Tag: Australian

Judy & Punch

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Seaside. Nowhere near the sea. A small town in the 17th century where allegations of witchcraft are regularly punished by torture, confession and stoning and the local Constable is an ineffectual ninny.

However all that is forgotten at the town’s palace of entertainment to which local celebrity Mr. Punch (Damon Herriman, also in The Nightingale, out next week) and his wife Judy (Mia Wasikowska) have returned with their popular puppet show featuring his puppet as a gleeful wife-beater and hers as his spouse, dutifully trying to protect their baby.

In the daytime, Punch is perfectly happy to be he who casts the first stone at an official stoning of paraded, accused, so-called witches while his missus is rather less enthusiastic. She has been trying, none to successfully, to wean him off the evils of drink, but the competition in the form of local woman of ill repute Polly (Lucy Velik) tempting him down the local boozer is proving too much for him to resist.

Home life is difficult: he hates their loyal but ageing caretaker couple and is so useless at looking after their baby girl that at one point the infant almost crawls into a blazing hearth fire.

When family circumstances worsen, Judy leaves Punch and falls in with a mainly female group of dissenters camping out in the woods. This Judy may have been thrashed within an inch of her life by her soused husband, but she’s had enough and is now working out how to fight back.

This is impossible to accurately synopsise without spoilers (hopefully I’ve given nothing away). It’s also filled with riotous detail – pub brawls, public hangings and stonings, official Ruffians who practice their violent law enforcement work whether the Constable agrees with their methods or not.

For generations of Brits, Punch and Judy as performed by a seaside puppeteer in a small vertical tent are indelible archetypes from childhood, along with the baby, the policeman, the dog, the string of sausages and the crocodile. Aussie director Mirrah Foulkes completely understands these figures, skilfully exploiting them to very specific narrative ends. She conjures a terrifying fantasy land where freedom confronts bigotry even as everyday folk marvel at the magic world brought to life by theatrical puppeteers.

As such, this plugs right into some powerful myths buried very deep in the British psyche then plays around with them to great effect. For anyone who grew up with the terrifying Mr. Punch, his much put upon wife and child and all the rest, this is essential viewing. And coming a week ahead of likewise impressive The Nightingale, it suggests there may be something of a wave of Australian fantastique at the moment.

Judy & Punch is out in the UK on Friday, November 22nd. On VoD in March.

Little Monsters

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

There are certain elements which, on paper, ought never to be in the same movie. For example, if your movie features kindergarten children centre stage, you probably ought not to have a death metal musician, bad language, violent video games, flesh-eating zombies, couples having sex, sex addition or relationship breakdown. Incredibly, Australian effort Little Monsters has all of these. Rather more incredibly, it not only works but is one of the funniest comedies of the year. The sort of film critics file under ‘guilty pleasures’.

It opens with an arresting montage of a couple shouting vociferously at each other in a variety of scenarios. Sara (Nadia Townsend) wants kids. Dave (Alexander England) doesn’t – he just wants to play his Flying V with his stadium rock / death metal band God’s Sledgehammer, a goal thwarted somewhat by the fact that the band actually broke up six years ago when the other members left. “Is that a Christian band?”, asks kindergarten teacher and Christian Miss Caroline (Lupita Nyong’o) who Dave fancies. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.

Dave seeks refuge at the home of his sister Tess (Kat Stewart) and her small son Felix (the winsome Diesel La Torraca) where he quickly gets into trouble for using Bad Words, introducing the boy to violent video games with zombies and complaining about the tiny size of their home delivered pizzas. Oh, and getting Felix to dress up as Darth Vader and barge into Sara’s flat in an attempt to propose to her, another goal thwarted, this time by the fact that she’s having sex with someone else when Dave and the diminutive Darth burst in.

Told he must both clean up his act and pull his weight if he’s to stay with Tess and Felix, Dave takes Felix to kindergarten class where he is immediately smitten by the childrens’ aforementioned and beloved teacher Miss Caroline and volunteers to help her on the upcoming school trip to community farm Pleasant Valley. However the course of true love never did run smooth: Pleasant Valley is situated next to a US military research facility from which a horde of flesh-eating zombies are in the process of escaping.

