amiiu BUSI AN AUSTRALIAN GENRE?
BRIAN MCFARLANE CELEBRATES SOME RECENT AUSTRALIAN FEATURES THAT TAKE FAMILY DYNAMICS AS A CENTRAL THEME AND ARE WILLING TO EXPLORE THE 'INDOCILE' FACTS OF LIFE.
recently read somewhere that there her families or find ourselves in a rose- 2005) and Dying Breed (Jody Dwyer, 2008), aren't enough happy endings in ate glow. Perhaps Tolstoy was right in his mockumentaries such as Razzle Dazzle Australian films - that they are too famous and oft-quoted opening sentence (Darren Ashton, 2007) and Rafs and Cats downbeat and so on - and that this to Anna Karenina: 'All happy families are (Tony Rogers, 2007), mystery thrillers such is why they don't make enough alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in as The Tender Hook (Jonathan Ogilvie, money. Can there be a connection its own particular way.' And perhaps Ken 2008) and Death Defying Acts (Gillian Ibetween this commercial state of affairs (if Loach's early film Family Life (1971) was Armstrong, 2007), the odd romantic drama it is, in fact, the way things are) and the pre- wise in its choice of title, as the rest of the such as Unfinished Sky (Peter Duncan, ponderance of local films bent on exploring film articulates the schisms and repressions 2008), the biopic Mao's i.as( Dancer (Bruce the dynamics of families? If honestly exam- that rend a middle-class family and drive a Beresford, 2009), and even, heaven help ined, are families more likely to contain daughter into a state that requires psychi- us, the 'epic' Australia (Baz Luhrmann, groups of people responding, not always atric remediation. Classic American cinema 2008). There's more than this sample, wisely, to crises of various kinds? As I often had us believe that the problems of but it's enough to suggest that Australian write, the news is breaking of yet another family relations could be ironed out in time cinema In the 2000s hasn't, as Tarantino Australian film ofthe kind I'm interested in: for the gratifying closure of a happy ending. seemed to think, neglected 'genre'. 'It's basically a story of loss, with a family The resolution of familial tensions in Aus- coping with the death of the husband and tralian films of the last few years has been However, I want to suggest here that the father,' says producer Sue Taylor about her less certain - and maybe more honest. most persistent genre may be the fam- film The Tree (Julie Bertuccelli, 2010), which ily film, by which I don't mean films made garnered glowing responses at the Cannes Last year when he was in Melbourne for the family, but rather about the fam- Film Festival.' promoting Inglourious Basterds, Quentin ily, exploring its potential for conflict and Tarantino was quoted as saying, 'My thing sometimes, though more sparsely, for [N THE FAMILY WAY would be that you should do more genre rewards. None of the films that have made films', citing the 1980s when 'You had your me aware of this distinctive genre has been Perhaps the great English novelist Ivy gum-tree films and your kangaroo films and a Hollywood-style celebration of family life. Compton-Burnett was right (when was she your Hanging Rock movies.'^ I'm not sure They are all too likely to respond to its more not?) when she remarked that more harm exactly what he was talking about, and I troubled underside to allow themselves was done in the name of the family than suspect he wasn't either. It seems to me of any other institution. Certainly her spare that there has been a recognisable trickle novels, written almost entirely in dialogue, of genre films in the last few years: horror do not lead us to expect that we will leave films such as Wolf Creek (Greg Mclean, 1&/ CHARLIE & BOOTS BEAUTIFUL KATE i: LAST RIDE
42 • Metro Magazine 166 (though not pejoratively) be categorised as 'family melodrama', the prevailing mode of unqualified belief in a happy outcome, and attention to The Black Balloon (Elissa Down, the genre that is the subject of this study when they venture too near to the latter 2008) as an example of a family drama is that of low-key realism, not necessarily - they are apt to lose their grip on the reality crossed with a teen movie, or Charlie & and not often - making for the comfort of a they have been examining. Typically, their Boots (Dean Murphy, 2009) and Last Ride happy ending. If this makes them less popu- interest is in the family at some kind of (Glendyn Ivin, 2009) as examples of two lar, it can also be said to make them more crisis point - the result, for example, of films about family malfunction with road truthful, both to their own insights and to the serious illness or sudden death. These are movie affiliations, or The Horseman (Steven social reality that is so crucial an element of crises that require and bring about some Kastrissios, 2008), which portrays a riven their production contexts. reorganisation of the structures of relation- family situation and