Sweet As (2022)

Another film festival I attended in February, my first month in Melbourne, was one with a thematic focus a little closer to home than the Europa! Europa Film Festival, namely the Melbourne Women in Film Festival. It was, I gather, the seventh edition, and it’s not a big festival — there were only a handful of films, along with the screening of an old Clara Law film (itself hived off from a larger celebration of Law’s work that’s been screening over the last few weeks), and a couple of programmes of shorts as well as workshops and discussions. I only attended the opening and closing night films, but both came with unexpected (to me, because I hadn’t read the website closely) free drinks, and a generally celebratory atmosphere which is always welcome! Long may the festival continue.

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Focusing on a young First Nations woman, Murra (Shantae Barnes-Cowan), who has been let down by her family — most immediately her drug-using and wildly erratic mother — Sweet As blossoms into a really wholesome film that I certainly hope connects with the right audiences. Murra finds herself pushed into going on a group trip with other troubled kids, where they are encouraged to discover their voices via old-fashioned film cameras that one of the guides, an enthusiastic Nicaraguan guy (Carlos Sanson Jr), is particularly keen on. Naturally this idea of photography as a way into taking control of one’s own story means the pressure is on the film’s cinematographer to capture something beautiful, and there’s definitely a sense of some tourist board-approved visuals here, though I suppose you don’t have to work hard in this bit of Western Australia to find something stunning to photograph. The core of the story, though, remains focused on Murra and the way she first resists and ultimately bonds with the others on the trip, as a sort of coming of age road trip. Perhaps it does all feel a little bit soft pedalled (and it fits rather neatly into a familiar generic framework), but this is ultimately a very hopeful film about restoring connections with other people and with the natural world.

CREDITS
Director Jub Clerc; Writers Clerc and Steve Rodgers; Cinematographer Katie Milwright; Starring Shantae Barnes-Cowan, Pedrea Jackson, Mikayla Levy, Carlos Sanson Jr, Ngaire Pigram; Length 87 minutes.
Seen at ACMI, Melbourne, Thursday 23 February 2022.

The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson (2021)

The full list of my favourite films of 2022 is here but I’m posting fuller reviews of my favourites. This Australian revisionist western film by an Aboriginal woman director, writer and star came out at festivals in 2021, but I caught up with it on a flight (it would fill a big screen though, and for some reason in my mind that’s where I saw it). Not a perfect movie, but it had a lot that I really liked.

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I suppose that, strictly speaking, this isn’t a Western (because it’s not set in the American West, or even the West of Australia) but it shares a lot of characteristics with those kinds of frontier dramas, where (white) settlers are put in precarious situations due to their low socioeconomic status and lack of protections afforded by ‘opening up’ a country not previously inhabited by them. But as this film knows all too well, that kind of work doesn’t lead to great outcomes for indigenous populations, and while it’s based on a classic 19th century Australian short story, it’s also very keen (being written and directed by an Aboriginal woman director) to strike out in a new direction that can acknowledge the complicated history and stories being interwoven here. Which is all by way of making it sound pretty dull and well-meaning, when actually this has a lot of the striking widescreen compositions and tense drama that the best of the Western genre brings, plus some excellent lead performances from the director herself in the title role, plus Sam Reid as a well-educated indigenous man who come across her cabin and who she tries to help. By the end I felt invested in the story, even if not every element worked so well for me (the music had a tendency to push a little hard at times).

CREDITS
Director/Writer Leah Purcell; Cinematographer Mark Wareham; Starring Leah Purcell, Rob Collins, Sam Reid; Length 104 minutes.
Seen in flight from Auckland to Nouméa, Saturday 8 October 2022.

The Power of the Dog (2021)

Jane Campion’s latest directorial effort, her first feature film since 2009’s Bright Star, was the opening film of the New Zealand International Film Festival but it gained a cinematic release while the festival was underway so I went to see it just afterwards. It’s a film that doesn’t reveal its hand until fairly late in the piece, a classic slow burn story, and even by the end there’s still plenty of mystery to the characters, but that makes it all the more compelling in my opinion.

