by Julian Wood
Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Nicholas Denton, Henry Nixon, Bishanyia Vincent, Helana Sawires, Will Johnston, Alan Dukes
Intro:
This is bold filmmaking, as much for what it does not try to do as for what it does.
The title of this elliptical new Australian drama fits it very well. It is intriguing but somehow nondescript at the same time. As an address, it feels sort of generic and indeed the house that is the centre of the film, set back from a long country road, is not remarkable. It is the place that the main couple in the film have moved into from the city. Jack (Nicholas Denton) is a decent kind of guy; he is a bit unfocussed but trying all the same. He has a seemingly important day job but often his only achievement for the day is to have chopped up a bit of firewood. His partner Anna is a medico at a local clinic a few miles away. (Anna is played by Tilda Cobham-Hervey who was so good as Helen Reddy in I Am Woman). Anna is more purposeful and focused than Jack, but she loves him and has high hopes for their tree change. We get the sense that both know her skills are more transferable.
The film evokes a sense of space, both physically and in the narrative. It takes its sweet time and feels languorous. The sound design is sparse but effective. The cinematography is equally well-matched to the mood of the piece. There are lots of long shots and pans and the countryside is captured as a place of long vistas, of emptiness but not desolation. The scenery is not really grand and dramatic. This is a landscape of brown and ochre scrubby semi-arable farmland, not of the eternal and awe-inspiring red centre.
Part of fitting in with the rural community is connecting with the locals and, at this, the couple are not especially successful. In fact, the few locals who do appear at the edge of the story seem to regard them as a bit weird. Soon enough, Anna and Jack fall into a sort of fantasy relationship to their circumstances. They start writing letters to each other, initially as themselves but then, in a more detached way, via characters they have invented.
This epistolary relationship is an interesting device to narrate loneliness and disconnection, but also as a literary device to explore buried or undisclosed feelings and resentments. You can say things in a letter that you might not be able (or willing) to vocalise to a person’s face. However, equally, there is something inherently unsatisfying about only using words where actions are needed.
James Litchfield’s feature is genuinely hard to classify and that is something in its own right. This is bold filmmaking, as much for what it does not try to do as for what it does. If that sounds paradoxical then, well, you just have to see the film to get it. For example, the film is a love story and concentrates obsessively on the couple circling around each other, but, despite some brief touches of intimacy, it never gets very physical. Also, there is a psychological thriller element introduced but this never gets full blooded or violent. It is almost as if going there would be to crash through to obviousness and require the film to buy into the horror genre with all its constraints and pitfalls. It swerves around that like an obstacle on a country road.
The film is not just quirky or offbeat, but unnervingly evasive. It is the kind of film that will annoy people but in a good way. Quite possibly, it will frustrate audiences but (and this is an important but), they will want to talk about it after and come out arguing about the characters and their motivations and what it all really meant. Once that irritant has been planted, maybe an oyster of appreciation can grow around it. One day we may look back on this film and see it as a one-off and an original contribution to Australian cinema.
