Filmbiz blog

Beautiful Yet Flawed. Day 11 of the Sydney Film Festival. A Daily Blog.

by Jim Mitchell | June 16, 2009 08:21

A film sure to generate much debate is Rachel Ward’s Beautiful Kate which is in competition this year and had its world premiere on Saturday night.

It's controversial not only in that it deals with such a taboo issue as incest but in the way it handles it.

Early this millennium, a middle aged writer Ned (Ben Mendelsohn, who also popped in another local feature Prime Mover which also premiered at the festival) makes a long delayed journey home to a country property in the Flinders Ranges where his father (Bryan Brown, who also co-produces) lies on his death bed, cared for by Ned's younger sister Sally (Rachael Griffiths). Twenty years earlier, tragedy struck the family with Ned's twin Kate killed in a car accident and the guilt still claws at Ned as he recalls memories and events leading up to it.

Beautiful Kate is, like its titular character, beautifully crafted, shot and acted which makes the film's depiction of its taboo subject all the more disappointing. It's a film that poses more questions than it answers - although we get clues, the audience is never really properly informed of the wider circumstances and emotions that have led to this act of incest, surely something that is truly necessary when trying to understand such a contentious issue. While the film leaves in no doubt the tragic consequences of this incestuous relationship, its lyrical imagery depicting teenage sexuality, apparently some kind of tribute to the work of controversial artist Bill Henson - comes across as beautifying what is a very ugly issue.

Add to this the fact that Beautiful Kate's plotline has so many gaping holes that you could literally drive a tractor through it, not at all aided by a particularly manipulative bombshell close to the film's denouement which seems simply unbelievable given the character it relates to has barely a presence in the film. By the end of its slight 90 minute running time, severe relationship issues are neatly wrapped up and Ned's guilt is irresponsibly absolved.

Beautiful Kate is based on the novel of the same name by Newton Thornburg, originally set in the U.S and transplanted to the Flinders Ranges by Ward who adapted the novel for the screen.

At the Q and A following the premiere, Ward admitted much had been altered and culled from the original source material. That's nothing new but you can't help wondering if some greater exposition and a longer running time would have helped to greater explain the circumstances of what is ultimately a very dark and disturbing story, very prettily realised. While Brown's performance is fantastic, the film never really gets to the root of his character's hardness or properly explores why he and Ned have such a caustic hatred of each other. The impressive Griffiths almost feels sidelined with her character's seeming lack of feeling towards Ned's role in Kate's demise as well as his 20 year absence which has left her to be the sole carer of their father. In fact the only really well rounded character seems to be that of Maeve Dermody's caustic aspiring actress and fiancé to Ned which provides greatly needed comic relief.

In the end, Beautiful Kate leaves you feeling rather cheated, most of all because, despite the film's stunning craftsmanship, the controversial issue of incest has been depicted by its makers so irresponsibly. Ward, in the aforementioned Q and A, stated she was drawn to stories that are "dark and compelling" and made reference to Beautiful Kate as a "love story with obstacles". To use the term "love story" when discussing the incestuous relationship between two major characters in the film seems grossly inappropriate - not to mention grossly inaccurate given the film's portrayal of said relationship - and raises serious questions about the handling of dark, contentious issues by filmmakers in this country not to mention the decision makers who green light them.

Red Carpet Watch - Rachel Ward and cast members Bryan Brown, Ben Mendelsohn, Sophie Lowe and Maeve Dermody.

Come As You Are. Day 10 of the Sydney Film Festival. A Daily Blog.

by Jim Mitchell | June 15, 2009 18:18

We speak with porn star turned feature film leading lady Sasha Grey about Steven Soderbergh’s latest cinema experiment, The Girlfriend Experience.

Porn Star Sasha Grey walked the red carpet at the State Theatre for the Australian premiere of Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience. Grey has made the transition into mainstream film in Soderbergh's experimental film, although she has no intention of leaving adult films behind.

It's 2008 and the US presidential election is looming and the global economic crisis has well and truly set in. A savvy, high class call girl Chelsea (Grey) who offers ‘the girlfriend experience', that is sex, as well as lending an ear or a shoulder to cry on goes from business meeting to meeting to discuss how she can expand her business. She's in a committed relationship with personal trainer Chris (real life personal trainer Chris Santos) but that relationship is put in jeopardy when Chelsea becomes infatuated with a new client, while her reputation is tarnished by an unsavory.

Soderbergh handpicked Grey for the role because of her notoriety for pushing the envelope of sexual depravity in adult film, and while sex is only intimated, not explicitly portrayed - the director wanted the audience to believe that this call girl would do anything. The problem is, Grey puts in such a cold, emotionless and flat-as-a-tack performance for the most part that even with that reputation, she's simply unbelievable.

