Worth: $13.00
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Cast:
Mark Leonard Winter, Silvia Colloca, Robert Menzies, Fabio Motta, Anya Beyersdorf
Intro:
... a film with a lot on its mind but doesn’t quite find the cinematic language to express it.
Shot in 2009 as a follow up to his WWII film Canopy, Aaron Wilson’s Little Tornadoes once again explores the weight of generational trauma on men – this time through the lens of Leo (Mark Leonard Winter, Measure for Measure), the son of Canopy’s Jim (Robert Menzies).
It’s the early 1970s and Leo’s wife Camille (Anya Beyersdorf) has left the family, including their two young children Maudey and Jack (played by real life siblings Minnie and Freddy Lisukiewicz). Leaving only a short and non-explanatory note and a set of keys behind on the table, Camille has departed for Melbourne as an escape from her drab existence in rural Victoria.
Alone and unable to fully comprehend Camille’s actions, nor adequately care for his beloved children, Leo sinks into a deep depression that is not aided by the fact that the era he lives in expects men to repress their emotions. He tries to speak to his father, Jim, but he is walled off by his own trauma of living through WWII and the death of his wife, Betty.
Leo is desperately seeking some kind of connection that will help him make sense of his life. That connection comes from his workmate, Italian immigrant Tony (Fabio Motta) suggesting that his sister Maria (Silvia Colloca) could help as a cook and babysitter in Leo’s home.
Little Tornadoes is a split narrative that concerns Leo’s struggles to find emotional equilibrium and a document of Maria’s immigrant experience. Maria’s voiceover is characterised by the wisdom of an outsider seeing Australia and those who live in it with a clarity that is poetic. We suspect that a lot of her dialogue comes from Wilson’s co-writer on the film, famed Australian author Christos Tsiolkas (Head On, The Slap).
Maria notes that Leo doesn’t yearn for a bigger life than the one he has established in the small town where he works in a factory. Leo’s whole world was his family and when he loses a vital part of it, he is forced to come to terms with what single parenting means, and how to best keep Maudey and Jack safe and happy.
The film is a very slow-moving character study that on one hand is subtle and on the other quite laboured. Even with its relatively short run time, there is a sense that Wilson is repeating motifs to the point of exhaustion.
Although Mark Leonard Winter’s performance is strong, so much of it is internal and relies on Wilson reiterating his loneliness by endlessly creating shots where the actor sits alone and stares off into the middle distance.
Enlivened by the appearance of Silvia Colloca’s character, the film still doesn’t quite know what to do with her. The Maria that appears on the screen seems somewhat at odds with the philosophical Maria depicted in the voice over. There is also the sense that Wilson is suggesting that no home can really be fulfilling without the presence of a woman. Snippets of a television vox pop discussing Germaine Greer and the emergence of second-wave feminism in Australia are supposed to point to something, yet it is curiously vague as to what Wilson is trying to say with them.
In the shadow of the Vietnam War, Jim’s experiences in WWII have a weight to them that could have enriched the character’s point of view. His monosyllabic reticence is partially explained by PTSD from the war. Leo’s desperate pleas for him to not ignore his grandchildren are one of the more heartfelt moments in the film and Wilson should have made more of the father/son relationship.
Little Tornadoes is a film with a lot on its mind but doesn’t quite find the cinematic language to express it. Although handsomely shot and immaculately period accurate, the film feels like the script never quite resolves on the points it is trying to make. The slowness of the film is not to its favour, making the narrative drag and many scenes feel pointlessly repeated. As Little Tornadoes is apparently the second film in a planned trilogy, Wilson will hopefully tie up his themes more succinctly in the third instalment.