has elements of a road ships within the family unit. movie and horror film, or Closed for Winter And maybe I should say that it's not just in (James Bogle, 2009), part mystery, part recent Australian films that I've been made When I write of the family film as a genre, I'm family drama. But apart from Beautiful Kate aware of a penetrating, sometimes painful, aware that I'm really talking about a hybrid (Rachel Ward, 2009) and The Boys are Back analysis of what makes family life less than genre as often as not. For instance, I'd draw (Scott Hicks, 2009), which might reasonably idyllic for so many. Think of Ken Loach's haunting (and comic) study of a father alone in Looking for Eric (2009) or Michael Win- terbottom's heartbreaking Genova (2009), about a family trying to hold itself together in the face of the tragedy of the mother's death, or the French films Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas, 2008) and Quiet Chaos (Antonello Grimaldi. 2008), or the British biopic of John Lennon's youth. Nowhere Boy (Sam Taylor-Wood, 2009), or the US drama Brothers (Jim Sheridan, 2009). All of these deal with quiet appositeness with the grief and pain within families. However, it is the Australian feature Playing for Charlie (Pene Patrick, 2008), and the fact of its limited release, that has led me to reflect on this phenomenon of recent local cinema.
Metro Magazine 166 • 43 TRALIAN & NEW ZEALAND
FAMILY UNDER PRESSURE: For seven-eighths of its running time, PLAYING FOR CHARLIE Patrick and her collaborators, especially her actors, scarcely put a foot wrong. I Playing for Charlie belongs with films like wish, though, she hadn't felt a need to tidy The Black Balloon, with its heartfelt account it up at the end, when there seemed to me of a family whose life is constantly made to be too much and too easy reconciliation difticulf by its devotion fo an autistic son, in the face of the daunting obstacles that and My Year Without Sex (Sarah Watt, have been so carefully and tenderly put 2009), in which a family copes with fhe before us. mother's serious illness. All three are rich in the details of the lives they depict and they FAMILIES IN CRISIS are all concerned with how family dynam- ics can be thrown ouf of whack. In Playing Playing for Charlie brought to mind a bunch for Charlie, Patrick makes us aware of the of other recent Australian films in which a rotten deals fhat life hands out to some crisis such as a death, serious illness or people, without their having ever done any- act of violence has thrown a family unit thing to bring this on themselves. The father info major upheaval. In several cases the of the family has died the year before the crisis has happened 'before' the action of film starts; the mother, Paula (Jodie Rim- involve Tony in some shonky business fhat the film's diegesis and works catalytically mer), has multiple sclerosis and works night will, he says, help Tony get fhe money he to shape the film's narrative. What these shifts at a call centre; teenage son Tony needs for his rugby ambitions. films often have in common is a fragmen- (Jared Daperis), a potential rugby star, has tary approach fo revealing the source of to mind baby Charlie while Paula is at her I don't want to say more about the plot the family's strained situation. As well as thankless job. This is all the work that Paula than this. What I want to suggest is that Playing for Charlie, there are three films that can get in Melbourne's west, and hovering these narrative complications aren't there take as their starting point an oft-screen over her is the shadow of her own illness. primarily to create conventional suspense. death, or not only off-screen but either But this isn't just an essay in miserabilism. Playing for Charlie isn't at heart a melo- pre-credits or predating the opening of the Patrick imbues her characters and their drama where we expect all such conflicts film; Bitter & Twisted (Christopher Weekes, situation with impressive humanity, and in to be resolved in the interests of neat 2008), Ten Empty (Anthony Hayes, 2008) Tony's real promise as a rugby player the narrative closure. Essentially, its conflicts, and Charlie & Boots (Dean Murphy, 2009). director acknowledges that even the grim- its stresses and strains, lead us to wonder Murphy's film is distinctly different in tone mest scenarios may hold glints of hope. just how this embattled little family can from fhe earlier two: it is part road movie possibly cope wifh its everyday pressures. and, perhaps unsurprisingly given thaf The opening shots of the film, filmed in There is something very touching in fhe it stars Paul Hogan and Shane [Kenny) Altona, show Tony kicking a ball around way fhat mother and son fall to squabbling Jacobson, is frequently very funny in its against a background of flaring industrial out of sheer exhaustion from trying to stay episodic way. Nevertheless, as I said