While Soderbergh (who does double duty at the festival this year with the epic Che also screening) should be congratulated for this timely look at the effect of the GFC, for creating a character that is the antithesis of the stereotypical dumb blonde call girl and for his versatile if pretentious camera work, it's Grey's lackluster performance that brings the whole production crashing down.

It's not hard to see why The Girlfriend Experience was chosen to compete in the official competition at this year's festival because it clearly fits the ‘outside the square' mandate. But put simply, clever camera work and a timely story combined with a charisma free lead performance, does not a good film make.

Ironically it's Grey's back story that is infinitely more interesting than the film itself. Filmink sat down with Grey, a veteran of over 100 porn films at the ripe old age of 21, for a surreal discussion of sex, her heavily improvised feature debut and researching the call girl trade.

"I have had previous theatre training so I did have that to bring to the table," giggles Grey. "But at the same time, Steven really wanted a natural quality to the film and not too much premeditation. It was kind of trying to marry the two together. I kept a really detailed journal and I wrote a back story and sent it to Steven. At pre-production we didn't even have an outline of the script, I just knew what the story was at a very general level. We interviewed two escorts. For me, that really helped in the sense that I got to have a small insight into their world so during some of the improvs, some of the questions I was being asked by other people, I had asked these women. We were also sent these anonymously written escorting blogs from the casting director and that was really interesting because they went into a lot more detail than these other women did which was really fascinating as well."

The Truth Is Out There. Day 9 of the Sydney Film Festival. A Daily Blog.

by Jim Mitchell | June 15, 2009 08:30

The Sydney Film Festival made it on to the front pages of the newspapers, but was it for the right reason?

A film already generating controversy at the festival saw its contentious subject go into overdrive today. At the world premiere of Stolen, an expose of alleged slavery in the Saharan desert from local filmmakers Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw and produced by celebrated documentary filmmaker Tom Zubrycki, one of their central subjects, Faitim Salam, arrived from her Western Saharan home to directly confront the filmmakers on what she says is a fabrication. Salam claims that neither she nor any of her people are slaves.

But Ayala and Fallshaw's documentary reveals a far different situation. They had set out to capture a reunion of a daughter (Salam) - one of thousands living in exile in refugee camps as a result of Morocco's invasion of Western Sahara - and her mother whom she had been separated from for 30 years. As filming progressed, the filmmakers began to suspect that Salam and all of the black members of the camps were being used as slaves by the traditional Arab inhabitants of the desert, capturing on film testimonies from some of the alleged slaves - testimonies that Salam argues were falsehoods in exchange for financial gain from the filmmakers.

Once the Polisario - the organisation that oversees the Saharan camps and who the filmmakers claim to turn a blind eye to the slavery - discovered the twist that Ayala and Fallshaw's film had taken, the pair were forced to leave the camps, burying their footage in the sands of the desert in the hope of one day retrieving them. Later they were detained and following that they took their allegations to the United Nations.

On the eve of the film's world premiere at the festival, Filmink sat down for a coffee with the brave filmmaking duo and discussed the much debated cardinal rule of filmmakers becoming part of their documentary and not staying behind the camera. Ayala and Falshaw say the turn of events left them with no choice. "The thing is, we were actually drawn into the story," says Fallshaw. "We never intended ourselves to be in front of the camera. That's why mostly in the beginning of the film, you don't see us because we didn't shoot the film like that. We really had no choice because we were detained and kicked out of the camps and having to hide our tapes. To get them back, we became part of the story."

"Half of the characters disappear in the middle of the film [because we were detained] so we had to somehow tell this story, to explain what we went through," adds Ayala. "The covering up of slavery made us understand how deeply rooted this is, how much the slaves didn't want to talk about it [on camera], how badly treated the black people are. We just tried to go further with the film, little by little because we had a big social responsibility then to tell this story."

The filmmakers believe that Salam was coerced by the Polisario - who reportedly paid for her to fly here - to deny their allegations.

No local distribution has been secured for Stolen as yet but Ayala and Fallshaw will tour the film at international film festivals and the documentary is also slated to screen at next month's Melbourne Film Festival.

All About The Music.... Or is it? Day 8 of Sydney Film Fest. A Daily Blog.

by Jim Mitchell | June 14, 2009 13:19

It was all about the music for Filmink today or was it? We spoke with two documentary makers who have made films about two very different icons of the music industry.

