiased Australian works like this one, through which he wears an unflattering buzzcut.

Sen wrote the anti-hero cop for Baker and moulded the script in order that it suited the actor’s strategy to the function. The pair collaborated, and Baker was eager to help a undertaking telling an Indigenous story.

“Simon is such an untapped expertise and I simply actually needed to permit Simon to have some house to simply act, play this character, this unusual, old-man cop,” Sen says. “We made a very good workforce and we could go on and do different stuff collectively, I feel.”

Simon Baker and Natasha Wanganeen in Limbo. Picture provided

The movie’s relative slowness, undisturbed by the frenzied interruptions typical of a US police procedural, comes from Sen’s willingness to permit occasions to unfold naturally, so the viewers watches a personality transfer by a scene in virtually actual time. He needed “to let the continuum of time and house movement” – one thing he had not tried earlier than and which requires placing a component of belief within the viewers.

“I needed, as a director, to not get in the best way of that. Simply letting the dramatic second carry for so long as doable, with out the contrivance of enhancing or slicing to a different shot.”

Sen forged South Australian actor Natasha Wanganeen in a outstanding function as a key member of the Aboriginal household of the murdered lady who have been handled at finest with cursory indifference, and at worst as criminals themselves. He says he has private perception into the unrelenting trauma this type of therapy causes Indigenous households, and needed to indicate audiences {that a} crime that was 20 years outdated was by no means a chilly case for the household.

Wanganeen’s highly effective display screen presence has received her tv and movie roles, and in 2021 she had a visitor half in Thornton’s 2021 TV zombie apocalypse sequence Firebite, which was additionally filmed at Coober Pedy. She says the city has a particular place in her coronary heart, and is in contrast to something she had seen earlier than.

“It’s a tricky place with robust individuals however their hearts are as massive and delightful because the opals they discover there,” she says.

Wanganeen discovered working with Sen to be a tremendous and particular expertise, and says his calm nature unfold to all those that labored with him.

“He’s a director who allows you to drive your character from your personal uncooked experiences, which is what each actor needs and wishes. He’s a grasp, and it was an absolute pleasure to work with him and to be a part of Ivan Sen’s black magic.”

Limbo opens nationally in cinemas on Could 18. Palace Nova Eastend in Adelaide is presenting a particular preview screening on Could 15 that includes a stay, in-person introduction by Ivan Sen, Simon Baker and Natasha Wanganeen.