It’s rare that a great story, which has the right elements to make an effective drama, comes your way. MATCHING JACK is one of those projects.
The idea that a boy’s life is saved through his father’s infidelity is loaded to the max. Ironic, emotive, call it what you like – it’s going to take an audience on a journey through pain, love, despair, humour and hope.
Let’s look at some of the elements. The clock is ticking right through this script; a cure must be found for this child’s leukaemia; and in the next bed is a boy for which there is no cure. Here is passion and pain, despair and pathos. The boy’s father’s infidelity is exposed in the worst possible way; yet it is this infidelity that ultimately saves Jack’s life. What a paradox; what a Pandora’s box of emotions; nothing is simple here. A woman scorned, a child facing death, the search for a bone marrow donor is futile, unless the husband has had a child out of wedlock. The mother, Marisa, grabs this slim thread and, by delving into the husband’s past diaries, pinpoints women that her philandering husband may have been with. And then she goes door-knocking. Unsuspecting women are confronted with their past as Marisa tries to ascertain whether these are children that may have been fathered by her husband.
This is a film based in reality and like real life it waivers between the highs and lows that we all experience. Confronting, thought provoking, heart breaking – a great story for now, for an audience from twenty years of age onwards – uplifting and tragic, funny and moving. It’s a story for you.