First up, we sat down with debut documentary maker Josh Whiteman to chat about his film Shadow Play, a look at the life and work of Anton Corbijn, famed music photographer, director of music videos for U2 and Nirvana and director of the Joy Division bio-pic Control. Corbijn has a stellar resume of work capturing amongst others REM, Coldplay and the changing face of mega band U2 from their infancy. "Having a picture taken, there's an intimacy, it's like sex," says U2 front man and humanitarian Bono during the doco. "I've been having sex with Anton for more than 20 years. He's very good at it."

Whiteman discussed Corbijn and his fascination with him from an early age.

"I became very interested in Anton's work when I was quite young. At age 11 or 12 I was a U2 obsessive and that was around the time The Joshua Tree came out and Anton did all the photography for that. As my experience of music started to broaden and I started to listen to other artists and become more interested in artists other than John Farnham, I just kept seeing his name on things. At the time, I had a subscription to Rolling Stone Magazine and he was the staff photographer there and I'd go through old copies of NME and his name just kept popping up. It sort of occurred to me that a lot of the things I was into, whether it was musical or film or writers or whatever, Anton seemed to be the glue between all of those different things - he'd either worked with these people or photographed them. It was almost like he was a filter for all the stuff I was interested in. I'd see Anton's name pop up on music videos for Nirvana, U2 or Johnny Cash.

"Here's this guy that is essentially a king maker. He increases the fame of people with his style and yet he himself is essentially anonymous. It's a very interesting paradox. He's like 6 foot 7, incredibly tall and hunched over and has always stood out for that reason. The camera for him is really a way for him to hide. He always wanted to be a musician and as far as I know he hasn't managed to. But he'd go to concerts on his own with his camera. It gave him a reason to be there. He loved music and musicians and photography gave him a reason to be around them."

Shadow Play will screen on the ABC later this year.

We also chatted with Vikram Jayanti (producer of When We Were Kings) on the line from the US about his intriguing talking-head documentary The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, a look into the bizarre mind of the very eccentric uber music producer, found guilty of the 2003 shooting murder of Lana Clarkson. 

Rather than simply giving Spector a voice when speculation was in overdrive prior to his 2007 murder trial, Jayanti was more interested in exploring a troubled genius going up against the might of the American justice system.

"I had no interest in the murder case. I hate to admit that," says Jayanti. "I don't really make investigative films, I don't really make fact driven films at all. I try to get inside what it feels like to be somebody else and the sort of people I happen to be interested in, happen to be people like Phil Spector - difficult, troubled, brilliant people. I just want to know what it feels like to look through their eyes at a moment of such duress as a murder trial. You certainly get quicker to the nub of who somebody is when they're cornered by fear and anticipation. I wasn't really trying to make any kind of exploration of his guilt or his innocence. I just wanted to know what it was like in that existential moment of facing possible life in jail and having someone dead in your house. Meanwhile, to know what it's like to have a record that plays in your head continuously of this sort of cavalcade of some of the greatest hits of the foundation generation of rock and roll [produced by Spector].

Jayanti is hoping his film's exposure during the Sydney Film Festival will secure a theatrical release.

Red Carpet Watch - Desperate Housewive' Teri Hatcher for Coraline.

Hitting Home. Day 7 of Sydney Film Fest. A Daily Blog.

by Jim Mitchell | June 12, 2009 17:51

On the 7th day of the festival, Filmink went along to the world premiere of Missing Water from former Australian of the year Khoa Do (The Finished People, Footy Legends), based on his play Mother Fish.

It's an affecting, emotional and experimental third feature from Do, and a very personal one at that, telling the story of a small group of Vietnamese refugees taking a treacherous journey by boat to Australia in 1980. The film begins as Kim, a factory worker recalls the fateful events of the boat trip, metaphorically re-imagined in the factory which now represents a weathered boat in which young Kim (Kathy Nguyen), her younger sister Hahn (Sheena Pham) and relative strangers ‘Uncle' (Hieu Phan) and Chau (Vico Thai) are on a perilous journey to America, or so they think. The clever sound design of lapping waves and purring boat engines let us know this, in case of any doubt. The factory and its sewing machines gradually start to deteriorate - representing the psychological state of the refugees - resembling the rickety boat.

It's a bold film from Do in that it asks a lot of the audience, in the sense that viewers really need to work hard to use their imagination especially in the story's infancy, where the metaphorical boat still looks like the aforementioned factory - it's like playing a game of make believe. That is perhaps the film's major challenge. But making a bold decision requires an investment from the audience and if you give in to the journey it's an emotional and rewarding one.

While each of the relatively inexperienced cast seem on shaky ground at first, it's not long before each comes into their own, their performances undoubtedly a challenge given they are acting in the very same restricted locale we see, imagining the horror of pirate attacks, rape and extreme hunger and dehydration, not to mention the potential horror of cannibalism (what is it with cannibalism in the line-up this year?).