The narrative brilliantly conveys a simple child’s view of the world so that all the things that happen to Felix and his classmates, no matter how seemingly inappropriate, are just a game. Miss Caroline looks after her charges by keeping their minds occupied via simple rhyme-based rituals (“one two three, eyes on me!”) and making sure that no matter how strange or bizarre the world may appear, it’s okay because adults are in charge and will always keep them safe.

This is the world of Felix’s favourite childrens’ TV star Teddy McGiggle (Josh Gad) who, as it happens, is at Pleasant Valley with his cameraman on this particular day. And who turns out in real life, contrary to his child-friendly star persona, to be a self-obsessed, foul mouthed sex addict who’d rather lock himself inside the one safe building on site than risk his neck to allow a crowd of (possibly infected) pre-school children to share the safety of that space and survive the hordes of zombies. It’s only thanks to Dave’s ingenuity that Dave, Miss Caroline and the kids are able to get into the locked gift shop inside which McGiggle has locked himself.

At the centre of this film, once it reaches the kindergarten class at the end of the first reel, is Lupita Nyong’o who gives everything to the part of Miss Caroline and is clearly having a great deal of fun with both the role and her co-stars, especially the small kids. She starts out in a bright yellow dress, later to be covered in dried gore which she explains to the children as, “I got into a jam fight”. She amuses the kids by singing them Taylor Swift songs accompanied by her ukulele. To give you a relief from the action, the singing and the zombies, Dave, Teddy and Miss Caroline all get one on one scenes in which they confide to someone else about their chequered pasts which makes you want to spend more time in their company (except possibly in that of the disreputable MgGiggle). Bring the pair of them back for a sequel?

Where the film really scores is when its preschool hero bursts through a crowd a zombies in his Darth Vader costume to rescue Dave with a tractor and trailer which he knows how to drive because he’s obsessed with tractors, pausing to pet a small lamb in an enclosure on the way. Most of the time, the film keeps going on sheer energy and originality, only to lose a little of that in a finale where troops turn up and, falling back on zombie film cliché, open fire on the zombies after Miss Caroline, Dave and the kids have already got them under control, at least to a degree, by singing children’s songs such as ‘if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands’. However, that’s a minor carp in a film which, while it really oughtn’t to work, turns out to be one of the funniest things you’ll see on screen this year.

Little Monsters is out in the UK on Friday, November 15th. On VoD in March. Watch the red band trailer below:

Slam

Posted on by victorfraga

This is not your average Australian film. In fact, it’s as international as it gets. The action takes place in New South Wales, but the crew and cast are very international indeed. The director Partho Sen-Gupta is originally from Mumbai, while the lead role is played by Palestinian actor Adam Bakri. The topics addressed are also universal: cultural assimilation, Islamophobia and religious/political extremism.

Ameena (Danielle Horvat) is a young rebel. She lives with her mother, a Palestinian refugee. She’s an activist and a feminist. She wears a hijab out of choice because she believes that women should be respected for their fists, and not for their curves. She routinely engages in slam poetry in the local community centre, a competition in which poets perform the spoken word. The letters “S-L-A-M” are written on her hand, very much à la The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955). Her performances are hypnotic and passionate. Her room is covered in Palestinian freedom, fight racism and antifa posters.

Her brother Ricky, on the other hand, is not politically active. He’s married to a pretty Australian woman, with whom he’s had two children (plus she’s now expecting a third one). They run a small cafe and shy away from political controversy. Ricky feels very Australian. His relationship to his sister Ameena is a little distant, given their very different lifestyles and political beliefs.

Then one day Ameena vanishes. Local police officer Joanne Hendriks (Rachael Blake) begins to investigate the missing person case, only for Ameena to be caught on CCTV abroad. She has become a “homegrown jihadi bride”, a newspaper cries out. Despite not even being a suspect of terrorism, Ricky’s life is turned upside down by paparazzi and police investigations. The young father slowly realises that he’s not as Australian as he thinks. He’s still a “wog”, a friend of Ameena asserts. He’s a second-class citizen, and he’s not exempt of racism and Islamophobia.

Slam does not blame individual Australians for racism. Aussies are not vilified. Ricky’s Australian family are very supportive of him. Joanne hesitates to believe that Ameena is a jihadi, despite the CCTV evidence. She confronts her boss, and wishes to carry on with a missing person case (instead of a jihadi/witch-hunt). Joanne reconciles the sternness of police duty with the humanity of someone who has also experienced a tragedy in her life, the byproduct of political actions. Blake’s performance is nothing short of astounding.

