Country Towns in Australian Films: Trap or Comfort Zone?

It was watching Strange Bedfellows (Dean Murphy, 2004) last year, with its patronizing view of country-town life, that set me to wonder about how Australian cinema has viewed these buffers between the metropolis and the bush, about what kinds of narratives it has spun around and inside them.

BY Brian McFarlane

everal films of the last couple of years foregrounded, for me at least, the perception that the country town is neither one thing nor the other, and that it has rarely been subject to the scrutiny afforded the demographic extremes. What follows is more in the nature of reflection and speculation than orderly survey. To turn to Hollywood, glitzy capital of the filmmaking world, one finds paradox- ically that small-town Americana was practically a narrative staple, that there was almost a genre of films which took seriously what such towns had to offer.

46 • Metro Magazine 146/147 Metro Magazine 146 • 47 Genre, though, is perhaps not the best elty; and Cy Endfield’sImpulse (1954) re- word, as it suggests more similarity than moves its hero from the quotidian predict- these films are apt to exhibit. Think of ability of his solicitor’s office to the temp- Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1947) tations of the city and a dangerous wom- which so resonantly explores George Bai- an; while films such as Jack Clayton’s ley’s feeling of entrapment in Bedford Falls Room at the Top (1959) and Ken Loach’s and, then, his gratitude for the support it Kes (1969) relocate class, family and oth- offers him at the lowest point of his life. er tensions to industrial northern towns. In Or of Sam Wood’s version of Our Town Canada, whose films we more rarely see, (1940), from playwright Thornton Wilder’s there is a trickle of films which situate their critical celebration of the mores of small- dramas in provincial towns: films as var- town living. Or the darker uses to which ied as Alan Bridges’ drama of conflicting such a setting is put in Hitchcock’s Shad- values, The Age of Innocence (1977, Can/ ow of a Doubt (1943), where the comfort- UK), Ousama Rawi’s relocation of a Ruth able mundane round Rendell thriller, Judgement in Stone (1986), of daily life is disrupt- Do Filmmakers actually bers. As recently as and Australian John Curran’s drama of ac- ed by the arrival of a Garden State (Zach ademic adulteries, We Don’t Live Here Any killer in the guise of a know anything about the Braff, 2004) the sub- More (2005, Can/US). From New Zealand, loved family member, genre still surfaces, there have been films about people leaving or in Wood’s magis- country towns in which in this narrative of the (like Gaylene Preston’s Perfect Strangers, terial small-town mel- return, after a dec- [2003], in which the heroine is actually kid- odrama, King’s Row they situate their stories, ade, of a TV actor to napped from her country town) or return- (1942), in which the his hometown on the ing, as in Brad McGann’s compelling dra- confines of the town or do they just arrive occasion of his moth- ma In My Father’s Den (2004) in which the can barely contain the there on locations with all er’s death. revenant uncovers family secrets. play of psycho-sexu- al perversities. These their preconceived notions In other English- When one turns to Australian cinema, four major titles all speaking cine- since the revival of the 1970s one finds come from the classic and prejudices intact? mas, the incidence a thin but steady stream of films set in period of the 1940s, of such films is not country towns over the next three dec- but the vogue for affectionate recreation so marked. In British cinema, settings are ades or so, from Country Town (Peter of the life of small-town America persisted most apt to be London, provincial cities Maxwell, 1971) and Wake in Fright (Ted much longer, and in comparably diverse like Brighton or Oxford, or picturesque vil- Kotcheff, 1971) on. These films have nev- circumstances: from, say, Henry King’s lages. Lance Comfort undermined the pas- er really constituted a sub-genre, as was romance, Wait ‘Til the Sun Shines, Nel- toral calm of agreeably-set small towns the case in the US; more often it has been lie (1952) to Richard Fleischer’s melodra- in such films asGreat Day (1945) and just a matter of setting – but not always, ma Violent Saturday (1955), in which a qui- Daughter of Darkness (1947) by exposing as we shall see. et town is invaded by a gang of bank rob- their capacities for constriction and cru-

