Film Review: Splice

Splice. 104 minutes. Rated MA15+. Directed by Vincenzo Natali. Screenplay by Vincenzo Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor.

If there’s one reason to see this rough and ready little B-Grade shocker, it’s to play that good old ‘spot the movie it’s trying to be’. It’s a great game, and on occasions like this, a far better way of getting bang for your buck than expecting to become involved in what the filmmakers loosely define as plot.

Scientists Clive (Adrien Brody powering along in career sabotage mode) and Elsa (Sarah Polley in perfect “you expect me to do what?!” mode) are fiddling around with genetic engineering experiments. There’s lots of dialogue about isolating protein, cloning, DNA and all sorts of other random scientific waffle that takes place in front of some impressive, heavy-duty scientific equipment. Curiously, it’s actually difficult to imagine these two being able to successfully engineer a mug of Continental Cup-a-Soup between them, but suddenly we have a mutant child/creature who, before you can say “Lots of Noodles”, grows into a mutant young adult called ‘Dren’ (Delphine Chanéac with more than a little help from the special effects department).

Clive and Elsa then spend the rest of the movie educating, nurturing, imprisoning, surgically mutilating, chasing, punishing and generally torturing the poor creature until, as you might expect, she turns against them. And who can blame her? The only real surprise is that it takes her as long as it does to get some pay-back on our peculiar pair of nerdy control freaks.

Ms Chanéac’s mutant gets all the best moments and gives the best performance, which is even more bizarre given that most of her body is computer-generated. The promise shown by occasionally dodgy mutant baby creature quickly evaporates as we find ourselves in ‘abandoned country house and surrounding snow-bound forest territory’ where Natali (Cube), cinematographer Tetsuo Nagata (The Passionate Life of Edith Piaf) and editor Michele Conroy try desperately hard to ramp-up the tension and suspense, but only end up not being able to increase the body count quickly enough to maintain even a nominal amount of interest.

As for our game, I spotted Alien, Jeepers Creepers and Frankenstein – but I won’t say anymore because I don’t want to ruin your fun, especially since it’s the only fun you’ll have.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.

Theatre Review: The Bougainville Photoplay Project

The Bougainville Photoplay Project. Devised and performed by Paul Dwyer. Directed by David Williams. Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall until August 15.

In the award-winning 1999 documentary Facing The Demons, the family and friends of murder victim Michael Marslew meet face-to-face in a ‘restorative justice conference’ between two of the offenders responsible for Michael’s death. Produced by the Dee Cameron Company, the documentary was broadcast to widespread critical and public acclaim – going on to win the Logie for ‘Best Documentary’ and the Award for Best Television at the United Nations’ annual Media Peace Awards.

‘Restorative justice’ and ‘restorative practice’ are both more- and less-complex versions of the concept of mediation, fuelled by society’s need (and preference) for understanding, forgiveness, harmony and mutual respect and cooperation as opposed to the ‘criminal justice system’ that focuses exclusively on argument, punishment, incarceration and – hopefully – rehabilitation.

In this beautifully directed and performed lecture, Dr Dwyer explores the essence of restorative justice through his engrossing, intimate reminiscence of his father Allan’s work (and his young family’s experience of it) as a renowned orthopedic surgeon in Bougainville during the 1960s. Gradually, the performance shifts its focus to the post-colonial relationships between the people of Bougainville, the Australian Government and BCL (a subsidiary of the mining giant Rio Tinto) whose enormous open-cut copper mine resulted in social and environmental armageddon.

Through the use of archival video (including the mining company’s shocking propaganda film My Valley is Changing), slides of a young family’s visits to Bougainville, photographs, projections and a collection of the “miracle doctor’s” tools the ghost of Dr Allan Dwyer pervades the performance, which makes its capitulation into agitprop a little discomforting. The juxtaposition between the pure-hearted goodness of one (the good doctor) with the capitalistic, imperialistic and self-serving actions of the other (the evil mining corporation) fails to do the argument complete justice. There is no illumination with regards to what the advantages of this mine might have been (if in fact there even were any), and yet without it, there is a hint of political opportunism that for inquiring minds, decreases the overall effectiveness of the piece. The resulting simplistic strain of revenging and avenging the horrors of destructive industry in the bountiful region also fails to meet the complex psychological imperatives within the concept of ‘restorative practice’ – abandoning us, instead, approximately halfway up the great Silvan Tomkins’s ‘Nine Affects’ scale of the human expression of emotion (disgust, distress and shame).