Xenophobia is a more sophisticated and yet no less dangerous form of patriarchal violence and colonial oppression. This anti-immigrant sentiment is constantly fed through the radio, television waves and also written newspapers. Headlines such as “Monsters want to behead Aussie pilot!!!” help to concoct the “Us versus Them” narrative. Nationalism is intimately linked to bigotry, and the argument that a generous Australia opened their doors to ungrateful immigrants/refugees is repeated throughout the movie. Ameena’s mother, however, begs to differ. She used to be a teacher in Palestine, while in Australia she was advised that she could never be more than a seamstress or a cleaner.

A profoundly reactionary and dangerous trend is addressed in the movie: denaturalisation. This is already conspicuous in the US and, to a lesser extend, in the UK. Now Australia is also joining the bandwagon. In Slam, the media suggests that not only “jihadi traitors” (such as Ameena) should be stripped of their citizenship, but also their entire family. A friend of Ameena could face denaturalisation simply because he donated A$400 to a Palestinian charity. The repercussions for Ricky could be disastrous. So should he apologise on behalf of his sister? Or should he try to understand what drove her to such extreme actions?

Slam is a impeccable piece of filmmaking. It will keep you hooked throughout its relatively long duration of almost two hours. Each and every character has depth, and nothing is redundant. The outcome is neither Manichean nor exploitative. Shaky camera moves are used to convey franticness an emotional despair, while red images are used to illustrate violence and also the memories of war. Very simple and yet effective devices. Plus get prepared for one of the most shocking endings I have seen in a long time. The final image of a person inside a car (I can tell you more without spoiling the movie) will haunt me for some time.

The extremely powerful slam poetry in the film was written by Lesbian feminist activist Candy Royalle, who sadly passed away this year after a battle against cancer. The film is dedicated to her.

Slam showed in Competition at the 22nd Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (2018), when this piece was originally written. It premieres in Australia on June 15th 2019 as part of the Sydney Film Festival.

The Butterfly Tree

Posted on by victorfraga

This is the first full-length feature film by director-writer Priscilla Cameron, following on from a series of shorts. Cameron took inspiration from a chance observation of a boy waiting on a Sydney doorstep, as well as her last short film Beetle Feeders (2011) and a close friend’s terminal illness. The result is an enjoyable (and often bizarre) blend of magical realism and male grief that – when it’s on form – dances with the beautiful mystique of a hundred butterfly wings.

The plot revolves around the relationship between father Al (Ewen Leslie) and son Fin (Ed Oxenbould), who have respectively lost a wife and mother in the not-so-distant past. Al, who teaches creative writing in a local community college, appears to be working through his grief by indulging in a romantic relationship with one of his students. Fin, a gentle boy of mid-adolescence, is still in awe of his mother, bringing butterflies that they used to collect together to a shrine-cum-retreat built inside a bug net under the titular garden tree. One day, the mysterious Evelyn (Melissa George) floats into town with a burlesque past and a delicious greenhouse forest of a florist’s shop.

Evelyn catches the attention of both males, becoming a surrogate mother and object of Freudian desire for Fin. His dreamlike fantasies (or are they really happening?) play out with the burgeoning erotic splendour of the teenage mind and place Fin centre-stage with his willing muse. These otherworldly shifts are fantastically choreographed, as surreal splashes of steamy sensuality are offset with the ever-present metaphors of cocoon and butterfly. Fantasy and flashback sequences are low-lit with the thick blue and red hues of a Wong Kar Wai bedroom, while in the real world, garish pinks and teals worthy of The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017) erupt across the screen against a backdrop of lush green flora. The film is also blessed with a superbly selected score that draws on trip-hop, alt-pop and Caitlin Yeo’s suitably emotional classical composition.

When fantasy, colour and music combine – notably in a rollerblading fantasy sequence set in Evelyn’s greenhouse – the film is at its best. It’s an intoxicating cocktail of surrealism and adolescent imagination, shot with music video sensibilities on a surprisingly low budget.