48 • Metro Magazine 146/147 IMAGES aRE from: THe cars that ate paris; fringe dwellers; love serenade; love’s brother; mullet; peaches; shame; strange bedfellows; strikebound; the honourable wally norman; the oyster farmer and the year my voice broke

As one who was brought up in a country town, who later worked in one with great enjoyment and satisfaction, and who has since gone regularly to yet others for lows does for Yackandandah, I checked pleasure, I may claim that my response out the Lonely Planet guide Victoria to see to how they are represented in Austral- what it had to say about Victorian country ian films is based on some direct experi- towns.1 It makes clear that there are doz- ence. This experience has too often had ens of country towns with a sort of life go- the effect of irritating me about the gener- ing on that never gets into our films: there tial dangers, except when you move to al tendency to cliché and condescension are numerous towns that have art galler- the suburbs which in film lore are uniform- in how the life of such towns is rendered ies or museums or historical societies, ly dull and conformist. I want now to look in our films. There is not much aware- some with all three; they take environ- briefly at several recent films set at least ness of the vibrant interaction possible in mental issues seriously and some have partly in country towns and see how they such communities, of the thriving culture institutionalized this concern; they have are used and depicted, what kinds of sto- that is at work in them, of the support net- restaurants worth eating at; they have ries are situated in them, which values works they can offer, or even of their no groups interested in film, books and dra- are celebrated, which mocked. Essential- longer in fact being all that separate from ma – and if all else fails they have internet ly, I want to see how country towns have metropolitan centres, modern communi- cafes. The internet and email mean, any- been used in Australian cinema. cation modes and processes being what way, that isolation is a thing of the past, they are. Too often, the townspeople are but you’d hardly guess it from the movies depicted as essentially out of touch with which care so little about the dynamics of Disturbances of the Peace the mainstream of contemporary life or, in how such places work, in terms, say, of the style of some Antipodean sub-Ealing class, occupations or leisure. I’m not sug- Well, what kinds of themes and treat- venture, seen as being, in their sly, simple gesting that we need Pathe Pictorial-type ments have shaped the images of the way, actually sharper than city folks. Both accounts of life of such towns; only that country town in recent Australian cinema? views seem to me, in their apparent op- the films set in them would be texturally There have been several examples of the position, to be equally patronizing; both richer if their mise-en-scène evinced more small community reacting to a stranger seem equally remote from treating the in- awareness on the filmmaker’s part that in its midst (The Oyster Farmer [Anna habitants of country towns as individuals they have a complex life of their own. Reeves, 2005], Somersault [Cate Short- who are as worthy of sustained attention land, 2004], Love’s Brother [Jan Sardi, as bush heroes or city sophisticates. Compared with other forms of represen- 2004], or, going back further, Love Sere- tation, such as poetry, drama, painting, or nade [Shirley Barrett, 1996], Hotel Sorren- Do filmmakers actually know anything TV,2 how does the cinema emerge in its to [Richard Franklin, 1995], Shame [Steve about the country towns in which they dealings with this halfway-house between Jodrell, 1987]). Mullet, on the other hand situate their stories, or do they just ar- the city and the bush? These latter two dramatized the case of the local return- rive there on locations with all their pre- spaces have been easily accommodated ing home disruptively, but there has been conceived notions and prejudices in- by films across a wide genre range: the nothing in this paradigm to rival the pow- tact? Do they think that because they’re bush has acquired historic significance er of In My Father’s Den. There are peo- not making documentaries it doesn’t mat- as the crucible in which admirable nation- ple straining under the constraints of the ter whether their representations have any al characteristics have been forged (hardi- purely local, wanting larger horizons, as in connection with reality? To test wheth- hood, endurance, mateship etc.); the city Peaches (Craig Monahan, 2005); and, in er I was letting my irritation run away with has often been seen as the site of excit- generic terms, there have been comedies me after seeing what Strange Bedfel- ing and/or corrupt possibilities, of poten- (The Honourable Wally Norman [Ted Em-