Interestingly, apart from the stunning recreations of his father’s surgical procedures, Dr Dwyer really ups the stakes with a stunning performance of his dangerous nighttime trek to a local forgiveness ceremony. With the use of only a tiny flashlight and a complete command of Bougainville’s lingua franca – Tok Pisin – we experience another level of engagement entirely both with and between the performer and his story. It becomes something like an exorcism – and is at once thrilling, dangerous and exciting. It is also the only point at where the performance embodies the fundamental cultural differences and similarities that define the accepted endpoint of restorative practice in action – which is euphoria, discovered through the act of understanding, acceptance and forgiveness, not the conceptualisation and analysis of it.

Dr Dwyer’s quiet and disarming final statement is that he plans to return to Bougainville with his two sons sometime in the not too distant future. I, for one, wish him well. What it will ultimately take for our nation to follow, sadly, remains anyone’s guess.

This review was commissioned by Stage Whispers Magazine @ www.stagewhispers.com.au

DVD Review: The Last Song

The Last Song. 103 minutes. Rated PG. Directed by Julie Anne Robinson. Screenplay by Nicholas Sparks and Jeff Van Wie. Adapted from the novel by Nicholas Sparks.

When the behemoth Avatar was knocked off the top spot on US box office list, it was by a great little film called Dear John – the story of a young soldier’s (John, played by Channing Tatum) love affair with ‘Savannah’ (played by Amanda Seyfried). Dear John also heralded an international breakthrough for writer Nicholas Sparks (whose 2004 novel The Notebook had also been adapted into a successful film starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams).

The secret to Sparks’s success lies in the simple fact that he doesn’t take his predominantly younger audiences for fools – and while his books follow a faintly predictable pathway through romantic drama and all the attendant complications, there is always more than enough character development to ensure we care enough to want to know what is going to happen in the end.

Ronnie Miller (Miley Cyrus) and her brother Jonah (Bobby Coleman) go to spend the holidays with their father Steve (Greg Kinnear) at his house by the sea. The fractured family dynamics play out perfectly as Ronnie punishes her father for having separated from their mother Kim (Kelly Preston) by sulking around the place and taking him to task for his very obvious failings as a husband and father. When she meets a handsome local lad Will (Liam Hemsworth), Ronnie gradually begins to understand that love – and life – can be a great deal more complicated than she ever imagined.

Skilfully directed by Julie Anne Robinson (whose previous work consists mostly of television including episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Weeds) and beautifully edited by Nancy Richardson (Twilight, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) who is obviously right at home in this territory, The Last Song is a charming, engaging and ultimately deeply moving story about the ties that bind us together in our search for someone who will love and understand us.

Cyrus (better known to practically everyone as the indefatigable Hannah Montana) and Melbourne-born Hemsworth (Neighbours, McLeod's Daughters, Home and Away) are excellent as the young leads, and the success of the film owes much to their onscreen charisma and complete lack of pretension. Bobby Coleman is superb as the little brother – and his pivotal scenes late in the film as the drama reaches its conclusion are beautifully handled and extremely moving.

Kinnear (As Good as It Gets, Little Miss Sunshine) delivers an under-stated performance as the ‘can’t-do-anything-right’ Dad, but his character’s journey through the film is ultimately revealed to have been beautifully controlled and painfully honest. The shot of him and Ms Cyrus on the verandah of his house as Jonah is taken home by his mother toward the end of the story is unforgettable.

The Last Song is a smart, surprising, rewarding, deeply-affecting film that will reward lovers of contemporary romantic drama – and it is well worth every minute of the time you spend in its engrossing company.

Pictured: Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth in The Last Song.

The review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.