The film’s greatest absence is that of a solid narrative. The plot often jumps in and out of extreme melodrama, reminiscent of the sort of television soap opera (Home and Away) that Melissa George got her early break on. Nonetheless, each actor is entirely convincing in their role – it’s not that The Butterfly Tree acting is of poor quality, but that strands about teacher-pupil affairs, threatening ex-husbands and Oedipal longings appear and then disappear in a hyper-dramatised and subsequently rather improbable way. This is all well and good. For a large part of the film, I had the feeling that this was simply ironic fun from Cameron, a bit of self-aware filler in between Fin’s lucid visions. However, two final act revelations are of a much more serious manner, meaning that the tone of the film is ultimately difficult to judge.

The oddly-realised plot is definitely bearable, but proves a boring distraction from the director’s mesmerising creative flair. The Butterfly Tree is a visual and aural feast that I’m sure will sate the appetite of a cult following. Just don’t expect to grasp the story.

The Butterfly Tree is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, July 13th.

Sweet Country

Posted on by victorfraga

The adorning vistas of F.A. Young’s photography in Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962) are a testament to the 2.20:1 aspect ratio and the power of celluloid. Adopting a similar ratio (2.35:1) Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country is a sweeping epic that tips its hat to those sand filled landscapes of Young. Set in Australia’s Northern Territory during the 1920s, Thornton’s Special Jury Prize winning film, received at Venice 2017, holds morality and the law close to its thematic chest. Enclosed with enthrallingly subdued performances and a requirement to be seen on the largest screen humanely possible, Sweet Country packs a meaty cinematic punch.

After killing a delirious white farmer in an act of pure self-defence, aboriginal farmer worker Sam (Hamilton Morris) is forced to flee into the desolate Australian landscape, and with it an odious bloody man hunt ensues. Lead by Sergeant Fletcher (Bryan Brown), the nearest town’s hierarchical leader, he is a man painted in shades of grey, not simply black and white. With touches towards his reserved romance towards a barmaid in the township, Fletcher is tinted with humanity, regardless of his brutality. Still, fuelled by the burning heat of the country, every sweat seeps off the screen into a curdle of tense anxiety.

In the barren scenery, a disconcerting absence of justice permeates everyday life. To the white farmers Harry March (Ewen Leslie) and Mick Kennedy (Thomas M.Wright), their aboriginal workers are as lowly as their cattle. Required for the film to absorb the audience, in initial scenes, a bedrock of racial and sexist prejudices is established by Thornton. Handled with an agile touch, the abuse on screen is never deployed in sadistic practice. Practising Christian values in the most hellish place, Fred Smith (Sam Neil), works with Sam and his wife on a small plot of land where the couple have their own home. A stark juxtaposition to March and Kennedy’s treatment of their ‘property’, Archie (Gibson John) has been programmed, most likely through violence, to call every white man he encounters ‘boss’. Though the phrase is used by Sam similarly, the lexical repetition of the noun in Steven McGregor and David Tranter’s script constantly elicits white supremacy.

In the hands of a lesser director, Hamilton Morris’ Sam could have been deployed as a noble savage figure, outlined in Michel de Montaigne’s essay ‘Of Cannibals’. Thought at its time of creation a liberal and genuine notion, it is an idea one that seeks to divide natives into a category. Selecting to imbue Sam with complexity, Thornton offers an empathetic perspective to his lead character and his wife (Natassia Gorey Furber) – away from the noble savage theory. Sam is a fully fleshed out human being and not just a caricature or silhouette for white notions to be projected upon.

Recalling the harsh realities of the wild in S. Craig Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk (2015) – whilst recanting the sweeping grandiose of Dee Rees’ Mudbound (2017) – Sweet Country requires to be seen in the cinema, away from screaming. Unlike Rees’ film, thankfully Thunderbird Releasing are handling the proper theatrical run of film and not Netflix. Comparable, Alex Garland’s latest feature Annihilation will suffer the same fate of being restricted theatrically in the UK to the small screen. Thornton’s epic is a timely reminder of cinema’s place in an amphitheatre, and not at home.

The director Warwick Thornton is of aboriginal background himself. His mother Freda Glynn founded and was the first director of the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (in the remote Alice Springs).

Climaxing with a moment of pure compassion, knowing little about the film before viewing, it’s hard not be in awe of Sweet Country’s stirring its cinematic and poignant trappings. A true knockout from down under. It is showed in cinemas in March. It’s out on all major VoD platforms on Monday, July 2nd.