Metro Magazine 146/147 • 49 ery, 2003], Strange Bedfellows, The Road portant in its context and is still more ad- generally are made to look ridiculous. to Nhill [Sue Brooks, 1997]) and darker venturous than most Australian films in its dramas (The Umbrella Woman [Ken Cam- insights into the political dynamics of a The incidence of such films tapered off eron, 1987], The Cars that Ate Paris [Pe- country town. There is pessimism in Trem- in the eighties, but there were still sev- ter Weir, 1974]), with a sprinkling of films bow’s giving up the struggle on behalf of eral memorable ones: Richard Lowen- that highlight socially significant matters the Farmers’ Co-op and returning to the stein’s Strikebound, Bruce Beresford’s The (Strikebound [Richard Lowenstein, 1984], city, but it is hard to think of many other Fringe Dwellers, John Duigan’s The Year Black and White [Craig Lahiff, 2002], The films which even tackle the left/right con- My Voice Broke (1987) and best of all Ste- Fringe Dwellers [Bruce Beresford, 1986], flicts adumbrated here. And in the setting ve Jodrell’s Shame. All these take serious Dead Heart [Nick Parsons, 1996]). Of of a country town, such oppositions per- subjects and deal with them intelligent- course, the categories are not necessari- haps emerge more starkly than they might ly against diverse backgrounds of country ly as clear-cut as this suggests, and never in the diversity of a metropolitan centre. towns. Strikebound never found substan- were: an earlier film likeBreak of Day (Ken tial audiences but remains a rare exam- Hannam, 1977) makes its drama from The other significant 1974 title was Peter ple in Australian cinema of a film centred both the revenant soldier finding it hard Weir’s The Cars That Ate Paris. Watching on the deprivations of a class, rather than, to resettle in his home town and from the this 31-year-old film again recently, I was in the Hollywood narrative tradition, an in- disruptions caused by outsiders arriving, struck by its formal daring in the way it dividual. Focusing on the miners’ strike in with different priorities. crosses horror flick with black comedy as South Gippsland (where the film was shot) it goes about its unsettling business. It of- in the 1930s, it gave a sympathetic, realist It is beyond the scope of this essay to do fers still the darkest vision of country-town account of the sort of solidarity the small a full survey, so I’ll concentrate on more life in Australian cinema. When Arthur (Ter- town was able to muster against ruth- recent films, with reference to just a few ry Camilleri) tries to leave the little hill-set less employers. The Fringe Dwellers, from notable early examples that might have town of Paris, the Mayor (John Meillon), Nene Gare’s 1960 novel, dramatized the pointed to fuller treatment of the life of the all avuncular bonhomie, turns serious and situation of an Aboriginal family relocat- country town. By my count, over fifty films tells him: ‘No one leaves Paris’ and, as ed from a shack on the edge of a coun- since 1970 have been at least partially set in ‘all close families, we don’t talk to out- try town (location-shot in Queensland) to in or concerned with country town life, but siders’. This vile little town lures motor- a Housing Commission home, and the so- only rarely in the interest of either mak- ists into accidents, then lives on the pro- cial problems they encounter in the com- ing good drama or serious investigation ceeds; the prettiness of the town’s setting munity. Duigan resisted the usual nos- of how such places might work. As Neil and the ugliness of its livelihood create a talgia factor in the rites-of-passage dra- Rattigan noted, ‘The new Australian cine- powerful signifier for the deceptiveness of ma, The Year My Voice Broke, in which the ma practically began with a country town surfaces. At every level, what