All the cast are integral in making the journey believable and it's a credit to them that they pull this off, particularly the young Nguyen and Pham. Do should be congratulated for bringing what must have been a difficult story to tell to the big screen - his own family made the traumatic journey - and for making the challenging creative decision he has made.

The following day the cast and crew took part in an entertaining and emotional Q & A - Phan was himself a refugee as was Nguyen's mother. Do spoke about the genesis of the story and his creative choices.

"About 8 or 9 years ago, I was working on my first short film which was called Delivery Day," he  said. "One of the stars in it was Hieu Phan and during that film, Hieu comes over and he says ‘Khoa, one day, you know what film you gotta make? You've gotta make a film about the Vietnamese boat people and about the Vietnamese refugees." Eight years later I called Hieu up - he's a full time engineer - and said ‘What are you doing? I need you to take some time off because we're going to try and make this story happen.' It's a story I've been wanting to tell for a very long time.

"The idea of the sweatshop was the whole idea of going into the mind of a refugee. It was always going to be a story that was a very intimate and personal one. So many Vietnamese Australians have been sewing in factories for many years and we thought, ‘wouldn't it be great to go into the environment in which they're actually working and actually go back and relive the journey with them and have the journey take place in the world that they've been spending the last 25 years of their life?"

Missing Water is part of the official competition for the $60,000 prize and is tentatively slated for release later this year or early next year.

Red Carpet Watch - Khoa Do and comedian brother Anh as well as the Missing Water cast and crew at the film's world premiere. John Woo for the Australian premiere of Red Cliff.

Girl Outshines Boys. Day 6 of Sydney Film Fest. A Daily Blog.

by Jim Mitchell | June 12, 2009 08:49

Camera flashes blinded as ‘It Girl’ Rachael Taylor posed with fellow cast members at the world premiere of the much anticipated local flick Cedar Boys, only four months after the release of the similarly themed The Combination.

Having a rapidly ascending star like Taylor (who left the defunct local soapie Headland behind to make the leap to Hollywood in the likes of Transformers, Bottle Shock and Shutter) in a small budget film is a double edged sword; the cache of a media darling may attract attention but it can also outshine other cast members. That certainly seemed the case at the premiere, with a heavy throng of paparazzi eager to get their fix of the glamorous actress.

Cedar Boys looks at the massive divide between the affluence of eastern Sydney and the crime effected western suburbs, home to a close group of Lebanese Australians (Les Chantery, Waddah Sari, Buddy Dannoun), and the descent of its protagonist Tarek (Chantery from Pitch Black and Heartbreak High) into crime.

Filmink spoke with Taylor, Chantery and writer/director Serhat Caradee on the red carpet.

Filmink: Why did you want to tell this story?

Serhat: I thought it was about time a truthful portrayal of young Lebanese boys was expressed on our screens. I was sick of seeing Lebanese boys being depicted in a stereotypical, clichéd way so I just wanted to bring some three dimensional characters to our screens. I just wanted to show the world as seen through young Lebanese boys' eyes.

Filmink: What are you trying to say in Cedar Boys?

Serhat: The big message behind the movie is about making choices. Obviously if you make the wrong choices it has consequences later on. It's about camaraderie, trying to fit in, acceptance.

Filmink: What drew you to your respective roles in Cedar Boys?

Rachael: Les drew me to this film because he and I have been friends for a long time and he told me about a film that he was attached to in Australia and that there was a role that I might be interested in and that's how it came about.

Les: Rachael was perfect for the role. When I first met Rachael, within five minutes she was able to kind of speak Arabic to me so I thought if there's anyone who could understand the character of Amie it's Rachael and we joked about working together.

Rachael: Also we were both in Los Angeles but we both wanted to tell Australian stories and I feel like this is a real watershed for Australian film. We're really happy to be telling an Australian story with cultural relevance.

Filmink: What have you both got in the pipeline?

Les: I'm going to New Zealand to do a big biblical epic called Kingdom Come playing a blind man.

Rachael: I'm just waiting around at the moment. I just did a pilot with Sarah Jessica Parker called Washingtonienne. It's from HBO by the same people who made Sex and the City.

Red Carpet Watch - Director David Caesar and stars Emily Barclay and Michael Dorman (reuniting after Suburban Mayhem) at the world premiere of truckie drama Prime Mover.

Eat your heart out Hollywood - Day 5 of Sydney Film Fest. A daily blog.

by Jim Mitchell | June 11, 2009 10:40

Today, Filmink had a look at two very different new features. Firstly a striking feature debut from a pair of local filmmakers, the next a US debut from the director of The Boys and Little Fish, Rowan Woods.

