{"id":628712,"date":"2026-04-24T22:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T22:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/628712\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T22:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T22:13:12","slug":"alphabet-lane-asks-how-can-a-relationship-survive-a-rural-tree-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/628712\/","title":{"rendered":"Alphabet Lane asks how can a relationship survive a rural tree change"},"content":{"rendered":"

As rents<\/a> and property prices rise<\/a> to astronomical rates around the country, more and more city slickers are sizing up a move to the country \u2014 a tree change, if you will \u2014 with promises of eased cost of living, stronger community and bountiful, open land.<\/p>\n

Fast facts about Alphabet Lane<\/p>\n

What: A couple that has just moved from the city to rural Australia turn to unconventional methods to ease the isolation<\/p>\n

Starring: Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Nicholas Denton, Henry Nixon<\/p>\n

Directed by: James Litchfield<\/p>\n

When: In cinemas now<\/p>\n

Likely to make you feel: Inspired to have a post-watch debrief<\/p>\n

It’s in this fantasy that Australian filmmaker James Litchfield plants his debut feature film. But just like a house hides rotten foundations in swanky reservations, Litchfield peels back the chipping paint to reveal reality in Alphabet Lane.<\/p>\n

“I was about 30 when I wrote it; I’d seen a lot of my friends move to the country,” Litchfield tells ABC Arts.<\/p>\n

“I guess it’s that moment where you find yourself. Committing to a certain life, when you do that, certain avenues change and certain avenues close off.”<\/p>\n

Upping stumps<\/p>\n

Alphabet Lane is essentially a sparse, tense two-hander lasered in on a young couple Anna (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) and Jack (Nicholas Denton), who make the leap from Sydney to the open ranges of the Monaro region of NSW.<\/p>\n

With Anna working nights as a doctor at the local hospital and Jack travelling kilometres every day to work on the Snowy Hydro Scheme as an engineer, the couple barely have time to share a kiss as their cars cross on the dusty, uncovered road home.<\/p>\n

Conversely, the weekends stretch out into long, unfilled blocks of time. Their city-coded friends can only make the trek out so often and the siloed locals seem unwilling, or unable to connect with the pair.<\/p>\n

\"two<\/p>\n

“It’s beautiful, but also mystical and a little austere. It’s a very interesting psychological landscape,” Litchfield says of his Cooma shooting locations. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

For Litchfield, who grew up in Cooma where the film was shot on his family’s sprawling estate, the seclusion of the countryside feels familiar.<\/p>\n

“I have quite a high tolerance and maybe even need for isolation; I was very interested in the positive and negative sides to that,” Litchfield says.<\/p>\n

“I think it is very good developing your inner life and your creativity and thinking about who you are, but then obviously there are perils that come with it.<\/p>\n

“Not having people around all the time can pose a challenge.”<\/p>\n

The struggle to create community eventually bleeds into tension between Jack and Anna; the roadside kisses cease and resentment starts to sink in, leading the couple to a very novel solution.<\/p>\n

Making ‘new’ friends<\/p>\n

Jack and Anna tackle the challenge of isolation with their imagination, creating fake neighbours who live just down the road \u2014 they’re a little older but they very willingly take the couple under their wing.<\/p>\n

It’s an inside joke between lovers at first, but as Jack and Anna soon begin a lengthy letter correspondence with their new ‘friends’ and each passed note fuels the fantasy that’s filling the couple’s loneliness.<\/p>\n

The longer the ruse goes on, the more tangible the lie feels. Maybe there is a kindly older couple down the road that wants Jack and Anna over for dinner?<\/p>\n

The ambiguity that swirls around the couple’s actions is what originally attracted Cobham-Hervey to the role of Anna.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Alphabet Lane director James Litchfield with star Tilda Cobham-Hervey. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

“It was very intimate and it left a lot of room for the audience to make their own ideas about what has happened to these characters,” she tells ABC Arts.<\/p>\n

“I really tried to lean into her desperation. For Anna it wasn’t just play, it was everything. It was like a desperate need to save a relationship and it was the only solution to saving it.”<\/p>\n

Litchfield says he intentionally infused his script with uncertainty to allow room for personal interpretation.<\/p>\n

“David Lynch talks about his films being abstract and for me that means being something that people can watch and relate to in many different ways,” he says.<\/p>\n

“It’s been interesting hearing people talk about things that it’s reminded them of in their relationships or things that they’ve had or things they’ve had friends do.”<\/p>\n

Community off screen<\/p>\n

In the world of Alphabet Lane, the locals are dismissive at best and outright prickly at worst, but Litchfield and Cobham-Hervey’s experience filming in Cooma was the complete opposite.<\/p>\n

The community embraced Alphabet Lane, with production moving into the small town for three weeks of filming.<\/p>\n

“Nicholas and I actually shared a house, so it was really life imitating art. We’d get up and have breakfast together and have a little cup of tea before bed,” Cobham-Hervey says.<\/p>\n

“Then the rest of the crew were just across a little garden. So we all really spent a lot of time together, which was delightful.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

“Anna’s response to struggling in her relationship, turning to letter writing and creating these imaginary worlds, I really could relate to that,” Cobham-Hervey says. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

With filming taking place largely on Litchfield’s family property, the director kept things close to home, casting some Cooma locals and even his own father in small parts in the movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When production did have to venture out from the lush estate, the community was happy to provide support.<\/p>\n

“Everyone was just so amazing, it was great to get them involved,” Litchfield says.<\/p>\n

“For example, hospitals are famously quite hard to shoot in. Cooma Hospital was extremely generous and said, yeah, you can use one of our wards when it’s not being used.<\/p>\n

“The council also helped us out a lot, they even created a road a bit ahead of schedule for us, which was helpful.”<\/p>\n

Cobham-Hervey says while Alphabet Lane veers into some abstract areas, the movie encourages viewers to solidify the relationships in their life.<\/p>\n

“I hope that people have the courage to tell their person how they really feel and to encourage creative play in relationships because I think that’s what this film really celebrates,” she says.<\/p>\n

“It’s something as adults we really turn off in ourselves and I think there’s so much to learn from being playful with your partner or your friends, even as you age.”<\/p>\n

Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n

Alphabet Lane is in cinemas now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As rents and property prices rise to astronomical rates around the country, more and more city slickers are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[304727,64,63,304730,163296,134,304728,304729],"class_list":["post-628712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-alphabet-lane","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-cinema","tag-australian-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-james-litchfield","tag-tilda-cobham-hervey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}