one expects conflicts of adolescence are intensified by film, Ted Kotcheff’sWake in Fright’3 and it is undercut by the anarchic imagination at the constraints of the New South Wales was in production at about the same time work, as we watch, say, an old lady pol- country town (for which Braidwood stood as Country Town, based on the long-run- ishing a hubcap, yahoos driving a spiked in) in which the film is set. The result was a ning TV serial Bellbird, which had been VW through the town, or the town’s hos- toughly affecting drama in which the three running since 1967.4 Country Town was pital full of ‘vegies’. The film remains an young protagonists ‘are outsiders, es- an affectionate cross-sectional account of alarming exposure of hypocrisies and as- tranged from their society in miniature’.5 its eponym, inevitably more stereotyped sorted malevolences at work in the appar- than in the serial, where actors had more ently peaceful setting. Still one of the most compelling studies of time to develop their characters. Wake the workings of a small town, Shame built in Fright, though, a much more accom- These two films, early in the revival, might the country-town ambience into some- plished film, offered glimpses of how ugly have heralded new Australian cinema’s thing more than mere setting, viewing its a remote town might be. Thirty-odd years coming to terms with various aspects class and gender structures as integral ele- on, its images of boozy male camarade- of the national life, including the coun- ments in its genre narrative of the stranger- rie in some of its more repulsive manifes- try towns in which a good percentage of in-town paradigm. Given that the stranger tations stay vividly in the mind. the population lived. In the 1970s there was a woman, and a highly placed barris- were several other films with insights ter at that, the scene was set for the shak- In 1974, there were two very significant into such places: Carl Schultz’s Blue Fin ing up of this ugly little Western Austral- films set in country towns, in very differ- (1978) made the life of a small supportive ian town (Toojay standing in for Ginbo- ent generic and thematic modes. Michael South Australian coastal community the rak), ugly in the ways in which its patriar- Thornhill’s Between Wars was a romantic attractive context for its main drama of fa- chal culture has colluded in a culture of drama of a World War One veteran, Trem- ther, son and a boat; released in the same gang rape, among other manifestations bow (Corin Redgrave), a former army doc- year, Tom Jeffrey’s Weekend of Shad- of masculinist domination. Only a con- tor with some advanced (Freudian) ide- ows is, by contrast at least in part, an in- sonant away from the classic western, as, who settles in a small town (Gulgong, dictment of small-town narrowness; while Shane (1952), whose structure it recalls, NSW, was the location) where he be- John Duigan’s Dimboola (1979) makes a the stranger-in-town Asta Cadell (Debor- comes embroiled in the clash of conserv- sorry, overstated mess of Jack Hibberd’s ra Lee-Furness) can’t pull off quite the tri- ative and radical ideas and ideals. The popular Pram Factory comedy of a Wim- umphal victory that Shane did, but she film may now seem somewhat lumbering mera small-town wedding where eve- has exposed the cruelties at the heart of in its narrative structures, but it was im- rything goes very wrong, and the locals the town’s class system and its misogyny

50 • Metro Magazine 146/147 – and perhaps planted some seeds of re- ni Ribisi) and falling for the handsome one face of life in the sleepy fishing town, bellion in the more ordinary minds of the (Adam Garcia). Writer–director Jan Sar- where football (Eddie’s dad coaches the townswomen. di evokes nostalgically a lot of the sur- rugby team), drinking and quieter inter- face of 1950s living, but doesn’t seem actions prevail. It’s essentially a working- to offer any 2004 purchase on the mate- class township, and, apart from a ton- I Want to Break Free rial. The filming style recalls the syrupy ally dubious and probably anachronis- sounds and pictorial longueurs of ear- tic bit about the father’s pride in the in- To jump to the new century means skim- ly CinemaScope films, without anything stallation of a flush toilet, director–screen- ming past Richard Franklin’s thoughtful to suggest that he has any critical per- writer David Caesar avoids