Van Diemen's Land is the third project of late (following Dying Breed and the ABC docu-drama The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce)  to use the horrific true story of Australia's most infamous convict - Alexander Pearce was a self confessed cannibal - as its inspiration.

From first time director Jonathan auf der Heide, who co-wrote the film with cast member Oscar Redding, it's a gothic and disturbing depiction of survival for a group of escaped convicts and the descent into madness of Pearce (Redding). In 1822, in the remote Tasmanian wilderness, a group of Scottish, English and Irish convicts escape from the slave labour of incarceration at one of the most brutal of the British Empire's settlements, Macquarie Harbour. Unprepared amidst rapidly increasing in-fighting, hunger takes hold with the captain (Arthur Angel from Tom White) of the rag tag group conspiring with Pearce to off one of the convicts, at random it would seem, to provide a source of food. After the first kill, paranoia sets in for the rest of the party, with Pearce, first portrayed as a reluctant collaborator, becoming consumed by an unthinkable hunger. Segments of pristine scenery are juxtaposed with a haunting gaelic voice, telling of the convicts' allegorical descent into hell.

Bloodthirsty and gruesome, Van Diemen's Land could easily be written off as a piece of colonial slasher-porn were it not for its roots in history, authentic retelling, a strong cast that rounds out some very troubled characters and stunning cinematography.

Van Diemen's Land does raise questions, as Wolf Creek did before it, of how explicit and necessary the depiction of extreme acts of violence need be. Perhaps the filmmakers are trying to depict how it truly was, although presumably some creative license was taken. The pages of history attest that these events happened in some shape or form but do we really need to see this horrific depravity in such sickening detail? Whatever you do, don't do as Filmink did and eat a meal while watching this one! It's enough to make your stomach turn (pun intended based on first hand experience).

Nonetheless, based on the film's creative merit on a reputedly low budget alone, the filmmakers behind Van Diemen's Land have created an impressive first feature. Be warned though, it's not a movie for the faint of heart. It's chilling to the bone.

Later, Filmink caught the Crash reminiscent Winged Creatures, Rowan Woods' first venture into Hollywood. An unlikely companion piece to his The Boys, the film set in Los Angeles, looks at the aftershocks felt by the witnesses to a lethal random act of violence and the very different ways each are affected; a girl (Dakota Fanning) rediscovers her devout faith, a boy (Josh Hutcherson from Journey to the Center of the Earth) ceases to talk, a bleached blond southern waitress (Kate Beckinsale) neglects her child, a gambling addict (Forest Whitaker) who speaks in rhymes spirals towards destruction, and a doctor (Guy Pearce) makes a dangerous play to assuage his guilt. Each recalls the event from their own perspective, the story revealing the truth piece by piece.

It's by no means a perfect film with its tendency to manipulate with time and an over reliance on coincidence in its premise, a common trait with flashback themed, non-linear storylines. However, it is nonetheless a strong Hollywood debut from Woods with standout performances from Whitaker and Fanning.

Filmink spoke to Woods, the only ‘celebrity' of note at the low key Australian premiere.

Filmink: What attracted you to this story?

RW: It's a corny answer but it was the best of a big pile of scripts I received from my agent when I'd lobbed into LA after a huge trip around the world with my family. I wasn't actually looking for a repeat performance of the dark films [I've directed] like The Boys and Little Fish but I saw this film as a companion piece to The Boys. The Boys was about the making of violence and where violence comes from but Winged Creatures is about the consequences of violence. There's also a very interesting structural device, a bit of time trickery that goes right down the middle of the film [which appealed to me].

Filmink: How did you feel going into making your first film in Hollywood?

RW:  It was difficult. Because it's a film with dark subject matter, it's a difficult one to get up in any climate so it took a long time to finance. But once all that was in place it was fine. It was a great cast, some of my favourite actors and also some of my favourite American crew people. There were some iconic indie crew members on this shoot, the Assistant Director (Donald Murphy) is Clint Eastwood's AD.

Filmink: So you didn't come across some of those obstacles that Hollywood can throw your way?

RW:  No it's just a hard film to finance but I'm used to that. It was also a very, very hard post production because being a multi-storyline structure, it could go in many different directions. I've never actually done a multi-storyline structure so it was a real journey.

Filmink: Kind of like a ‘Choose your own Adventure?'?

RW: Yes. It was really, really difficult to get the balance right.

Red Carpet Watch - Hugo Weaving and Tom Russell, stars of the new Aussie road movie Last Ride and its director Glendyn Ivin.

FROM DISGRACED TO DISGRACE - DAY 4 OF SYDNEY FILM FEST. A DAILY BLOG

by Jim Mitchell | June 09, 2009 08:54

Today, we checked out a new doco on recently jailed uber music producer Phil Spector and the adaptation of J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace.