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I am aware that this film isn’t for everyone, and honestly I approach this as someone who is not a huge fan of Benedict Cumberbatch as an actor or of Campion’s work this past decade (chiefly on Top of the Lake, though I adore all of her feature films). That said I feel there’s enough here that’s resonant and special, especially within the context of modern film production and certainly among films commissioned by Netflix. This is mostly a film of atmosphere and setting — narratively Montana, but it’s filmed in New Zealand, and I think that’s going to be fairly clear to anyone who’s from either of those places. It’s essentially a two-hander between Cumberbatch’s grizzled older rancher Phil and Kodi Smit-McPhee as Peter, the son of Kirsten’s Dunst’s Rose (who marries Phil’s brother George, played by a doughy-cheeked Jesse Plemons).

There’s a subtle but unavoidable underlying homoerotic tension throughout the film — which mostly comes out within the screenplay as talk about Phil’s now-departed mentor Bronco Harry, but is also clear in some of the loving close-ups that really I can’t explain here but are evident when you see the film — and I think it starts to become clear that Phil has a lot of the same background as Peter. Indeed, he is in a sense a version of the latter, albeit one who has actively remoulded himself to meet the expectations of his era, of his surroundings and of his peers into a more ‘manly’ man. Some of the dramatic moves don’t quite work to my mind — especially the way in which Phil and Peter at one point start to become friendly — but there’s an underlying power to their scenes that has almost a classical tragic resonance as the power balance between the two starts to shift throughout the film. And while nothing much outwardly seems to happen, it’s clear that this subtly sketched yet evident mental struggle between the older and younger men starts to consume both their lives.

CREDITS
Director/Writer Jane Campion (based on the novel by Thomas Savage); Cinematographer Ari Wegner; Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst, Thomasin McKenzie; Length 126 minutes.
Seen at Penthouse, Wellington, Thursday 25 November and at the Light House, Wellington, Friday 24 December 2021.

Babyteeth (2019)

I’ve still only seen five films in a cinema since lockdown rules were relaxed, because I am still very careful about how much I’m stepping into cinemas (and there’s still a relative paucity of new content available, quite aside from the fact that the institutions I most often frequent, like the BFI Southbank and the ICA are not yet reopened). However, this Australian film tempted me back into a cinema, because it looked like one of the highlights of the London Film Festival last year. It clearly doesn’t work for everyone, presumably to do with its themes and the way it presents them, or perhaps the age differential in the central relationship (her age is somewhat skirted around), but I really liked it.

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There’s basically an entire sub-genre of films about terminally-ill teenagers, and it’s probably also fair to say that they don’t always get the best reception. It’s a strange category because it’s hard-wired to be a weepie, but it’s too often made into this romantic thing given the demographic involved. Of course, the 20-or-so-year-old Eliza Scanlen has recent form for playing dying children, but she plays them well so it’s no surprise she’s excellent as Milla here. However, I think the real focus, because it’s where the greatest pain lies, is in the parents and as far as casting goes, you don’t get much better in Australian cinema than Essie Davis and Ben Mendelsohn. The film itself has a rather arch structure, little chapter headings popping up on screen, and an at times whimsical and stylised presentation. Still, for all that it’s pulled down some fairly mixed reviews, I find myself liking this film quite a lot. The choices that the filmmakers take are pretty bold — although I think the romantic story between Milla and the older Moses (Toby Wallace, playing a 23-year-old to her teenager) required a little bit more thought about the way that age gap would play, although certainly it is acknowledged within the film — and so I think they pay off, but ultimately this is an actors’ film and they excel.

CREDITS
Director Shannon Murphy; Writer Rita Kalnejais (based on her play); Cinematographer Andrew Commis; Starring Eliza Scanlen, Toby Wallace, Essie Davis, Ben Mendelsohn; Length 120 minutes.
Seen at Genesis, London, Sunday 16 August 2020.