in a chimneys. This skill and obsession give afloat. Outside threats to family stability - ionger account of the film in this journal, him a powerful reason not to succumb to such as Scarf or the possibility that Tony 'the real drama of the film is in fhe skirmish- the unusually heavy pressures of his life. will travel abroad with the rugby team - are ing approach towards understanding that His skill is recognised by his school rugby unexpected complications in the quotidian characterises most of their exchanges'^ coach, Joe (Shane Connor), who arranges realities of their lives. And it's not just the - fhat is, in the movement from estrange- for him to try out for the state team. The way the film works through its picture of a ment to the forging of a new bond between conflict now is centred on fhe extent fo family up against it that is so impressive. It silently grieving father and son. Each starts which Tony's possible future In rugby can has a great look of being lived in, of lives the journey with his own particular response be made a reality in the face of the family's lived on the fringe of a large city. In more to the death of, respectively, a wife and a financial difticulfies. A further complication film-specific terms, Patrick knows exactly mother, and wifh strains and suppressions appears in the form of Scarf (Mark Leonard what use to make of close-ups - she lets that are worked through as they make their Winter), only recently discovered to be the faces do a lot of the work - and of editing, way from Victoria to Cape York. son of Tony's late father. Paula is dubious especially in fhe way she gefs the film off to such a compelling, fragmented start. abouf Scarf and rightly so, as he wants to Hogan's name ensured that the film didn't
RECENT n^ AUSTRALIAN FAMILY MOVIES * H s s
44 • Metro Magazine 166 pass unnoticed, but the other two films, much bleaker in their exploration of how grief can tear a family apart, struggled to find attention. Bitter & Twisted, a film that seems to have slunk through Australia but that has found appreciative audiences overseas, opens with a flurry of lights over the face of someone lying on the floor as others watch over him; the young man's eyes are then closed in death. The film then cuts, accompanied by a plangent guitar, to a long shot of a solitary figure sitting on a gravestone. Other people unconnected with the lone griever drive away and the film cuts again, this time to a family dinner table, with one chair significantly unoccu- pied. In notably elliptical fragments, writer/ director Weekes creates a picture of the family of the dead man (who turns out to be the older son, Liam [Jeremy Brennan]); behaviour that arise when dealing with loss three years later, they have still not come to and the unhelpfulness of those who might terms with his loss. have been supposed to offer some kind of as she reaches for his hand. There is no support or reassurance. large emotional moment here, just a usually Weekes, in a striking directorial debut, inarticulate man's arrival at an understand- stresses the sense of alienation the family None of the encounters I've just indicated ing about the priorities of his life. The effect members feel from each other through the is played for melodramatic effect. Bitter & is very moving. In another instance of recurring use of shots that present them as Twisted's tone is essentially one of quiet, accepting that 'things happen all the time', isolated individuals in a suburban setting. compassionate observation, and it moves Ben kisses Indigo urgently, then runs off When they make contact with others, the not towards the resolution of melodrama, when she boards the bus to Melbourne. results are apt to be fraught, if not abrasive. effective as that often is, but to an accept- She can't love him, hard as he tries to be The father, Jordan (Steve Rodgers), seri- ance that time has elapsed, that some like Liam, and he goes off to meet Matt in a ously overweight and still blank with grief, facts have to be faced, that pieces need to café, settling at the moment for friendship, has lost all interest in his car salesman's be picked up. A heart attack for the father but he has the memory of that kiss. And the job and has to deal with the insensitive catalyses some of this tentative acknowl- film ends with a close-up photo of the four interrogation of his boss, Donald (Rhys Mul- edging of a future that has to be lived, not remaining family members (daughter Lisa doon). The mother. Penny (Noni Hazlehurst), just passively received as inevitable. The [Basia A'hern] is much more lightly sketched unable to stir Jordan to sexual interest film ends on a note of subdued melan- in the film's patterning): that is, the photo is or even to going out for a meal, goes off choly that registers both pains past and a a way of indicating that Liam has gone and, angrily to a bar where she meets a