Wicker Park (film)
2004 film directed by Paul McGuigan
Wicker Park is a 2004 American romantic thriller drama film directed by Paul McGuigan and starring Josh Hartnett, Rose Byrne, Diane Kruger and Matthew Lillard.
It is a remake of the 1996 French film L'Appartement, which in turn is loosely based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and follows a young advertising executive who searches obsessively for his ex-lover after she disappeared two years earlier. It was nominated for the Grand Prix at the Montreal World Film Festival, the city in which the film was partially filmed. The title refers to the Wicker Park neighborhood on Chicago's near northwest side.
The film received generally negative reviews from critics, and was a box-office disappointment.
Filmed on a budget of $30 million, Wicker Park grossed only $21.6 million worldwide.
On December 28, 2004, the movie was released on DVD and VHS from MGM Home Entertainment.
Plot
Matt Simon, a young advertising executive, returns to Chicago with his fiancée Rebecca, after spending the last two years in New York. He bumps into his old friend Luke on the way into a meeting at a restaurant, in preparation for a business trip to China. Once inside, Matt thinks he overhears Lisa, the beautiful dancer he was in love with two years before, who had vanished overnight.
“Wicker Park (film)” enters the record as 2004 film directed by Paul McGuigan. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Wicker, Park and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Wicker Park (film)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Wicker, Park and film provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q603494. The first chronological checks are 2004 and 1996.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Wicker Park (film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Wicker Park (film) primary sources, Wicker Park (film) archive and Wicker research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Wicker Park (film)”?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Wicker Park (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.