Theatre Review: Sappho ... In 9 Fragments

Sappho … in 9 Fragments. Written and performed by Jane Montgomery Griffiths. Staging by Marion Potts. CUB Malthouse, Melbourne until August 21.

Sometimes being in the audience at the theatre can be an enlightening, entertaining, challenging, thought-provoking, deeply moving and uplifting affair. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, it can be all of these things. Mostly, you count yourself lucky if it’s one of them. Sometimes, you can also sit there wondering what on earth is going on, and I need to confess, straight up, that from the moment it started to the moment it finished, Ms Montgomery Griffiths’ brilliantly performed ode to the poet Sappho went straight over my head. I’m sorry, but it did. I felt it all whiz past me, as I stared balefully at the stage wondering what on earth I’d missed. Had Act One started at 6pm? Was this Act Two? Why was she naked? Where do you go from the purest of human physical forms?

And like falling asleep on a train and waking up – panicked and disorientated – at an instantly unrecognisable locale, I realised that I was in the wrong place – particularly complex when you’re there to write a review. The harder I tried to concentrate, the more hazy it all became. I would grip onto a word, a phrase, a sentence … desperately trying to make sense of it all. What was it trying to say? What was I supposed to feel?

What is that great big box doing taking up almost the entire stage and restricting one of the most singularly adventurous and physically literate actresses in the country to a zillionenth of what might have been possible?

I’m hallucinating! Embellishing! Delirious with the fear of my own dumbness. The starkness of my sudden and confronting illiteracy! I’ve got no idea what she’s talking about. Oh, wait. Gaps. I am the gap. The gap. Gap. Gap between what? And what? The gap between all this wonderfully clever writing and acting and my power of even fundamental comprehension. She’s in love with someone who’s gorgeous and … oh, now she’s a nasty bossy nasty piece of work. I think. Maybe.

Biscuit tin. Now I am in a biscuit tin. I visualise a biscuit tin – one with a particularly pretty embossed tableau of some sweet, snow-bound English village like the ones you buy really cheaply at Coles at Christmas Time to have on standby for when friends drop by and have a Christmas present for you and you don’t have one for them. God!

This Sappho is everything! … and she has a beautiful coat.

I’m clever enough, I think, to know that the play is going to finish when the honey has all dripped out of the box and onto the stage. I have to keep telling myself it’s honey, because my poor little over-zealous imagination is beginning to imagine it’s something else. But nothing prepared me for the meat-tray.

I leave the theatre with my platonic plus one and we wander, destroyed and disillusioned, off into whatever remains of our ordinary little, happier lives.

It’s been five days and it’s still no clearer … but I did go to Borders and try to buy a book I’ve always wanted to read: The Death of Socrates. Or Plato. One of them. They don’t have it in stock! I’ve failed again. I will be cleverer! This intoxicating Sappho would expect nothing less. Would she?

Pictured: Jane Montgomery Griffith in Sappho. Photographed by Jeff Busby.

Theatre Review: Stephen Lynch – The Three Balloons Tour

Stephen Lynch: The 3 Balloons Tour. The Palms at Crown, Melbourne.

Diminutive YouTube phenonemon and Tony Award Nominee Stephen Lynch took all of about a minute to have the capacity crowd eating out of his hands with a hilarious video about a ‘Hands on a Hard Body’ competition. In it, Mr Lynch has been in training for ages (along with a rag-tag bunch of other competitors), to endure the wintery elements and keep his hands firmly planted on a truck. The person who keeps their hands on the truck the longest, wins the truck. Hands gloved and incredibly psyched up for what could be any number of days and nights ahead, the competition begins and everyone places their hands on the truck. Lynch’s punch-drunk enthusiasm immediately gets the better of him, and in a moment of unbridled glee, he removes his hands from the truck and waves them about in the air. And he is immediately disqualified.