young vestigial optimism. Jordan says to Penny, as the song on the soundtrack says, 'The man, succumbs to his embraces back at 'Things happen all the time. We can't let time has come to say farewell.' his house but pulls back and is then seen it kill us. I quit my job tonight', having told trying to hail a taxi to take her home. And the unpleasant Donald that 'I've hated If that sounds contrived or sentimental, I the younger son, Ben (Weekes), is troubled working for you every single day since your can only say that it is neither. It is a way of by the advances of his bisexual friend. Matt father left.' Finally to Penny, who has urged saying that the rawness of pain and hurt (Matthew Newton), and fancies himself in him, 'Please talk to me. This is my life,' he has begun to lose some of its power over love with his late brother's girlfriend. Indigo says - and the camera moves in for a big (Leeanna Walsman), who is involved with close-up as he does - 'I thought about Liam a married man. The screenplay is skilfully and all the opportunities he'll never have structured to articulate the patterns of ... 1 want my family. I love you.' He weeps 1: MY YEAR WITHOUT SEX 2IÍ3: BITTER & TWISTED 4: PLAYING FOR CHARLIE
Metro Magazine 166 • 45 In the excoriating scenes that follow, each of the other guys will be defined by how he responds. The fastidious, elderly Cecil (Don Reid) recails once hitting his wife: 'My boy saw it and I lost it from that day on.' Aggressive, defensive Alex (Grant Dod- well), whose speech is liberally peppered with the word 'fuckin", weeps as he says, 'Why didn't he [Freddy] tell us? We coulda done something.' This suggests some kind of emotional progress. Lucas (Steve Le Marquand) brings a basilisk stare to most occasions in the group's meetings but seems to be seeking undefined sexual where it is going, and does so with unhur- encounters in the bars he frequents. When ried assurance and a touching empathy morose, abusive Moses (Paul Tassone) with the lives it explores. attacks everyone in the room, shouting that 'Nothing's fucking changed', we are forced their lives. Bitter & Twisted is a small-scale MEN AT WAR to consider what, if any, kind of advance film that, in my view, scarcely puts a foot has been made, and the film is wise enough wrong. Weekes, working from his own care- Rodgers is similarly affecting as the stand- not to come up with any sort of pat closure. fully wrought screenplay, knows intuitively up comic Freddie in Michael Joy's Men's In the last sequence, Moses has shaved off how much 'information' to filter through Group (2008), which is not so much a film his beard, as if signalling some meagre new those early sequences, so that we gradu- about a family in crisis as a study in men start, and Alex talks of a phone call he has ally acquire an impressively detailed sense who've stuffed up their lives in ways that made to the son he has previously called of how this family is operating in and out of very often stem from and rebound upon their an 'arsehole' and not 'grateful', and he can the home. Simon Wright's editing is impor- families. The film opens with a new arrival now say that 'I don't want my son to grow tant to the consciously fractured narrative, at the weekly men's group meeting at the up like me, not saying, "I love you"'. both in obvious montages such as the home of Paul (Paul Gleeson), who sends his one in which Penny deliberately smartens family out for the night so as to host a sort of Men's Group is, at heart, a film about up her appearance in a dress shop and a psychotherapy session for a handful of guys fathers and sons, though it is never sche- hairdressing salon, or in quieter juxtaposi- in his sitting room. In the more usual sense matic in its approach. There is a remarkable tions like that of Ben's passionate kissing of film narrative that has conditioned us to sense that the dialogue and reactions are of Indigo with the gentle kiss Penny plants expect a cause-and-effect chain of events, improvised (which is largely the case), on the weeping Jordan. If editing and the with character governing event and event a feeling that compels involvement and cinematography that renders suburban life highlighting character, not much seems to wards off the customary expectation of the without either idealisation or patronisation happen here. And yet, I would claim, it is neat tying up of loose ends. There are many are important to the film's richly textured utterly engrossing, acted by a superb male shots of men in solitary situations (Moses in quality, so too are the performances of vir- ensemble of which Rodgers is outstanding his squalid garage-cum-bedroom with his tually the whole cast - most heartrendingly as the anything-for-a-laugh comedian who lugubrious dog; Freddie in his characterless so in those of Rodgers and Hazlehurst as is quietly coming apart as he finds himself room with Big Bunny, the doll that reminds Jordan and Penny. This is a film that knows desperately missing his little daughter, his him of the daughter he loves; Cecil in his marriage having collapsed. His off-screen tastefully chilly middle-class house: Alex suicide propels the group towards vari- whose isolation is telegraphed by a brief ous degrees of self-realisation and the film shot of the apartment's letter boxes). It's towards a climax of sorts. hard to give a true picture of the richness 1-3: mtH'S GROUP i BEAUTIFUL KATE