A very timely film in this year’s lineup is The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, an intriguing look into the bizarre mind (not to mention hairstyles) of the very eccentric music producer, found guilty of the 2003 shooting murder of the former actress Lana Clarkson, which he claims was in fact suicide. It’s basically a talking head intercut with footage of Spector’s many hits (including Imagine with John Lennon) and footage of his 2007 trial juxtaposed with review quotes of his work.

It’s not exactly an objective exploration of the saggy faced Spector from director Vikram Jayanti but more a documentary that gives Spector the opportunity to speak his mind. And boy does he ever. Amidst taking some spectacular swipes at the likes of Martin Scorsese, Tony Bennett, Paul McCartney, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and the judge presiding over his court case amongst others, Spector – who defines his music making as art – has the audacity to compare his work to that of Da Vinci. That’s not to deny his talent, a freakish ability to generate a hit. It’s demonstrated time and time again in the documentary, featuring clips of an astonishing cannon of work that has made an indelible mark on popular culture – ‘You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling’ by The Righteous Brothers a case in point. But it’s hard not to feel that he’s immersed in delusions of grandeur. He claims that he’s better than Lennon, Dylan and a list of other luminaries and has such a belief in himself that it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that Spector thinks that he’s “bigger than Jesus”. His hubris is perhaps most simply expressed by the number plate adorning his car which reads “I Love Phil”. For much of the film’s length this outrageous arrogance is funny but by the end, you feel as if you want to reach through the screen and throttle the man.

What is so jarring about the film is the contrast between Spector’s seemingly indifferent attitude to the outcome of the murder trial and his humorous take on it when interviewed by Jayanti – to paraphrase, Spector says “I’ll be in jail with Bubba. He’ll be my 6 foot 8 husband” – compared to his deer-in-the headlights disorientation seen in court footage.

There’s also a contextual poignancy to Spector, an obvious clue perhaps to his eccentricity and sadness which has filtered through to his music – his father committed suicide when he was 5. We’ll be speaking with director Vikram Jayanti about his very quirky subject, so look out for our interview in future posts.

One of the locally produced films in competition for the festival’s $60,000 prize is Disgrace, based on the novel by J.M Coetzee. It’s a searing and confronting look at the struggles faced in South Africa post Apartheid, with the film’s plot catalyst, the downfall of predatory professor David Lurie (brilliantly brought to life by John Malkovich) in Cape Town, who, in disgrace flees to the rural property of his lesbian daughter Lucy (a stunning performance from South African newcomer Jessica Haines). Both are the victims of a brutal attack.

The married filmmakers, Australians Steve Jacobs and Anna Maria Monticelli and their spiky-haired lead actress Haines walked the red carpet for the film’s Sydney premiere on Friday at the State Theatre. Recently, Filmink caught up with Jacobs and Monticelli who spoke about this ambitious sub $10 million project, the film rights for which were hotly contested.

Filmink: John’s character is not an easy character to like is he?

AMM: He’s not but many women when they read the book love him, that’s what’s so interesting. They fancy him in a funny way because he’s so daring. [He says] ‘I want you, I’m going to have you.’ There are elements in him that have elements of a fantasy. When they [women] see it on screen, I’ll be interested to see whether they still like him because he’s doing [on screen] exactly what he does in the book.”

Filmink: There seemed to be a lot of internet chatter amongst fans of the novel about who should play David. What do you feel John brought to the role?

SJ: A faithful, valid and unapologetic interpretation of the character.

Filmink: Jessica Haines is a real find. It’s hard to believe this is her first film role….

SJ: Jessica brought honesty, integrity and authenticity to Lucy. She did a tremendous job with a demanding role.

Filmink: It’s often a concern of authors that a film adaptation will debase their work but it seems like your script is quite faithful to the novel. How did you approach the complexity of the novel (in terms of issues, metaphors and characters) in the sense of tightening and focusing on them cinematically?
AMM: Cinematically the story has to work. Often good books don’t necessarily make good films. Then there are the decisions of what to leave out and what to leave in, in order to make it a good cinema experience. When you read a book, your imagination fills in the gaps and your personal prejudices or beliefs and state of mind come into the way you are reading and understanding the story. But when you make a movie, it’s there in your face. The film has chosen a path for you, decided what you are seeing and feeling and in a way it makes a lot of decisions for you. With the book I felt there was a story that was very cinematic.

Disgrace opens nationally June 18.