It is this marvelously endearing moment of self-deprecating humour that sets the tone for all that is follow, as Lynch sets out to avenge his obvious failings with the incarnation of a (literally) devilishly sexy and blokey personae where nothing is off-limits. His imitation of Christopher Reeve (“Dear Diary”) was spectacular – just as his safety valve (the words “too soon?”) challenged us all to lighten up and question the extent to which we were truly outraged. The difference is all in the intention, and one never sensed that Mr Lynch was being cruel. He was, instead, harvesting recognisable moments of our lives and our history to bring us all to the euphoric point of just being able to have a bloody good laugh, in spite of our earnest concerns about being politically incorrect.

This was certainly not a show for the uptight PC crowd who would have been totally offended by much of what was on offer. When comedians push the envelope to the extent that Mr Lynch does, it all comes down to talent and charisma. Even though he admitted to feeling terribly jetlagged and sick (which showed in some of the slower rambling segments that barely held together), you never had the sense that here was a performer taking themselves too seriously.

There was also the added bonus of the devoted audience singing along (not bad for someone whose work we only know of from YouTube), and his song about his “special” friend (“Special Ed”) had the audience roaring out the lyrics (“ … and now his mother keeps him in the / SHED!”) Interestingly, the most vocal members of the audience were male – proving that regardless how we all feel about a song about waiting for the results of our AIDS test (which started the show), its provocative lyrics certainly found their mark. Subliminally, Mr Lynch is also making a significant comment about the importance of safe-sex – and I would posit that a large percentage of his audience would take-home a punchy and compelling message about the need for it in their lives. He should be congratulated for taking the time and the responsibility because, frankly, no-one else is.

Lynch was superbly supported by his best mate Rod Cone who, expertly, was the butt (both literally and figuratively) of Mr Lynch’s rambling odyssey to bromance and appalling humourous, blokey camaraderie. Their song about the ‘hot girl’s fat best friend’ in the pub was so spot-on that it has been the subject of much conversation ever since – as was the song about “Queer Tattoos”, which was almost as clever and tear-inducingly hilarious as it got.

The sound at The Palms at Crown was stunning, but the lighting was appalling which resulted in a nasty shadow residing under Mr Lynch’s chin all night which only succeeded in ageing him by about thirty years. Utterly unattractive.

Knife-edge satire (where Mr Lynch happily and unapologetically lives) is a punishing form of comedy, and lesser talents would have crumbled under the conceit. Not so Mr Lynch, whose singing voice, diction and timing is fantastic and who can really belt out his tunes on the guitar and the piano. His use of his guitar as a lute was just sensational. Tom Lehrer, Noel Coward, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore all forged careers with satirical observations about the cause and effect of manners, ambition, society and the travails that come with each and all of those things – and Mr Lynch is doing a marvellous job of keeping the camp fires burning. Check him out on YouTube. You may very well be mortified, but you won’t be disappointed.

This review was commissioned by Stage Whispers Magazine @ www.stagewhispers.com.au

Film Review: The Ghost Writer

The Ghost Writer. 128 minutes. Rated MA15+. Directed by Roman Polanski. Screenplay by Roman Polanski and Robert Harris. Adapted from the novel The Ghost by Robert Harris.

The rich vein of undeniable political nous that is to be found in this grim, gloomy and intense political thriller from Roman Polanski (The Pianist, Chinatown, Tess, Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant) makes for an absorbing film – and fans of intricate politically-motivated thrillers will love every minute of it. Harris’s terrifically taunt and candid script (that at times has the tone of a confession), benefits considerably from his experience as a news and current affairs BBC journalist and Political Editor of the UK’s The Observer.

With the assistance of a ‘ghost writer’ (someone who is paid to write a book that is credited to another author), British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) is writing his memoirs. Following the mysterious death of his is first ghost writer, an un-named young writer, ‘The Ghost’ (played by Ewan McGregor), replaces him on a wind-swept island fortress. As Lang finds himself facing accusations of war crimes for Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war, The Ghost uncovers startling truths about his client’s political obligation to the Americans which, if they were ever to become public knowledge, would bring down the British Prime Minister and his government.

Unsurprisingly, the sun doesn’t appear to shine much in Mr Polanski’s world these days – and it doesn’t make a single appearance in this film. Post-production on The Ghost Writer was reportedly completed while the director was under house-arrest in Switzerland awaiting the outcome of an extradition attempt by the United States to face sex assault accusations dating back to March, 1977.