patronage in Hotel Sorrento (1995), in which two sib- spective on either such aesthetic matters the way he creates its ethos. The film ac- lings return from abroad to their father’s or the cultural mores of the period, and knowledges that this life may not suit eve- home for a round of guilts and griefs he seems to have fallen for the sentimen- ryone and clearly doesn’t suit Eddie: Ed- that resurface in the reunion in the idyllic tal notion of Italians as lovable and exu- die may be nostalgic about aspects of eponymous coastal town. And it means a berant in his representation of their im- its life but the film is not. It is clear-eyed brusque sentence for Shirley Barrett’s ro- pact on this little country town. By chance about the kinds of decency that find fulfil- mance Love Serenade, in which two sis- as I was writing this, I came across Philip ment here, and beautifully exact perform- ters in a listless Riverina township com- French’s comment on the new film ver- ances, especially from Gilbert, Porter and pete for the favours of a DJ from Brisbane sion of Oliver Twist: ‘The movie lacks any McClory, give real poignancy to the choic- who’s come to run the local radio station, serious point of view about individuali- es, rewards and limitations that are avail- and Sue Brooks’s The Road to Nhill. The ty, society, community.’8 It seemed whol- able to them. Further, Robert Humphreys’ latter, with its cast of distinguished veter- ly apt in reference to Love’s Brother (and cinematography eschews the merely pic- ans (Patricia Kennedy, Bill Hunter, Monica to any number of other Australian coun- torial in favour of something more affect- Maughan and others), is a quiet, unevent- try-town films): we are told that distance drenched: there are moments of spotlit ful rendering of the solidarity of a small lends enchantment, but surely it should loneliness that suggest he was advised by community when four lady bowlers are in- also lend, well, distance – that is, critical a combo of Edward Hopper and Russell volved in a car accident; and solidarity detachment and perspective, as well as Drysdale. It is still perhaps the best and has not, generally, been a key narrative el- emotional involvement. most heartfelt Australian film about life in ement in these films, except for the politi- a country town: it is small-scale, not am- cally motivated Strikebound. Mullet (David Caesar, 2001) was made bitious on the scale of the great US films of tougher stuff than Rob Sitch’s mean- mentioned above, but by not taking ref- Curiously, it is the more recent films which dering, likeable The Dish released in the uge in nostalgia, pictorialism or conde- have seemed locked into a sort of time same year, and wallowing in nostalgia, as scending humour it has a ring of rigorous warp where country towns are concerned. Love’s Brother does, or the sub-Capra truth about it. Strange Bedfellows is the most extreme sentimentalizing of small-town politics in – and, not to put too fine a point on it, of- The Honourable Wally Norman. The re- Apart from the largely contemptible fensive – example. Having previously writ- turn of Eddie (Ben Mendelsohn) to his Strange Bedfellows, the three most re- ten about this wretched film at great- coastal hometown (Gerringong, NSW) is cent Australian films with country-town er length in this journal,6 I’ll restrict myself not an occasion for rejoicing either on his settings are the multi-AFI-award-winner, here to repeating the two central points of part or on anyone else’s. His city career Somersault, and, this year, Craig Mona- my criticism. First, the film is patronizing hasn’t glittered and if he hasn’t exactly han’s Peaches and Anna Reeves’ The Oys- in its view of its country town (Yackandan- come home with his tail between his legs, ter Farmer, two superior films, the first of dah), suggesting in plot details and mise- he certainly doesn’t come trailing clouds which suggests that a small-town ambi- en-scène that it has registered nothing in of glory. His policeman brother Pete (An- ence might be stifling and the second that the way of change since the 1950s – just drew S. Gilbert) is chary of him; his ex-girl it might provide a sort of liberation from consider its treatment of the climactic friend Tully (Susie Porter), now married to city tensions. The protagonist of Somer- firemen’s ball. Second, it is internally inco- Pete, socks him on the chin; his parents