Home Stories (Aussie films at Adelaide Film Fest 07)

Rare are the film festivals able to claim they have significantly encouraged local production. The Adelaide Film Festival is the first festival in Australia to actively fund Australian film on a large scale. Its Investment Fund provides A$1 million every two years for equity investment in works which then premiere in Adelaide.

From a programming standpoint it's a risky proposition, as you are committed to showcasing films before they've had a chance to be seen. However the fund has produced outstanding results so far: its first two projects were the internationally acclaimed Look Both Ways and Ten Canoes.

At its 2007 edition, the Festival premiered four Australian features (including Dr Plonk and The Home Song Stories), three documentaries (including Forbidden Lie$ and Kalaupapa - Heaven) and five shorts. The results, while mixed, are really encouraging and fully validate the fund's existence.



CLUBLAND

Cherie Nowlan's Clubland followed it warm response at Sundance (where it was bought by WB) with a sold-out Australian premiere in Adelaide.

Twenty-one year old Tim has a new girlfriend. It should be the perfect romance but a dark secret is holding him back: his parents are entertainers. Tim’s over-protective mum, the once legendary English club comedienne Jeannie Dwight (Brenda Blethyn, excellent), and his crooner dad have seen better days. Tim's attempts at emancipation threaten to shatter the fragile family dynamic, he finds out - the hard way - that he may be the only person capable of keeping the show on the road.

Crafting a melodrama that moves the audience without resorting to tragedy or sentimentality is a tall order, but ace screenwriter Keith Thompson does that and more with this well-written portrait of a dysfunctional family in crisis. Coming of age movies seem to work best when the person coming of age isn't the likely suspect. Brenda Blethyn's hysterical Jeannie learns to grow old gracefully, and it's her journey into maturity which is the film's emotional core.

There's fine acting amongst her juniors as well, with Khan Chittenden and Emma Booth making an engaging young screen couple. This Sydney-shot film avoids the pitfalls of the genre thanks to Cherie Nowlan's measured direction. The slick production values, generous characterisation and excellent performances elevate the material well above the soap episode the story might've called to mind.

There's emotional honesty in the relationships depicted here, between characters who are credible and likeable. Melodramas rely on the art of emotional manipulation, but Clubland does it with enough subtlety that the viewer avoids the bitter aftertaste of unwarranted tears.



THE HOME SONG STORIES

The Home Song Stories is the story of Rose, a glamorous Shanghai nightclub singer (Joan Chen), and her struggle to survive in Australia with her two young children. Based on a true story, the filmmaker's, this is an epic saga of mothers and sons, unrequited love and hidden secrets that spans continents and decades. It's also a story of migration and displacement, one most of us can relate to.

The film is narrated by Tom, a Chinese Australian writer working on a script about his life, beginning when he was a small boy in 1964. The film follows this narrative, charting the nightclub singer's journey from Hong Kong to Melbourne, her tumultuous love life and the hardships endured by Tom and his sister. As the kids grow up fatherless in a strange land, they learn to fend for themselves and become surrogate parents to their own erratic mother.

Tony Ayres follows up Walking on Water with a mature, semi-autobiographical work likely to connect with audiences of all backgrounds. The Home Song Stories allows Joan Chen to do her best work in years as the needy, unstable mother who wants the best for her family but looks in all the wrong places, unaware that she holds the key to its emotional balance.

There's a great sense of time and place at work here, backed up by sumptuous production design, costumes and photography. The script is too self-indulgent at times, and several scenes feel redundant, imbued as they are with self-pity and teary sentimentality. The melodramatic elements add-up however, and the film packs a powerful emotional punch which resonates long after the credits roll.



FORBIDDEN LIE$

This documentary and self-described literary thriller investigates the accusations that "Forbidden Love" author Norma Khouri made up her biographical tale of a Muslim friend who was killed for dating a Christian. The novel was a runaway bestseller translated in many languages and Khouri was the toast of the literary festival circuit until an article in the Sydney Morning Herald revealed the novel was in fact fiction. While honour killings do occur, they are not as frequent as Khouri would have her readers believe, and her particular story did not, in fact, happen.