Global Cinema 9: Australia – Starstruck (1982)

Australia is of course a huge country, but relatively speaking it’s not so populous. Nevertheless it’s had a long and prosperous cinema, with a number of well-known and highly-regarded directors, not least Gillian Armstrong, who directed the film I’m focusing on in this post. I’m not sure if any one film can sum up Australia, but Starstruck seems to capture something of the spirit of the place, at least in the 1980s.

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Commonwealth of Australia
population 25,758,900 | capital Canberra (427k) | largest cities Sydney (5.3m), Melbourne (5.1m), Brisbane (2.5m), Perth (2.1m), Adelaide (1.4m) | area 7,692,024 km² | religion Christianity (52.1%), none (30.1%) | official language none (English) | major ethnicity no data | currency Australian Dollar ($) [AUD] | internet .au

The sixth-largest country in the world by area is an island large enough to be (most of) its own continent, and as such has huge diversity of environments, from deserts to tropical rainforest, and mountains in the south-east, and most of the population is concentrated on the eastern seaboard. The name comes from the Latin terra australis (“southern land”) used since ancient times for an (at that point hypothetical) southern continent, though “New Holland” (explorer Abel Tasman’s name for it) was largely used until the early-19th century. It has been inhabited by indigenous peoples for around 65,000 years until Dutch explorers “discovered” it in the early-17th century. The British set up camp for the first time there in 1788, to establish a penal colony, with further colonies set up in Tasmania (Van Diemen’s Land) and other areas, though South Australia was never a penal colony. Indigenous populations declined in these years, with a policy of assimilating the Aboriginal population that continued until well into the 20th century. The separate colonies federated on 1 January 1901 and independence from the UK declared, with formal constitutional ties ended in 1942. Ties to the US strengthened and immigration from Asia was allowed from the 1970s onwards. It still maintains the British monarch as head of state, with an elected Prime Minister.

Cinema had its beginnings in Australia with screenings in 1896, and anthropological shorts from 1900, with the first feature in 1906 being The Story of the Kelly Gang (the earliest feature-length narrative film in the world, depending on your definitions). Studios were founded (the earliest in Melbourne) and there was a boom of sorts in the 1910s, followed by a decline in the 1920s. Production continued at an uneven pace, slowing down significantly by the 1960s, though the Australian Film Institute was founded in 1958. From the late-1960s onwards, though, government supported film more and various programmes led to an Australian New Wave, as well as a fringe of “Ozsploitation”. The 1990s saw a further entrenchment into the mainstream and worldwide success for a number of titles. Cinema continues to be made, although with less worldwide success against the huge American productions, though a lot of these are filmed in the country.

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Starstruck (1982)

Obviously Gillian Armstrong’s feature debut My Brilliant Career (1979) is justly lauded, and it’s a fine period film, but with the passage of almost 40 years this, her second feature film, seems almost equally period. It’s contemporary, of course, and it gleefully trades on a certain post-punk new wave spirit of restless energy and vertiginous hairstyles, yet alongside it sits the traditional working class Australia still stuck in the 1950s, tut-tutting at the kids and the noise they make. It’s a slender premise to hang a film around — a TV talent show that could make our heroine Jackie (Jo Kennedy) a big star if only she can somehow inveigle her way on — but yet Starstruck achieves it with single-minded vision. The energy of the musical numbers shares a lot with the kind of art pop of, say, Split Enz, which makes sense given the involvement of that band’s leader Tim Finn in the songs here (and, one imagines, some of the performances too). It’s an energy that sustains the film through all of its madcap plotting, that and the interplay between cousins Jackie and 14-year-old Angus (Ross O’Donovan), who it slowly becomes clear are only so determined at pop success because their family disappoints them so regularly — with the exception of the rambunctious Nana (Pat Evison). This is one of the films I had most looked forward to seeing by Gillian Armstrong and it’s inexplicable that it’s not more widely-available, because it’s not just a precious document of an era (the early-80s) but also a delightful film in its own right.