sault is Heidi (Abbie Cornish), a teenage herent: its narrative premiss, relating to a (Tony Barry and Kris McQuade) give him girl who arrives in the picturesque moun- tax break for same-sex couples is entire- a qualified welcome; and the friendly bar- tain town of Jindabyne, after fecklessly in- ly a twenty-first century concept, where- maid Kay (Belinda McClory) berates him viting advances from her mother’s boy- as all the film’s other narrative ‘informa- for sleeping with her without having sex. friend. Director Cate Shortland doesn’t tion’ seems to belong to a period several Eddie leaves at the end, not much wiser, succumb to the natural beauties of the decades earlier. Further, for a film that no but having exploded to Pete at a cathar- place, and what stays in mind a year later doubt thinks of itself as being very liberal, tic ‘barbie’: ‘You’ve got everything I ever is her concentration on Heidi’s sexual ven- it seems at heart seriously homophobic. wanted!’ turesomeness, and several very acutely drawn relationships with the people of this The other recent film which I’ve also writ- What we get in Mullet is a cross-cur- small community. These include the sci- ten about here is Love’s Brother (2003),7 rent of family and other conflicts brought on of a local landowning family, Joe (Sam a wet little romance about an Italian bride to some kind of head by Eddie’s return. Worthington), whom she meets in the pub,9 (Amelia Warner) fetching up at a Victori- Nothing very dramatic happens, or so it her co-worker Bianca (Holly Andrew), in an country town (Daylesford locations) to seems, but, as in a Chekhov play, tumul- the local ‘server’ and, most affectingly, with marry the plainer of two brothers (Giovan- tuous feelings are stirred under the sur- the woman (Lynette Curran) who runs the

Metro Magazine 146/147 • 51 motel where Heidi stays. There’s an unem- hospital recovering from a car accident, Australian film which works as potently as phatic sense of hierarchy encapsulated in but he has more on his mind than broth- the great American small-town melodra- the run-ins Heidi has with these three. erly duty or a love of oysters. He has exe- mas I mentioned above – or even as witti- cuted a robbery at the Sydney Fish Mar- ly and insightfully about small-town class Peaches is set in the Gippsland river town, kets, showing unusual inventiveness in his politics as the British comedy, A Private Swan Reach, though the fruit cannery choice of weapons, and he awaits anx- Function (Malcolm Mowbray, 1984). In the which looms so large in it was located in iously the arrival of a package of money meantime, if there is as yet no great Aus- Riverland, South Australia, and indeed the he has sent himself. His anxieties lead him tralian small-town film, when our filmmak- other locations were mainly South Aus- to suspect the postal delivery girl and oth- ers have broken free from the easy op- tralian. Like The Oyster Farmer, it is one er unlikely locals, and bring him into con- tions in dealing with Main Street, Austral- of those rare films which takes work se- tact with a Viet vet (Jack Thompson), living ia, there have been some undeniably re- riously. The cannery is the centre of the in a small, scruffy community upstream warding moments. These moments tend small town’s life and all the relationships from the township which, we assume, to arise from the films’ perceptions of why with which the film is centrally concerned wouldn’t be easy with their iconoclasm. some people find refuge in such towns are connected to it. The young girl, Steph and why others feel they need to leave (Emma Lung), who leaves at the film’s end The plot is in fact quite well worked out, them. If that sounds like modest rewards, because she realizes there is no future not settling for obvious thriller complica- well, thus far the films that enshrine these for her in the town, works there briefly as tions, but rather for a gradual unfolding perceptions, even at their sharpest, are a casual and attracts the attention of the of several human dramas. Jack’s accept- essentially modest, but within those lim- foreman Alan Taylor (Hugo Weaving), once ance into the oyster-farming hamlet, with its they have suggested that there is life the lover of Steph’s foster-mother Jude its precarious dependence on its one in- – and lives – out there in country towns (Jacqueline McKenzie). Around these three dustry, is the