46 • Metro Magazine 166 RECENT AUSTRALIAN FAMILY MOVIES
of painful detail in the film's mise en scène, about', ends in disorder, and consequently more a matter of observation, of fragments especially in the faces and body language Elliot spills out his resentment to Diane. (sometimes admittedly too elliptical in all of of its cast, without going through the film While his mother had been 'losing her these films), of revelation in the prevailing in much more detail than I have space for marbles' upstairs, he'd come across Diane suppressions, of cryptic shots of people here. The men of Men's Group have failed and Ross in a compromising situation in isolation or framed in narrow doorways. their families and family has not provided downstairs. The family barbecue also turns And it should also be admitted that it is them with the sure sense of a place in their into a shambles and the film implies in such sometimes possible to get impatient with worlds. It is a grim enough experience, but scenes a critique of Australian male culture. the lingering, often wordless shots, or with it is lit with a compassion that is rare in The film slides into something more like dialogue that is often hard to pick up either contemporary - perhaps any - cinema. conventional action when Ross, seriously because it is whispered or because, like the strapped for cash, aims to rob a petrol films at large, it is sometimes too cryptic to The men don't emerge well in Anthony station with the help of Shane (Brendan be grasped readily. Hayes' Ten Empty, either. The mother of Cowell), but characteristically this episode a suburban Adelaide family has died ten fizzles out when he can't bring himself to The stylistic and narrative difterences can years before the film starts, and the older threaten the girl cashier. There is pathos be felt by a glancing comparison with son, Elliot (Daniel Frederiksen), has returned in Ross's failure as father and husband films such as Beautiful Kate and The Boys from Sydney for the first time in years. His and his confession to Elliot that he hasn't are Back, which make much bolder, more father, Ross (Geoff Morrell), has married his worked in twelve months. overtly melodramatic capital from the reve- mother's younger sister, Diane (Lucy Bell), nant's effect on the family situation, and. and Elliot has come back to act as godfa- All these episodes are strung together to in The Boys are Back, also from the sud- ther to their baby. His younger brother, Brett reveal lives rather than to create suspense den death of the young wife and mother. (Tom Budge), has shut himself in his room or climaxes. But as in the other films I've The films I'm foregrounding here tend to and refuses to talk to anyone. Elliot's arrival been discussing, conventional plotting is work in much less recognisable narrative will precipitate tensions of various kinds, not the narrative mode in Ten Empty. It is and generic patterns - and may well have bringing unpalatable truths to the surface, reached sparser audiences as a result. I and it will take Brett's suicide attempt to want, though, to celebrate their kinds of bring the film to a muted resolution. accomplishment and their willingness to explore the indocile facts of life - facts In director/co-producer/co-writer Hayes' about class and economy and gender feature debut, he takes us quietly into brutalities - as people are actually living it. the heart of the family's stresses. There is I should like to think that films that do this strained conversation between Elliot and get the audiences they deserve. Let the his father, Ross, their distance signalled in rest go to Avatar and Twilight. Elliot's refusal of a glass of home brew and preference for a 'red'; Diane tries to be con Endnotes ciliatory at the dinner table but her efforts ' Quoted in Stephanie Bunbury, 'French founder on Ross' angry tipping out of all Shades to a Family Tree, With Mother, the uncashed money orders Elliot has sent Daughter and a Moretón Bay Fig', The him, as if Elliot's apparent success is a mat- Sunday Age, 23 May 2010, p.8. ter not for pride but for resentment; there E FILMS I'M ' ^ Jim Schembri, 'Tarantino shows UNDING HER is a fleeting shot of Brett's feet in the crack inglourious local knowledge'. The TO WORK IN MUCH LESS of light under his door, to indicate that he is Age, 3 August 2009,
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