CREDITS
Director Gillian Armstrong; Writer Stephen MacLean; Cinematographer Russell Boyd; Starring Jo Kennedy, Ross O’Donovan, John O’May, Margo Lee, Pat Evison; Length 105 minutes.
Seen at home (YouTube), London, Friday 22 May 2020.

Speed Racer (2008)

There’s certainly a message to this film, but it’s buried in layers of aesthetics that you’ll either hate or, as I did, sort of get to tolerate after a while. I think it’s an acquired taste, but I enjoy the Wachowskis and their increasingly baroque output, as witness Jupiter Ascending, one of the great films of the last decade and one equally likely to divide its audience. Anyway, I’m taking a bit of a break this week from the themed reviews, so this is just a post for my regular women filmmakers slot on Wednesday, and I should cover a newish release on Friday.

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I’ve seen films based on cartoons and manga before, but they don’t usually go quite so far in capturing a certain uncanny hyper-saturated cartoon-panel-like sensibility as this film. It all but completely does away with standard filmic editing or any kind of naturalistic construction of reality, as each element within the frame looks as if it’s filmed separately and layered on, moving often independently of the other images. Conversations are between superimposed heads swiping right or left across the screen, and rarely between two people standing or sitting facing one another. Even in domestic settings, every shot looks like it’s against a green screen, so it must have been fearsomely difficult to have acted on the film — though, that said, the performances are hardly naturalistic either. It’s all pushed to a ridiculous degree, with the racing sequences themselves more like a very hi-def version of Mario Kart, and certainly defying all laws of physics. And I suppose that’s where the achievement lies, in creating a film so at odds with reality, but still with a very clear message about the corrupting power of capital and the need to resist it.

CREDITS
Directors/Writers Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski [under different names at the time] (based on the manga マッハGoGoGo Mahha GoGoGo [“Speed Racer, aka Mach GoGoGo”] by Tatsuo Yoshida 吉田竜夫); Cinematographer David Tattersall; Starring Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Matthew Fox; Length 135 minutes.
Seen at home (Blu-ray), London, Saturday 1 June 2019.

Two Netflix Films about Mediæval Kings in the British Isles: Outlaw/King (2018) and The King (2019)

Although Robert the Bruce (whose story is rendered in Outlaw/King) and Henry V (of The King) were two historical figures whose lives never overlapped, they did live within a few generations of one another (Henry was born around 60 years after Bruce died), and both lived in what was then a divided island, though part of that was down to the actions of Bruce himself. Neither film can probably claim to be great history — they are more invested in generic tropes of heroism and resistance, while The King isn’t even based on the history but on Shakespeare’s rendering of it some century and a half later — but both illuminate some of the ways that history is used and abused, also adding to that popular idea that Mediæval times were all about grim misery, mud and gore.

Strange Fits of Passion (1999)

Usually I do a new release on Fridays, but my theme this week is YouTube movies, and there’s rather a shortage of ‘new’ feature filmmaking (it’s mostly music videos and maybe short films). So here’s another old Australian comedy from the late-1990s, again inspired by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’s Twitter thread. The director of this effort (she doesn’t appear to have any other non-TV directing credits since) wrote the recent film Ride Like a Girl (2019).

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A slight if likeable Australian comedy, which I’d struggle to call a ‘coming of age’ exactly as it features a fully-grown protagonist who is trying to lose her virginity. She works in a Melbourne secondhand bookshop, and the film is very good at demonstrating how wrapped up she is in her own inner world — in so far as the (clearly low) budget allows, we get to see all kinds of imagined reveries featuring her various crushes, as they come along. Like a lot of contemporary Australian films of this nature, it’s comedic up until the point that it’s not really anymore, but instead morphs into an exploration of what’s motivating her. The (unnamed) protagonist played by Michaela Noonan has a sharp and ironic sense of humour, a sort of brusque underlying cynicism which her journey throughout the film starts to erode a little bit, to bring out her inner empathy as the film goes on.

