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Hot Flix and Cold Nights at the 2006 Melbourne International Film Festival
by BRETT WOODWARDBY the time the final week of the 2006 Melbourne International Film Festival rolled around I was like a jaded audience member at a gladiatorial bout at the Colliseum. I'd seen every combination of man and creature do battle and I wanted, quite unreasonably, to see something truly novel. While it's extremely difficult to find somewhere in Melbourne to watch monkeys box, MIFF had plenty more to offer. 
"A Scanner Darkly" I wanted an Errol Morris documentary out of "Muskrat Lovely". More specifically, I wanted Errol Morris' "Vernon, Florida" out of "Muskrat Lovely", which is very unfair. This short documentary had all the right ingredients for a quirky exploration of small town life: a thriving trade in small mammal meat, a competition to show off the local lovelies and a village full of people wearing hunting caps indoors. But while it was very sweet - staunchly resisting the impulse to ridicule the hayseeds or add condescending narration - "Muskrat Lovely" just drifted by. Over the course of the film, the residents of Dorchester County in Maryland educate the viewer on the social mores of their town, highlight odd regional habits and offer plenty of advice on how to trap, skin, dress and cook a muskrat. The parallel story of the "Miss Outdoors" pageant looks deeper into the lives of the county's younger residents but doesn't turn up much you don't already know, chiefly, you've got to make your own fun when you're living in the bush. Hence the addition of a swimsuit and evening wear section to the annual Outdoor Lifestyle expo. Visitors can pick up a new rifle, a rubber dingy, a case of Muskrat jerky and a young bride without having to stray too far from the bar tent. Two things stuck with me from this pleasant, but not world-beating, doc: you can stuff, season and garnish a roasted Muskrat all you want, but it's still a rat. Secondly, don't run while on stage in high heels and a bikini in case you fart in front of the judges. Guaranteed points off. If you've ever stayed in a country motel you're familiar with the work of Florence Broadhurst. If it involves curtains or wall-paper that incorporates garish floral patterns or the eye-gouging colour combination of electric blue, lime green and hot pink, Florence probably had a hand in its manufacture. After decades of concocting fictional lives and personalities for herself, Florence Broadhurst settled on becoming one of Australia's most celebrated designers throughout the 1960s and into the 70s. Her hand silk-screened Op Art interior decorations were in demand whenever a pop star's mansion or a groovy young king's castle was being renovated. Her bold patterns have seen a revival in recent years putting her name once more in the spotlight. The lady herself is no longer around to enjoy her second brush with fame having been brutally murdered 30 years ago in one of Australia's most outrageous unsolved society slayings. "Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives Of Florence Broadhurst" is director Gillian Armstrong's ("My Brilliant Career", "Starstruck", "Charlotte Gray") loving documentary recreation of a life that was more fiction that fact and concluded like a thriller. Broadhurst was born on a remote Queensland cattle station at the turn of the 20th century. From a young age she wanted nothing to do with Queensland or cattle stations. She applied herself to elocution lessons and bolted for Shanghai as a teenager. This courageous but desperate move, for a girl of tender years, saw her flitting about the Far East for a decade as a dancer, singer and troupe member of a succession of light entertainment companies. Wherever she landed, Florence sought out the wealthy and flamboyant, always hoping to insinuate herself into their company and leave her rural past behind for good. If her many tales are to be believed, she was seen on the arms of Barons and Dukes and courted by Rajas. By the time she arrived in London between the wars she had a whole bogus identity as a famous opera singer in place. With a few old family photos, letters and reminiscences to go on, Armstrong pieces together Broadhurst's early years utilising stylised rear projection and a collage animation technique familiar from Terry Gilliam's work on the Monty Python TV show. For a time Broadhurst did quite well in the couture trade having stolen the client list of an established fashion designer. When her fortunes waned in England, she found herself back in Australia, cursing her past. In Sydney she