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Helen M Jerome reviews
The Australian Film Festival 2009…
There is a new confidence about Australian film-makers, if the latest batch of offerings at the gloriously varied 15th Australian Film Festival at London’s Barbican Centre is any guide. They have the space and the freedom to explore whatever issue engages them – in fiction and documentary – and even in a very dark animated, stop- motion feature entitled $9.99.
With Baz Luhrmann’s epic AUSTRALIA (right) as one of the closing day’s films, you might imagining rolling your eyes heavenward and demanding another swig of Jacob’s Creek (or another sponsor’s beverage) to get through the 11-day festival. But you’d be wrong. Pretty much everything else on offer surprised, moved and delighted the audiences – and meanwhile explored some of the outer edges of the human condition, including the dizzying, ongoing shock of dealing with mental illness, disability and bereavement. Yes, one or two of the same actors cropped up in two or three films – luckily the better performers. And yes, there was some hand-wringing about what’s wrong with Australian society.
But being framed in strong narratives, these movies still worked beautifully. The only exception was Gillian Armstrong’s DEATH DEFYING ACTS, starring a pumped-up, badly-coiffed Guy Pearce as escapologist Harry Houdini, opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones as his eyelash-fluttering love interest. Both leads utterly adrift in a toe-curlingly corny script about Houdini’s visit to Britain – with some welcome ballast provided by Timothy Spall as Houdini’s manager. Oh, how we long for the days of Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career when she worked with Judy Davis rather than CZJ.
So which were the best features that should on no account be missed? I guess the trio that stand head and shoulders above the rest are BITTER AND TWISTED, TEN EMPTY and the extraordinary BLACK BALLOON. All powerfully and perfectly written, directed and acted.
In BITTER AND TWISTED (right) we home in on a family still utterly distraught after the oldest child’s suicide three years earlier. They can barely function from day to day; the father is comfort eating and failing miserably at his job; the middle-aged mother thinks she’s pregnant when it’s really the menopause; the younger son can’t escape his dead brother’s shadow; their sister isn’t eating. Each is stricken with an inarticulate loneliness, yet their endearing qualities draw you tightly in as their lives unravel.
TEN EMPTY isn’t a walk in the park either, embracing bereavement, depression, self- harm and alcoholism. Everyone is cripplingly dysfunctional here, as the director Anthony Hayes explained in the Q&A afterwards. Heavily influenced by Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, Hayes said he wanted to avoid the Americanisation that afflicts many Aussie films, and show ‘stoic men in the suburbs’. Which he does brilliantly, with a handful of stubborn male characters who simply cannot communicate except through violence and/or a drunken haze.
As for BLACK BALLOON, it’s a mini-masterpiece by first-time director Elissa Down that you simply have to see. It straddles different genres – romance, soap, social drama, and coming-of-age – as it serves up a nostalgia fest of fashions and fads, complete with the brilliant Toni Collette as the long-suffering, pregnant hippy matriarch. But crucially it has a point – and a point-of-view through the eyes of teenage son Thomas (Home and Away graduate RHYS WAKEFIELD), who not only has to cope with all the usual sweet sixteen problems, but also has an autistic brother, Charlie (LUKE FORD), with another sibling on the way. Thomas is at a new school with new peers to tease him; he’s falling in love with out-of-his-league classmate Jackie, played by model Gemma Ward; Charlie is a constant, noisy embarrassment. But because the whole family quarrel, fight, pitch in and somehow get by, you’ll root for them all against the odds. And it’s very funny too.
The other drama that gives a voice to the inarticulate is MEN’S GROUP (right). It closely follows a group of six men – played by some of Australia’s finest – who meet weekly to air their hang-ups and problems. Every one of these disparate characters is in denial, and this is one heck of a bumpy ride, with raw emotion constantly just below the surface. They buffet and aggressively challenge each other with frank language, in poignant passages that climax with a shocking event.
A refreshing change from the usual buddy movies, THREE BLIND MICE has echoes of On The Town, with three sailor pals on shore leave in Sydney, just before they’re shipped off to Iraq. In between their macho posturing, heavy-duty flirting, and gambling, we catch glimpses of their dark secrets and insecurities. And writer, director (and star) Matthew Newton surgically explores the true, scared selves that remain when everything else is stripped away.
I’m still not entirely sure about the surreal animated stop-motion feature $9.99 (right). It features fine voice talent like Geoffrey Rush and Anthony LaPaglia, but it’s certainly no Aardman animation, and the characters are as deliberately unattractive and uncomfortable to watch. The main question it poses is: what’s the meaning of life, but it’s so unremittingly downbeat that I felt detached throughout – and by the conclusion I could care less.
Documentaries at the festival were rich and varied. The best were SALUTE and THE OASIS, which feel important and life-affirming, even in their darkest moments.
SALUTE (right) is the under-reported story of the third sprinter on the Olympic winners’ podium when two Black Power activists gave their infamous salute in 1968. Silver medallist Australian Peter Norman was brave then, and continued to support Human Rights thereafter – despite finding himself cast out from Australian sport to the point where he didn’t even get a mention at the Sydney Olympics. An incredibly moving documentary tribute to a remarkable man.
Gritty documentary OASIS shows a homeless youth refuge in Sydney, in which another remarkable and near-saintly man, Captain Paul Moulds, helps kids who literally have nowhere else to go. We get to know each of these youngsters as they survive, thrive, and occasionally perish, despite the best efforts of Moulds and his over-worked staff – and it might just make you think differently about the homeless.
Then there’s NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD (right), a big old ride through the era of Oz- ploitation flicks. Not quite an homage, this is an insightful, yet irreverent study of the sensational schlock-horror movies, the broad comedies, the sex-ploitation, horror and violence that poured forth from down under. And everyone involved, from directors and stars like Barry Humphries, Susannah York and Jamie Lee Curtis, to super-fans like Quentin Tarrantino, has their say. Indeed, it’s hard to stop Quentin raving about each and every scene of every single B movie the celluloid wizards of Oz produced. From Mel Gibson in Mad Max to BMX Bandits with Nicole Kidman, the clips ensure that the gang’s all here.
Last, but not least, is ROCK ‘N’ ROLL NERD, which documents the rise and rise of the gifted musical comedian Tim Minchin. Barely recognisable at the beginning, as a dark and curly-haired, slightly overweight, novelty cabaret singer going nowhere fast, Minchin decides to lose weight and transform his entire his image. He emerges with gleaming, fixed teeth, as a mascara-ed rock god, with blonde-streaked hair. He makes his act edgier; he gets noticed by the movers and shakers in Edinburgh and the rest of the comedy world; he sells out West End venues; he becomes a dad and we discover that his social worker wife (and childhood sweetheart) Sarah has always been the one who pays the bills. It’s not all plain sailing, but it all helps to make this the most revealing look at the gruelling life of a standup since Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedian. And if you get the chance to see Minchin live, do!
TOP THREE FESTIVAL FILMS:
- BLACK BALLOON
- BITTER AND TWISTED
- TEN EMPTY
(right)
ONES TO WATCH:
- ANTHONY HAYES (Director, Ten Empty)
- MATTHEW NORMAN (Writer, Director, Actor, Three Blind Mice)
- ELISSA DOWN (Director, Black Balloon)
- RHYS WAKEFIELD, LUKE FORD and GEMMA WARD (stars of Black Balloon)
Check out the official London Film Festival website at: LFF.org.uk
Review copyright © Helen M Jerome 2008.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.