CREDITS
Director/Writer Elise McCredie; Cinematographer Jaems Grant; Starring Michaela Noonan; Length 84 minutes.
Seen at home (YouTube), London, Wednesday 25 March 2020.

Thank God He Met Lizzie (aka The Wedding Party, 1997)

Right, I’ve done weeks themed around various online streaming platforms, but I haven’t yet mentioned YouTube, which may just be the best repository for films online. It certainly has some of the more interesting and obscure titles. It’s always worth searching YouTube when you’ve exhausted every other possibility, especially when you’re looking for a particularly niche title, because someone may have uploaded it. I also can’t verify that at any given moment any of the films I mention having watched there will be available, but who knows. This particular pick comes from inspiration provided by Australian film writer and academic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas in a Twitter thread of Australian movies directed by women which were available on various platforms, including YouTube, so a few more may appear on my blog this week.

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A deeply bittersweet Australian romcom of the late-1990s, about a man who marries a woman but realises as he’s doing so that he still has deep and real feelings for an ex that he can never repair due to his own stupidity. That all comes out in the final act, though, as the early part of the film is him meeting his future wife, and then a series of flashbacks to the earlier relationship. At first these seem like they’re just a reminder of another similar time of happiness in his life, but by the end comes the realisation (for him as for the audience) that this was in fact the only time he was happy. The problem — and this is perhaps a problem exacerbated by time — is that it’s difficult to really feel for his predicament because the woman he ends up marrying, the Lizzie of the film’s title, is played by Cate Blanchett. That said, playing the role of a beautiful, perfect yet imperious and demanding woman is in fact very suited to Blanchett; the true love is played by late-90s Aussie romcom mainstay Frances O’Connor (well, she was in Love and Other Catastrophes anyway), and that makes some sense even if the fact that both of them fell for this guy (called Guy, which makes me think of the similarly bittersweet Umbrellas of Cherbourg) is rather less explicable. Still, it’s rather likeable in my opinion.

CREDITS
Director Cherie Nowlan; Writer Alexandra Long; Cinematographer Kathryn Milliss; Starring Richard Roxburgh, Cate Blanchett, Frances O’Connor; Length 91 minutes.
Seen at home (YouTube), London, Friday 10 April 2020.

Criterion Sunday 301: An Angel at My Table (1990)

Janet Frame is one of those iconic New Zealanders (not least because of her bright corona of red hair) who probably isn’t much known outside the country — or wasn’t until this biopic by Jane Campion. It’s a remarkable work that tracks her life via a tripartite structure (taken from the three memoirs Frame wrote): we see her as a young schoolgirl, then as a teenager, and finally played by Kerry Fox as an uncertain adult venturing out into the world after a period of difficulty. By which I mean that she was sectioned into a mental hospital for eight years of her life, for absolutely no medically-sound reason as it later turned out (just that everyone thought she was a bit odd). Campion does her best to find a balance between the darker elements and a sense of poetic license and even joy, and ultimately the film is about Frame finding her place in the world and her poetic voice. It’s all gorgeously shot and mounted, set in rural Otago before Frame later moves to London and Spain. Fox does well to convey Frame’s withdrawn character in an engaging way, and this is one of Campion’s best films.

CRITERION EXTRAS:

• The main extra is the 10 minute The Making of An Angel at My Table (2002) documentary by one of the producers of the feature which gives some behind the scenes context for the making of the film, mostly told by Campion herself, as well as Campion on her festival and press tour, promoting the finished film.
• There are six short deleted scenes which add a few more little details to the characterisations.
• There’s a fine stills gallery with some production photos, including the actual Janet Frame with her three actors.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Jane Campion; Writer Laura Jones (based on the autobiographies To the Is-Land, An Angel at My Table and The Envoy from Mirror City by Janet Frame); Cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh; Starring Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson, Kevin J. Wilson; Length 158 minutes.

Seen at Embassy, Wellington, Sunday 12 December 1999 (and most recently on Blu-ray at home, London, Tuesday 17 March 2020).