Until Blacktown, I’d never watched a film guided by the Dogma 95 Manifesto. I think I can also quite safely say that I’ve never watched a movie that is set in the town of my birth. I don’t expect ever to see a film shot in Blacktown again, but you never know.
The Dogma 95 (Danish: Dogme 95) Manifesto aims for utmost simplicity in filmmaking. No special effects. Small crews. Cheap, cheap films. What you end up with are home-movie quality pictures. Given the absence of all the bells and whistles of big-budget films, there are no misconceptions about why you have come to watch the film: for the plot and the characters.
While Blacktown was ultimately likeable, it was probably by far my least favourite film of the festival. Blacktown is writer/director Kriv Stenders’ second film (his first was The Illustrated Family Doctor). I admire Stenders for wanting to make a movie on no budget at all; however I thought he could have worked on the plot a bit more before shooting began, and I reckon there was more onscreen chemistry between John Howard and Queen Elizabeth II in their recent Buckingham Palace meeting than there was between the lead actors in this film. But then, doing casting properly must be an expensive process, so I’ll forgive the film for that.
Nikki Moore (Niki Owen) works as a secretary. She’s in some kind of on and off relationship with Peter (Kriv Stenders). Her colleague sets her up on a disastrous blind date, which ends when Tony (Tony Ryan) rescues her from the situation. By fits and starts, Nikki and Tony fall in love. It’s an unlikely match. He’s an aboriginal, she is not (this issue is one of the barriers that characters overcome by the end of the film). He’s a reformed alcoholic, substance abuser and criminal who’s served time in gaol. But he can sing, and he’s a character, and he uses his charms to convince Nikki that he’s the right guy for her.
Though the film may have given an accurate representation of the path a modern relationship takes, it failed to be really interesting. Maybe the plot was too real, too ordinary. In my view, films should rarely present life exactly the way it is. We live that every day, and we don’t need to see that on the big screen. We knew how the film would end, even though a paltry effort was made to throw some uncertainty into the mix. For films such as Blacktown to really work, something out of the ordinary needs to happen, especially if it has the added layer of reality given to it by the pseudo-documentary filming style. I’m absolutely certain that had Mr. Stenders used his creative talents to flesh out the plot prior to filming, Blacktown would have been a much better movie for it.