Anna Broinowski's film is an engrossing, fast-paced investigation which picks apart the case built by Khouri, who's never fully admitted that she'd been lying to the public. The real coup here is the unlimited access to Khouri herself, who jumps at the opportunity to tell her side of the story, and perhaps bask further in the publicity she has become accustomed to.

Khouri is revealed to be a pathological liar and the plot thickens as the novelist spins further unlikely tales to lead the documentarian (and the viewer) away from the truth. In a sense, Norma Khouri, as a subject, is the gift that keeps on giving. The trouble here is that the filmmaker gets slightly carried away in her attempt to unpack every single lie, whether crucial to the narrative or not.

Conversely, issues likely to broaden the canvas and put the con into political perspective are barely touched upon. Published around the time of the invasion of Irak, the book fuelled the public's appetite for negative and simplistic portrayals of arabs. It might've been interesting to further explore the role that the book may have played in feeding the government's propaganda machine at a time when public opinion hadn't yet turned against the 'coalition of the willing'.

Our readiness to believe accounts which promulgate stereotypes about the Arab world is a distrurbing one, and the film does leave the viewer uneasy. However, I left the screening feeling uncomfortable for other reasons as well.

For a film about manipulation, Forbidden Lie$ was itself highly manipulative, ignoring the real chronology of the investigation's findings to drop narrative bombshell after bombshell on the viewer. For a film about exploitation, Forbidden Lie$ also felt slightly exploitative: how long can one stay outraged at the subject's shocking revelations once one learns that she suffers from a disorder and that her lies are indeed pathological?

Despite these reservations, this absorbing documentary is a thought-provoking conversation starter well worth catching.



KALAUPAPA - HEAVEN

Veteran filmmaker Paul Cox returns to the scene of his 1999 fictionalised biography Molokai: The Story of Father Damien, with this moving documentary about the people of Kalaupapa.

Kalaupapa, 20 minutes by plane from Honolulu, is a peninsula on the island of Molokai. It is a tropical heven with gorgeous beaches and lush vegetation—and for the past 140 years it has been one of the world’s most famous leprosy colonies.

Cox has gained the community's trust and this clearly shows in the candid interviews with the handful of inhabitants who have chosen to remain in the colony. Despite the ravages of Hansen's Disease, the stigma attached to their condition and the isolation they have faced for several decades, the ageing residents are animated with a spirit of generosity, solidarity and compassion which is truly inspiring.

The film itself is slightly too long and repetitive, and could have used tighter editing. It remains a fascinating document of a place soon to be forgotten and a community which deserves to be remembered.



DR PLONK

The time is 1907. Dr Plonk, A scientist and inventor, predicts that the world will end in 101 years, unless something is done about it. To prove his theory to the scientific community, he invents a time machine and travels to the future to capture signs of our civilization's decay.

The world premiere of Dr Plonk was a very fitting closing night for this adventurous but friendly festival. Rolf de Heer's new film, a silent black& white comedy, is a testament to this great Australian filmmaker's talent, inventivity and versatility - and of course, a love letter to cinema itself.

Shot on a hand-cranked camera and accompanied by a vivacious score by Graham Tardif (performed live on closing night by the Stilletto Sisters), Dr Plonk returns to the dawn of the medium to recapture the wow factor inherent in the simple tricks of early cinema. It's telling that the film which made the best use of the possibilities of the medium and came across as the most innovative was also the most backward-looking.

The film is filled to the brink with slapstick, action, heartfelt romance and beautifully choreographed moments of visual poetry. Its 83 minute running time flies by thanks to its great sense of pacing and relentless good hulmour. More than a tribute to Chaplin, it's also a witty, topical comment on our modern society and perhaps how little it has come since the time of The Great Dictator.



The Closing Night party took place in the Garden of Unearthly Delights, a fun-fair of performance spaces and vaudeville acts. It was a gorgeous place to unwind after a hectic week and share thoughts on the program with other visitors. There won't be another Adelaide International Film Festival until 2009 but I'm already looking forward to returning to South Australia.

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Home Stories (Aussie films at Adelaide Film Fest 07)