Category: Random observations

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.

Some might be put off by the thought of a film in which the dialogue is almost entirely in verse; but after having seen Yes, a movie by director Sally Potter, verse is the perfect delivery mechanism. In such a natural manner are the lines delivered by the actors, that it took me several scenes to realise that the dialogue was in verse (barring the opening scene with the maid talking about dirt and cleanliness). This movie was clever, sad, funny and extremely relevant in today’s cultural and religious climate.

One feature of this film is that we are never told the names of the leading characters. She, played by Joan Allen, is an Irish born American scientist living in a marriage from which all love has been extinguished. Her husband, Anthony (Sam Neill), is a philandering, well-to-do British politician who feels that She is a cold woman. At a formal dinner, She meets He (Simon Abkarian), a Muslim waiter and chef from Lebanon. He notices the sullen mood of She at the dinner, and quickly proposes what might be called a tryst. Feeling trapped in her loveless marriage, she accepts.

We find out that He was once a surgeon in Beirut, but fled Lebanon after he saved a man from certain death only to him shot in front of his eyes. The killers told him only to treat those on the right side of the civil war. As a doctor, He could not abide this, and left the country immediately. She, having grown up in a nation of similar turmoil can sympathise with what He has come through. Their love is passionate and true.

There is one eyebrow raising scene in which He and She engage in some under the table intimacy at a restaurant. The scene required utmost delicacy from the director and needed to be played perfectly by the actors and it was. Less competent direction and acting might have turned what was a beautiful moment in the film into something filthy and artless.

A moment of conflict arises when He loses his job at a restaurant after He is insulted by one of his colleagues. Although He appears confident and comfortable in the western world, this incident exposes his fragility and the frustration he feels at being persecuted for his religious beliefs. He questions Her about her motives in this relationship. Is he just her exotic plaything? Why is it that he can compose verse in English and has read the Bible while She (and the western population in general) knows not one word of Arabic and knows nothing of the Qur’an? (Aside: I’d actually argue that if you’ve read the Bible, then you’d have a pretty fair idea of what’s in the Qur’an and vice-versa, but everybody always seems to completely overlook this point. More on this in a later post.)

During their argument, She is called away to her dying Aunt’s bedside in Belfast. Her Aunt is a Marxist through and through. We hear the Aunt speaking in an amusing unconscious soliloquy, poking fun at She, and giving She advice, all of which She cannot hear. That is, all except her last words, spoken aloud, which beseech her to go to Cuba to cleanse herself. She does go, and He meets her in Cuba after visiting Lebanon where he is tempted to take up his job as a surgeon once again.

Yes is a film I thoroughly enjoyed. It pulled off the modern Shakesperean verse without being pretentious in the slightest. My brother, who came to the screening, loved the film for goodness’ sakes, and he usually hates this kind of thing (being more partial to the Die Hard genre). I could say the film became a little too overtly leftist at its conclusion, but that really would be nit-picking. Yes was a truly memorable movie-going experience.

Puppy is a new Australian film from writer/director Kieran Galvin about two people who fall in love in a strange set of circumstances. We were lucky enough to watch the premiere of Puppy at the Regent Cinema. The director, producer, main cast and other members of the film crew were in the audience on the night.

Liz (Nadia Townsend) is rather calamitous, and her life is pretty screwed. To begin with, she runs over her sister’s dog, steals her sister’s necklace to pay for the vet to operate on the dog (the dog dies anyway), and then she is kicked out of her sister’s and her sister’s partner’s flat. We then find out that years earlier she watched as her slow minded brother killed himself by jumping off a rooftop carpark when he was trying to fly. Now Liz just wants to die, so she tries to gas herself in her car. But even this fails. Later in the film she tells us she wasn’t really trying to kill herself, but the fact is, she would have unless Aiden (Bernard Curry) had "saved" her.

We quickly learn that Aiden is highly delusional. He mistakes Liz for his wife (who’s left him). Aiden rescues Liz from her exhaust filled car and drives her off in his truck to his house in the countryside. He ties Liz to the bed, puts a dog collar on her and keeps her on a rope whenever she’s not tied to the bed. Slowly, he begins to trust that Liz won’t try to escape, and lets her walk about the house freely.

Of course, Liz does try to escape when Aiden goes out, but she’s stopped by Aiden’s two fierce dogs (I’m sure most people would have risked escape, anyway.). She later tricks Aiden into calling the local doctor, who comes to the house but then keels over and dies of a heart attack. Then, after managing to overcome Aiden by partially strangling him, she kills one of his dogs and tries to drive the truck away, but being rather prone to disaster, Liz merely manages to back the truck into a shed and gets it stuck.