Red Carpet Watch – Supermodel Kristy Hinze, her new hubby, the Netscape billionaire Jim Clark and the director of dolphin expose The Cove, Louie Psihoyos at the documentary’s Australian premiere. Clarke is the film’s Executive Producer and backer. Later in the day, at the Australian premiere of the Aussie/Israeli claymation co-production $9.99, some of the voice cast walked the carpet at Dendy Opera Quays including Claudia Karvan, fellow Secret Life of Us cast mate Samuel Johnson and Tom Budge.

Tickets are selling quickly for films in the festival line up, so hop to it. Sold out titles include 44 Inch Chest, Winged Creatures, Bastardy, Coraline, The Limits of Control, Dead Snow and Stolen.

For more information on films and screening times head to www.sff.org.au

THREE DOWN, HEAPS TO GO – DAY 3 OF SYDNEY FILM FEST. A DAILY BLOG

by Jim Mitchell | June 08, 2009 08:45

Today, Filmink took in a British double bill, two brilliant, wordy films that redefine the meaning of crudity.

First up, was 44 Inch Chest from Louis Mellis, scribe of Sexy Beast, where we meet walking contradiction Gary ‘Gal’ Dove (Ray Winstone, also of Sexy Beast), a hard man in paralysis from a broken heart. His wife Liz (Joanne Whalley, Scandal) has called it quits in their marriage, citing an affair with another man.

In a shabby room somewhere in London’s East End, Gal’s friends – Archie (Tom Wilkinson), the cantankerous and profane Old Man Peanut (John Hurt), the suave Meredith (Ian McShane) and the no-nonsense Mal (Stephen Dillane) – rally around him, suggesting a not unexpected form of revenge – on the flip of a coin it’s decided that Liz’s lover is going to cop it.

Before we know it, ‘Loverboy’ is kidnapped and interrogated firstly by Gal’s friends and then by Gal himself. It mightn’t sound like much of a premise but this is a film that’s driven more by its themes, plus a witty, crude and profane script (if this was censored you’d barely have any dialogue left) and richly drawn characters. Hurt is a standout as the craggy elder statesman of the group and Ian McShane is brilliantly charismatic, reveling in his portrayal of the openly gay Meredith. Winstone as you might expect gives another standout performance as the menacing but vulnerable Gal.

What’s most surprising is 44 Inch Chest’s rumination not only on revenge but the bond of love and marriage which Gal values so dearly – who’d have thought it, a sensitive hard man? “Love is like a Garden,” he tells Liz. “You’ve got to do the weeding to keep it beautiful.”

In fact, Gal’s five minute monologue has a distinctly Shakespearean feel to it while the film itself is inherently theatrical. The majority of 44 Inch Chest takes place in the one room but never feels claustrophobic with the ironic dialogue and performances thoroughly entertaining, drawing you in and the film becoming increasingly surreal as it approaches its denouement.

44 Inch Chest screens again on Saturday June 13.

Next up was In the Loop, a big screen spinoff of the Britcom The Thick of It created by Armando Iannnucci (I’m Alan Partridge).

Fledgling Minister for International Affairs Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) sets off a chain of events that will ripple across the Atlantic all the way to the White House. From the moment the bumbling polly opens his mouth it becomes clear that he’s headed on a cringe-inducing journey down the proverbial creek without a paddle. Simon has publicly stated that a war is “unforeseeable”, an act of extreme naivety at a time when war is clearly on the boil. Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi reprising his The Thick of It role as the seething, strangely eloquently uncouth Director of Communications to the Prime Minister) isn’t happy to say the least, going into damage control with typical bombast.

The fun really starts when Simon makes a further gaffe – “To walk the road of peace, sometimes we need to be ready to climb the mountain of conflict” he says – prompting White House political spin masters to pounce, drawing him in as their political pawn. From here on in, it’s a clash of social and political cultures between the polite Americans and the blunt Brits – although some of the former certainly give the latter a run for their money.

Each character is beautifully realised including cracking performances by Gina McKee as the sardonic British Press Secretary, Capaldi whose barbs could cut through steel, Hollander with his impeccable comic timing, a brilliantly uncouth James Gandolfini – like Tony Soprano in a uniform only 100 times funnier – and would you believe, My Girl’s Anna Chlumsky all grown up and sassy. An almost unrecognisable Steve Coogan turns up as one of Simon’s fiery constituents.

You wonder if, given its sitcom roots, that In the Loop might play out like an extended TV episode but the pace is swift just like the rapid fire dialogue. It never feels a stretch. In the Loop’s documentary, hand held style camerawork  and awkward scenarios could easily see it compared to Ricky Gervais’ The Office were it not for – and this comes at the risk of sacrilege – the more acerbic humour and filthy chatter – it’s more like a distant, cruder older cousin. In fact, In The Loop ingeniously and unapologetically pushes the envelope of crude so those easily offended beware. But if that doesn’t bother you, there’s much to enjoy in this brilliantly witty film – its caustic turn of phrase, frequent pop culture references, the way it mercilessly lampoons the machinations and manoeuvres of international politics as well as the aforementioned stellar performances.

