Oscar-worthy breaks
From Northern Italy to North Carolina, this year’s Academy Award winners inspire wanderlust, writes Lorna Thornber.
There should really be an Academy Award for best location. A movie’s setting often plays as much of a starring role as the lead actors, and is often just as swoon-worthy. In the case of some of this year’s Oscar winners, there’s no denying the location trumps the lead in the looks department.
The films that took out the golden gongs in 2018 were set in an eclectic mix of locales, from an area of Northern Italy yet untainted by tourism (yes, such a place does exist) to cute US mountain towns.
So now the awards have been handed out, it’s time to start planning a real-life cinematic escape. Here are just a few ideas we haven’t included Best Picture winner The Shape of Water as we thought you’d prefer not to spend your holidays in a room-sized fish tank. The double-decker Elgin theatre in Toronto that featured in the film is well worth a visit though.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Fans of director Martin McDonagh’s blackly comic revenger’s tragedy may be sad to learn that the picturesque titular mountain town is entirely fictional. The film - for which Frances McDormand won best actress and Sam Rockwell best supporting actor - was shot in the unassuming North Carolina town of Sylva, population 2644. But even by another name, the town is just as sweet - in a sleepy, old-school Americana kind of way.
Keen to cash in on the film’s success, the state tourism board has created a three-day itinerary which it says enables travellers to ‘‘walk in the shoes of Mildred Hayes (McDormand) as she battles with her community to dig deeper into her daughter’s violent death’’. Suggested stops include Jackson’s General Store where (spoiler alert) Red was thrown from his secondfloor office window; Sassy Frass, the home decor store that served as the Ebbing Police Department’s semi-functional HQ; and City Lights Cafe, a popular haunt with cast and crew.
Head to nearby Black Mountain to find the long lonely road where Mildred hired her billboards (they’ve been taken down but the tourist board promises ‘‘the scenic road is worth the drive’’). Once known as the ‘‘Front Porch of North Carolina’’, Black Mountain has been rebranded as the ‘‘Little Town that Rocks’’ and you can find out why at local boozer The Town Pump Tavern, where Mildred played pool with her small-statured admirer. Sylva, Black Mountain and the equally quaint-yet-quirky towns of Dillsboro and Maggie Valley serve as gateways to the region’s blockbuster natural attractions, which include the Great Smoky Mountains national park, the Nantahala national forest and Gorges state park.
For those who don’t associate strenuous activity with a break, bohemian, craft-beer loving Asheville is just a short drive away. Woody Harrelson developed a thing for local Buchi kombucha while in town, and you can visit the ethereal deer that materialised as Mildred was planting flowers for her daughter at the Western North Carolina Nature Centre, also home to black bears and red wolves.
Call Me By Your Name
It would be hard not to fall in love with the Italian town where Elio fell in love with Oliver in the cinematic love story of 2017.
The opening credits of the film, which won best adapted screenplay, say it is set ‘‘somewhere in Northern Italy’’ featured on our cover this week and Crema, the historic Lombardian town where many scenes unfold, is a sun-dappled vision of that part of the world with its grand villas, verdant gardens and exceptionally fertile orchards. Make like the starcrossed lovers and cycle through streets lined with colourful, centuries-old buildings and out to the surrounding countryside, stopping whenever the mood strikes to enjoy a ‘‘cuddle’’ in the long grass or a swim in a river. Don’t expect to find too many of the movie’s infamous peaches though - corn and grapes are the main crops in these parts (making for plenty of good polenta-based meals and wine).
Less than an hour from Milan, Crema is a good base to explore the film’s other locales, such as Lake Garda and Bergamo, where the lovers spend their last days together. Elio and Oliver’s relationship mightn’t have ended happily but that doesn’t mean your holiday can’t. A hike to Serio
Lady Bird
Waterfalls, the highest in Italy and the second highest in Europe, a` la the boys toward the end of the film will ensure your own Italian affair ends on a high note. OK it didn’t actually win an Oscar but ironically, Lady Bird‘s success is likely to drive more people to the city its main character so longs to escape.
Director Greta Gerwig grew up in Sacramento and, in many ways, the film - which was nominated in five categories, including best picture, best director and best actress - is a tribute to the Californian capital which, while it has played an important role in the state’s history since the Gold Rush era, is often overlooked by visitors. Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) lives in the River Park neighbourhood, which she dismisses as ‘‘the wrong side of the tracks’’, but much of the movie is set in the city’s posher neighbourhoods. Movie-themed walking and running tours inevitably include the ‘‘blue house’’ in the the Fabulous Forties suburb that Lady Bird pretends to live in. While it’s not open to the public, the owners are gracious about the stream of sightseers who’ve stopped to take selfies outside since the film’s opening they’ve even been known to step out of the way of photos.
Other essential sites include the McKinley rose garden where Lady Bird and Danny frolic among the flowers one evening, Gunter’s Ice Cream parlour, where you can pick up an Oreo pie on a stick, and the art deco Tower Theatre. While Lady Bird longs to leave, it’s clear Sacramento will always hold a special place in her heart. When the Catholic nun and high school principal tells her ‘‘you clearly love Sacramento’’ after reading her essay, the teen shrugs and says she simply pays attention to her surroundings. ‘‘Well it comes across as love,’’ the nun says. ‘‘Don’t you think maybe they are the same thing, love and attention?’’
As Gerwig told the Los Angeles
Times, ‘‘it’s not a show-offy place’’, but it’s one that rewards those who seek out the places that lend it its special character.
Darkest Hour
A tour of the filming locations of this tense biopic of Winston Churchill in his early days as the UK prime minister as Hitler’s henchmen spread across Western Europe is also a survey of London’s most iconic political landmarks.
The Houses of Parliament, Treasury, Foreign and Commonwealth Office and 10 Downing Street all play themselves in the film - for which Gary Oldman won best actor - while Somerset House doubled as the entrance to Buckingham Palace.
Close by lies the underground bunker from which Churchill and his cronies plotted Hitler’s defeat. Considered one of Britain’s best kept World War II secrets, it now houses the Churchill War Rooms museum. The labyrinth of rooms and corridors below Westminster tell the stories of both Churchill and the war, with some spaces looking exactly as they would have then. Keep an eye out for Churchill’s favourite cigar and the Transatlantic Telephone Room disguised as a toilet.
Restrictions on filming in such important buildings meant many interior scenes were filmed outside the capital. Wentworth Woodhouse, a Grade I listed Georgian mansion in Rotherham, Yorkshire, masqueraded as the inside of Buckingham Palace and, claiming to be the largest privateowned house in Europe, is well worth checking out.
Bramham Park, a Tuscan-style country estate in Leeds, and Brodsworth Hall, a dream Victorian home in Doncaster, both stood in for 10 Downing Street. It’s the latest of a string of onscreen appearances for Bramham Park, which has also starred in TV adaptations of Wuthering Heights and Victoria.