Having tied Aiden to the bed, Liz feeds him the medication he’s been desparately in need of. Aiden undergoes a complete transformation as his delusions subside, and he wonders what awful things he might have done to Liz. Around this time, Liz decides to dig a shallow grave for the dead doctor, at which point Aiden’s wife comes to check on him. By this time Liz has grown fond of Aiden. She’s worried that his wife is trying to get him institutionalised. Let’s just say she quickly ends up in the grave with the dead doctor and the dead dog. Eventually, the police become suspicious, first about the missing doctor, and then about Aiden’s missing wife. But they’re very incompetent policemen.

I might have done Puppy a slight injustice by making it seem a little bit sillier than it really was. I did like the film, but not as much as the previous two movies I saw at BIFF this year. While the performances were good (particularly from Bernard Curry), I found some elements of the film totally unbelievable. Poor Liz’s failed attempts at escape moved from the frustrating (which is a totally valid feeling to conjure in the movie audience) to the ridiculous (which is not a feeling at all, and had no place in this film). It’s a good start from first time director Kieran Galvin, but his best is surely yet to come.

We didn’t know what to expect from Me and You and Everyone We Know. Thankfully it turned out to be one of the finest low budget films I’ve seen. Since watching this film, I’ve found out that it won the 2005 Caméra d’Or at Cannes and the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at Sundance among numerous others. Roger Ebert also awarded it four out of four stars in a recent review. All this from a first time director, Miranda July, who also co-starred in this wonderful film.

We know, almost as soon as we set eyes on him, that there’s something a little odd about Richard, played brilliantly by John Hawkes. This is confirmed moments later when, in an effort to impress his two children in the midst of separating from his African American wife (Jonell Kennedy), he pours lighter fluid over his hand and sets it alight! We find out a few scenes later that he confused lighter fluid with rubbing alcohol (which apparently won’t burn you when set alight).

Christine (July), is a budding modern artist who composes strange little cinema pieces from photographs stuck to her wall. To pay the bills, she drives the elderly around town in her car. On one such trip, she takes her client and friend, Michael (Hector Elias), to a shoe store. Here she meets Richard, who’s a salesman in the shoe store. From this point on, Christine more or less stalks Richard – in the nicest of ways. These two, both quirky in their own ways, are obviously meant to be together. Christine sees this from the start, while Richard, having just separated from his wife and with two young children to look after, is still less sure of this.

Further entertainment is provided by the young characters: Richards children, Peter (Miles Thompson) and Robby (Brandon Ratcliff), Sylvie homemaker (Carlie Westerman) who is the young girl next door, and Heather (Natasha Slayton) and Rebecca (Najarra Townsend) who play a couple of late teens curious about sex. The funniest moments in this film occur during an Internet chat that Peter and Robby are having with an unknown person who becomes highly aroused at Robby’s strange, but ultimately innocent (Robby is seven years old), ideas of sex.

A terrific movie. If you like slightly offbeat and innovative films, this one’s a must see.

When there are so many movies showing at a film festival, it’s hard to decide which ones to see. However, Land of Plenty was an obvious choice from the outset, since it stars Karen’s favourite actress, Michelle Williams. Be warned, some spoilers follow.

After returning to America after years spent in Africa and the Middle East with her (deceased) missionary parents, Lana (Williams) sets out to find her uncle in order to pass on a letter from her mother. Lana finds work and accommodation at an LA mission operated by a friend of the family. Her uncle, Paul (John Diehl) turns out to be a paranoid Vietnam War veteran, who spends most of his time driving around in a surveillance vehicle staking out those he suspects to be terrorists. Hassan (Shaun Toub), a homeless Pakistani man whom Paul had been following, is killed in a drive-by shooting. Lana and Paul decide to track down Hassan’s family; she because she feels it isn’t right for Hassan to end up in an anonymous grave on the outskirts of LA (the fate of many a homeless John/Jane Doe) and he because he smells a terrorist plot. The ensuing journey is what makes this film worth seeing. In some ways Wim Wenders was brave to make this film because of the post-9/11 theme, which, although apparent throughout the entire film, is brought into sharp focus in its closing scenes. There are also some very funny moments in this movie, mostly featuring Paul and his military gadgets. One thing that could have made the film better in my opinion, is if the first half of the movie could have been shortened and the latter half expanded.

No doubt this film will be added to our DVD collection at some point, not just because of its Dawson’s Creek connection but because it’s a genuinely good movie.

Karen and I were lucky enough to score five passes each to the Brisbane International Film Festival courtesy of Clinton. (Thanks heaps!) We’ve seen three films so far: Land of Plenty, Me and You and Everyone We Know and Puppy. A brief review of each will appear here shortly.