Love is now review

Andrew Lovett has a look at a bicycle-based road trip movie set in rural New South Wales and a chat with the director.

Love is now, a new film from first-time director Jim Lounsbury, takes a unique look at the tried-and-true road-trip. He swaps cars for bicycles (provided by Reid Cycles)  as his characters pedal their way through the beautiful harvest trails of northern New South Wales.

Having seen my fair share of typical ‘road trip’ style films, this one really struck me as something different. Amateur photographer Dean (Eamon Farren) finds more than he originally bargained for after sneaking into an art exhibition, where its love at first sight with Audrey (Claire van der Boom), an experienced photographer herself.

The two are madly in love from the moment their helpless eyes meet, some casual flirting and high-pitched laughing ensues before Audrey confesses something. She once set-off on her bike to complete the harvest trail by herself, but for undisclosed reasons, the journey was cut-short. So, caught up in the moment, she spontaneously challenges Dean to help her complete the journey. “When should they leave?” he asks—Audrey’s reply, “Tomorrow.”

Lounsbury then teases us. Subtly dropping little pieces of information that not all is right between the two. Nevertheless they ride together, stopping off at different fruit picking orchards while simultaneously finding more dramas and falling deeper and deeper in love.

The harvest trail backdrop is beautiful, but not overwhelming. There is very little use of technology, only twice I counted while watching the film was a computer or mobile phone sighted.

“We wanted to show that magic of being immersed by the landscape and allowing it to be a part of the story. With a car sometimes you just don’t have that level of connection with the land and the roads” says Lounsbury, who is a bicycle enthusiast himself.

“So the bicycle slowed it down just that little bit. One of things that we really wanted to do with this film is to give people a sense of escapism that they don’t get from technology.”

After seeing these rolling hills and beautiful sunsets, I was getting the bug to hit the road myself. Lounsbury says that if you can, give it a shot, “Up in the Hunter Valley there is actually a trail that people do ride. A lot of backpackers from France and Germany do it. They go picking anything from tomatoes to oranges and anything else on the way up to Queensland. I don’t know how many people have done it on bicycles, but if you did want to do it, I think you could work your way up the coast.”

Lounsbury, who was born and bred in the USA and lives in Seattle, said his love for bikes started at an early age, “I’ve had mountain bike and I used to do a lot of single track mountain bike riding. We used to do a lot of riding in the Blue Mountains in Tennessee when I was in college. Also when I lived up in Seattle, my mates and I would do a lot of riding in the summertime using the chairlifts to the ski bike trails.”

Like with most films, from that first thought being put to paper to the finished product, it took time, “I came to that original idea of riding bicycles and going on this journey as a way of processing the grief about five years ago.”

“I came from a family of medical professionals. My father was a doctor, my mother is a nurse. I think that I’ve always been fascinated with grief. I think that the original idea came from the process behind someone who had a break from reality because of the grief that they are suffering from the loss of someone they had fallen in love with quite deeply.”

Something I couldn’t help noticing in the film was that the actors weren’t wearing helmets. According to Lounsbury this was a talking point in pre-production: “When we were in talks about the film with the NSW government, we asked that question (if the actors have to wear helmets), and they said, ‘look we get it’ and they embraced the script without the characters having to wear helmets. I guess from our stand point we just wanted to be able see the actors.”

Lounsbury also said that he found pre and post production to be the most stressful periods, but all in all the stars aligned throughout the whole process, “We were really fortunate with weather, location, and I think that you know when you have that sort of feeling when we started to get Universal Pictures on board to get us international distribution and Hoyts came on board to give us a local cinematic release. It just kind of follows on from the luck we had during the production process. All along this film has been one of those certain projects that ‘could’, but it’s gone a lot further than anyone thought it would.”

I won’t give away the ending because it’s not what you’d expect—at least I didn’t see the twist coming.

Love is now is now available on DVD.

Ride On content is editorially independent, but is supported financially by members of Bicycle Network. If you enjoy our articles and want to support the future publication of high-quality content, please consider helping out by becoming a member.