film’s centre, and persona- worthy of further cinematic exploration. • is a complicating network of secrecy, de- ble newcomers, Alex O’Lachlan and Di- ceits and acrimony, and Steph leaves final- anna Glenn as Jack and Pearl, bring an Endnotes ly when the past is fully excavated – and apt sexual charge to this element of the 1 Chris Rowthorn et al, Victoria, Lonely Planet when the cannery is to be closed down. film. As do Field and Kerry Armstrong as Publications, Melbourne, 2002. The film is less concerned with the town Brownie’s estranged wife, who has leg- 2 Think of such series as Bellbird, A Country than with the cannery and the present– endary powers over the spawning habits Practice, SeaChange, Free as Air, all of which past nexus which preoccupies Steph, but of oysters. The tentative reconciliation of found enough variety of material in their se- there is a pervasive feel for the camara- these two benefits from the sense of ex- lected setting to maintain viewing interest derie of those who work at the threatened perience as actors they bring to the expe- over several seasons. factory and a real concern for how, in a rience of their characters. As with Peach- 3 Neil Rattigan, ‘Country Towns’, in Brian Mc- very small town, opportunities and rela- es, the personal matters and the work are Farlane et al (eds) The Oxford Companion to tionships might be limited. There is some almost symbiotically intertwined, and one Australian Film, Oxford University Press, Mel- self-consciously ‘lyrical’ camera work in re- of The Oyster Farmer’s points of appeal bourne, 1999, p.80. lation to the sex scenes and the natural is in the way Jack’s absorption into the 4 Interestingly, neither was directed by an Aus- environment, and there is something de- community gradually comes to replace tralian: Peter Maxwell was a Viennese-born terminedly art-house about the film’s ambi- his larcenous city-based interests – and veteran of British TV series and B movies; Ted tions that settle for some diffuse narrative the plot’s own interest in this latter. Kotcheff, born in Canada, had had several habits, but it accretes something to the successes in 1960s British cinema, including cinematic representation of the Australian Life at the Top (1965). country town as a place where work and Small Towns, Big Lives 5 Raffaele Caputo, ‘The Year My Voice Broke’, in the rest of daily living might be seriously Scott Murray (ed.), Australian Film 1978-1994, difficult to sustain. When I began to prepare and even to Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1995, write this piece, it seemed to me that the p.237. In The Oyster Farmer, the beauties of the Australian country town had been inade- 6 Brian McFarlane, ‘Australian Comedy: What’s Hawkesbury River terrain are palpable but quately represented in locally-made films, That?’, Metro, No.142, 2004, pp.34-37 not allowed to swamp the feel for the life that such usages of their attractions as 7 Brian McFarlane, ‘Brotherly Love – and Love’s of the place, where oyster farmers have had been made remained no more than Brother, Metro, No.140, 2004, pp.22-25. been going about their business for eight ‘usages’, as often as not plagued by ei- 8 The Observer, London, 9 October 2005. generations. A girl in a boat says: ‘It’s time ther nostalgia or easy, metropolitan-de- 9 In fact, the uses to which pub settings are put we had some new blood round here’ and rived contempt. The more I have (re-)con- might be an entertaining and even useful little the narrative, like so many before it, gets sidered the films, the less intemperate- subject for exploration, perhaps in comparison under way with the arrival of newcom- ly I adhere to this point of view. I think it is with the dramatic uses of pubs in British films, er Jack Flange (Alex O’Lachlan) from Syd- still true to assert that we do not yet have and bars in US ones. ney. This isn’t a documentary about oys- a film which whole-heartedly takes on ter farming, but it wins respect for spend- the phenomenon: such a film would take ing enough time on the job for us to grasp us into the ways in which such a town its centrality to the remote community into works, across class and gender divides, which Jack comes to work for Brownie the kinds of expectations and limitations (David Field). Jack has a sister in a nearby that fuel its dynamics. We may yet get an

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