In The Loop has been described in the festival’s program as doing “for Downing Street and the White House what The Hollowmen does for Canberra” but that’s not giving this needle-sharp political satire the praise it deserves. It should go down in the annals as a bone fide instant comedy classic. Seek it out.

In the Loop has its final screening on Tuesday.

Red Carpet Watch – director Steve Jacobs, Anna Maria Monticelli and the revelatory actress Jessica Haines of Disgrace based on Nobel Peace Laureate J.M Coetzee’s novel of the same time. We’ll have more on that film in our next post.

For more information on films and screening times head to www.sff.org.au

ON YOUR MARKS – DAY 2 OF SYDNEY FILM FEST. A DAILY BLOG

by Jim Mitchell | June 05, 2009 10:28

After the industry and punters had partied the opening night away, it was time to settle in to some serious screen gazing.

Filmink got the ball rolling with the gripping Burma VJ which mixes compellingly raw footage and reenactments to capture a rare uprising of Burmese nationals in 2007 against one of the most repressive regimes in the world. The footage generated from Rangoon comes from video journalists (or VJs) of the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), a covert organisation whose sole purpose is to document the horrific violation of human rights perpetrated by the government (with hidden cameras risking their own safety and indeed life).

Narrated by a man we know only as ‘Joshua’, the documentary tells how the aforementioned co-ordinated a network of illegal VJs, sending footage of the demonstrations led by Buddhist monks to the world, when internet servers were shut down and foreign journalists outlawed by the government. The scatter-shot footage, often smuggled out of the country and ultimately airing on major international networks like CNN shows the chilling development of a peaceful protest turning violent with vengeance enacted brutally by the military not only to the Burmese people but unthinkably to the monks.

While the footage contained in Burma VJ may ring true to those who remember seeing news coverage at the time, it is none the less extraordinary, not only for its breadth but for the risk taken by this band of tireless VJs in the face of extreme penalty, as they sent out a visual voice to the world and managed to have their own footage filtered back into the country. For a sobering cinematic experience, it would be hard to beat the fascinating Burma VJ.

Then it was a change of pace from France with the latest from director Claire Dennis (Beau Travail), 35 Shots of Rum. In a working class Parisian suburb, we experience the daily ritual of the protagonists’ lives; the laconic Lionel (Alex Descas, also appearing in The Limits of Control, the latest from Jim Jarmusch screening during this year’s festival) drives trains, his loyal daughter Joséphine (Mati Diop) studies at uni, their neighbour, the sunny Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue) drives taxis while another, the brooding Noé (Grégoire Colin from Denis’ The Intruder) flies in and out for work seemingly without attachment to anything. Lionel seems to be content with the life he shares with his daughter with whom he has a deep connection – “We’ve got everything here, why go looking elsewhere?” he tells her – but for others, life is less than whole. Joséphine, despite constantly doting on her father begins to feel restless, Gabrielle quietly pines for Lionel, while Noé awaits the day Joséphine will return his long standing romantic interest in any definitive way. Still, these characters, living in the same apartment in a working class suburb, are as Gabrielle says “family”, with a welcoming yet complex kinship gradually transforming as the forces of change impact each of their lives.

35 Shots of Rum is not for the impatient with its meandering pace that pays attention to the more mundane aspects of every-day life: loading the washing machine, cooking rice, smoking a cigarette. But perhaps the film’s pace is the point with Dennis and her cast bringing poignancy to those moments in life we may take for granted; the joy of eating a warm meal together, the silent communication of dance or a friendship where words aren’t always necessary. 35 Shots is a film that revels in the finer nuances of relationships. While letting the audience in, almost like voyeurs with little exposition and at times sparse dialogue, Dennis and the cast subtly tease out the complexities of what initially seem like fairly straight forward relationships. It’s not until the film’s final third that these connections, like the film’s title, can be fully appreciated. Like a train silently shuffling up to a platform, 35 Shots of Rum with its richness of warmth and humanity, slowly but surely creeps up on you.

Festival highlights in coming days include the competition contenders The Maid and the searing J.M Coetzee adaptation Disgrace, as well as local flick Van Diemen’s Land. There’s a portrait of a fashion icon in Valentino: The Last Emperor, another of a music icon and convicted murderer in The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector and the political satire of In the Loop featuring Steve Coogan and The Sopranos’ James Gandolfini. Next week sees the festival’s big guns arrive, Coraline voice star Teri Hatcher and action auteur John Woo.

For more information on films and screening times head to www.sff.org.au