The stark photography from Cinematographer Pawel Edelman is perfect and Editor Hervé de Luze (both Oscar nominees for The Pianist) is in nail-bitingly good form, while Production Designer Albrecht Konrad’s fortress home set is a masterpiece. Alexandre Desplat’s score (Fantastic Mr Fox, The Queen) enhances the tense mood of the film perfectly.

Kim Cattrall (Samantha from Sex and The City) is great as Lang’s loyal PA, while Olivia Williams as his wife Ruth, absolutely nails every neurotic detail of the feisty First Lady who has a great deal to lose. Only Brosnan and McGregor fail to lose themselves entirely in the plot – choosing, instead, to play it deadly straight. And in a Roman Polanksi film, that’s always an obvious mistake.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group and an edited version of it appeared in the printed edition of The Geraldton Guardian.

Theatre Review: Norm and Ahmed

Norm and Ahmed by Alex Buzo. Directed by Alex Pinder. La Mama, Melbourne, until August 15.

Anyone who wants to know anything about playwriting, directing, acting and designing has until August 15 to get themselves to La Mama and see this brilliant account of Mr Buzo’s (a national treasure, surely) faultless first play.

Written in 1969 (which today is somehow almost too confronting to accept), it was notoriously the subject of a prosecution for obscenity – not, as La Mama’s Artistic Director Liz Jones pointed out (in her wonderful and emotional postscript to the performance) for the use of the word “boong”, but for the use of the word “fucking”. It was here, at La Mama, that Norm and Ahmed was first produced – and as a gentleman in the audience pointed out before the drawing of the famous ‘La Mama Raffle’: “Have the police been notified?” Norm and Ahmed also holds the La Mama record for the most re-stagings of a play at the theatre – with this Many Moons production being the fifth.

Mr Buzo’s script is all lean, theatrical muscle and Mr Pinder’s direction of it is absolutely beautiful in its stark and pure textual complicity. Peter Finlay (Norm) and Kevin Ponniah (Ahmed) deliver two of the most accomplished, tour de force performances in recent memory, and one has no choice but to forgive them their opening night nerves in front of a capacity house – bursting at the seams – for this rare and historic occasion.

In ‘Norm’, Mr Buzo somehow miraculously – and entirely – encapsulates a complex national identity including its deep-seated anxieties about the very essence of what it means to be different. From ‘Norm’s’ razor-sharp commentary about the “perverts” in the bushes to his moving reminiscence of his late wife ‘Beryl’ and his experiences as a soldier in the war – Norm is a monstrously illuminating creation. That people like him still exist, is cause for serious contemplation – and it is in his holding up of the cracked mirror where we, reluctantly, may find something of our own prejudices reflected, that marks Mr Buzo as a truly astonishing playwright. That it’s all done and dusted in under an hour makes him a master.

The tendency to fall into caricature in the performance of these two roles is never far from likely – such is the perilous line between stereotype and archetype around which great writers of great characters for the stage dance. In Mr Finlay’s hands, however, the immensely complex ‘Norm’ is in a craftsman’s hands. At times, through a most incredible vocal and emotional range, it was never entirely clear if Norm was going to kiss Ahmed or kill him. Norm’s vulnerability, his fear, his hatred and his quintessential Australian suspicion are all beautifully realised in this stunning performance. For anyone even remotely interested in the art of acting, this is what it looks and feels like. As Ahmed, Mr Ponniah is all wide-eyed wonderment and naivety – layered with a sense of genuine eagerness to be accepted by his marvelously engaging new-found friend. Mr Ponniah’s complete command of Mr Buzo’s dialogue was superb – and the audience loved it. The shouts and cheers at the end of the performance, with curtain calls which one sensed could have gone on all night, were entirely well-deserved.

Nothing, however, can prepare you for the final moment in Norm and Ahmed – and the woman sitting three seats away from me almost leaping from her seat and screaming “No!”, was the entire measure of this electric night in the theatre. It is compulsory viewing. Go.

This review was commissioned by Stage Whispers Magazine @ www.stagewhispers.com.au