clawed her way up the social ladder with high-profile charity work, a fake British identity, yarns about being a confidant of the Queen Mother and a cover story to explain away her down-at-heel husband's truck repair business as a luxury car importer. Dumb luck saw her stumble into a small wallpaper factory. With nothing but the determination that had seen her through all manner of scrapes, Broadhurst embarked on a new career at an age when most people are looking forward to retirement. The business boomed. Over a decade she became a respected - but some say loathed - designer who commanded the enduring respect of her staff while treating them like prisoners on work release. Early one morning in 1977, Broadhurst was beaten to death with an exotic manufacturing tool. The killer let themself in and out of her factory, the site of the murder, with a hidden key. Broadhurst was making her slayer a cup of tea when they struck from behind. All clues pointed to someone well know to the victim but the cops never established a single worthwhile lead. Rumours abounded about her harem of boyfriends, one of whom was nursing a chronic smack habit. Attention was also focused on her estranged son who was thought to benefit most from her death. Even the dodgy accounting firm that was later implicated in the legendary "Bottom of the Harbour" tax scams came under scrutiny. Thousands of Sydney socialites attended Broadhurst's funeral and still mourn her passing, obliquely referring to who they believe was the culprit. Contemporary designers are interviewed about the groundbreaking wallpaper designs and explain the resurgence in their popularity. "Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives Of Florence Broadhurst" is mobs of fun and, unusual for an Aussie documentary, is getting a limited run in theatres. Love the work of author Philip K. Dick and I don't mind director Richard Linklater ("Slacker", "Dazed and Confused", "School of Rock"). However, the animation technique Linklater first trotted out in "Waking Life" (2001), and that he re-employs for his adaptation of Dick's "A Scanner Darkly", sucks. So Linklater has some software that paints over real footage to make it look somewhat cartoon-y - big whoop! There was a good reason why, during the worldwide hullaballoo over everything "Lord of the Rings", nobody mentioned Ralph "Fritz The Cat" Bakshi's little known 1978 animated adaptation of the Tolkien saga. It was dreadful, but with a look awfully similar to what Linklater is messing about with now. "A Scanner Darkly" is classic Dick. Sci-fi paranoia, futuristic drugs, police surveillance, nobody certain of anyone's true identity, even their own. Keanu Reeves plays Bob Arctor who is either an undercover cop so deeply entangled in his sleazy underworld that he is losing his mind OR he is simply a junkie so messed up he believes he is an undercover cop. In a household full of fellow Substance D addicts, Arctor goes about everyday life perpetually on the brink. Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr phone in pretty standard doper performances but Rory Cochrane, as the unhinged D-freak Charles Freck, does a splendid job of exhibiting every sign of Speed psychosis. "A Scanner Darkly" is easy enough to watch and you could add it to the pile next time you're renting a bunch of cheap weekly DVDs, but it certainly won't turn you on to Dick's sublimely twisted fiction. Oh, and Keanu will probably dip out on an Oscar again next year. Still on an animation jag, Bruce Petty's "Global Haywire" was yet another fine instalment in the filmography of one of our nation's treasures. Petty has been Australia's pre-eminent political cartoonist, and social conscience, for more than half a century. His knack has always been to hose away the bullshit to expose the lies or simply to reduce a complex argument to its core so that that the rest of us lunkheads can look on admiringly and say, "Oh yeah, right, good point, never thought of it that way, nice work Bruce." Unlike Keanu, Petty got his first Oscar 30 years ago. In "Global Haywire" Petty fast-forwards through hundreds of years of capitalism, conquest and civilisation to explain why you're still working for shitty pay and your government gets to waste your tax dollars. Along the way he clarifies the situation with the Industrial Revolution, dozens of wars, slavery, terrorism, colonialism, climate change and just why we're all suckers for free drinks. Petty's rough and ready animation, a trademark style that has weathered decades of filmmaking fashion, is cut together with commentary from the likes of Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Robert Fisk as well as a few passersby who had something relevant to add to the conversation. The film is genuinely funny satire with some moments of devastating truth. The ABC usually run Petty's work so give it a look if, like me, you prefer 700 years of history condensed into an hour cartoon. You won't feel nearly so bad about having to front up for a family Christmas after seeing "Running Stumbled", unless your family are a bunch of pill-crazed head-cases who live in a garbage strewn Louisiana hovel. If they are, you might want to rent a Chevy Chase movie instead. John Maringouin's dad tried to kill him 25 years ago before the boy fled with his mother. Now a documentary filmmaker, Maringouin shows up at his father's house in an attempt to find out why the family disintegrated. Dad is, or was, a mildly successful New Orleans artist called Johnny Roe. Nowadays he lives in a few shabby rooms piled with memories and cat shit. Roe constantly bickers with his girlfriend of nine years, Virgie Marie Pennoui, who rambles incoherently like a cross between a bad Beat poet and Dennis Hopper's brain-fried photographer from "Apocalypse Now!". Roe no longer paints his trippy Picasso-esque portraits and surrealist landscapes and hasn't for years. In his own mind he is always just a few days from getting straight back into the art world, as soon as he does the rounds of a few local drive-in pharmacies and picks up a couple of hundred valium and codeine tablets. Roe appears to be deluded and sliding rapidly into early senility and chronic ill-health. Virgie Marie is giving him all the help to the graveyard she can. She yaks endlessly about dying while Johnny encourages her to hurry up and do so. It transpires that Johnny Roe has spent the years since he last saw his son in the company of chronic drunks and dopers who make Charles Bukowski's drinking buddies look like the cast of "Cheers". Johnny counts genuine psychotics - guys who pull a shotgun on cops for a giggle - as his closest friends. Unfortunately they are all dead or institutionalised and Roe's limited social contact is generally with his equally flaky brother, his dying mother or doctors supplying his multiple prescriptions. Maringouin wanders back into his father's life, turns his camera on and sticks around for a couple of weeks. The quiet desperation, the wasted years and lives, the seeming hopelessness of Roe's current situation all pile up like the garbage in his neglected kitchen. It's like a morbid reality show where the losers that are voted off are taken away in an ambulance. It's compelling viewing that shuffles through 13 'chapters' before the shock conclusion. Near the end Maringouin (who remains at arm's length for most of the doc and adds no narration) states that he feels like killing the remainder of his family to end the suffering - and you take his point! Then, the impossible happens. A shattering film, one that has haunted me since. Only read recently that the ending we saw at the MIFF screening was added well after completion as unexpected family events unfolded. I'm a sucker for pretty much any film screening that has live music and "Chronopolis" scratched that itch for this year's festival. Enjoyed the mildly experimental electronica that formed the soundtrack. Part of it came from a laptop, some from "Chronopolis" director/producer/lead performer David Shea's keyboard and the rest from a chamber ensemble participating in one of those improvisation game pieces like John Zorn's "Cobra". Shea has worked with Zorn in the past so the approach is not surprising. The result was a lot less random noodling than most people suspect. I'm supposing that I should have spent less time watching the performers and more time looking at the images up on screen. Although the video component was linked by a sketchy narrative that was explained in the hand-out we all received in the queue prior to the show, I found the mash-up of, um, everything, to be exactly what I expected and not a visual knockout. With every nightclub that's plugged in a video projector running "Astro Boy" back to back with "Triumph Of The Will", "Koyaaniqatsi", obscure Blaxplotation movies and old footage of scientific experiments, this sort of stuff is pretty easy to come by and just as easy to ignore. I felt like I could have enjoyed "Chronopolis" more on a club couch with a frosty in my hand, chatting about sauerkraut recipes during the slow parts and nodding along when a particularly decent clarinet solo caught my attention. My, aren't we a media saturated bunch! Al Franken would agree. Media saturation, particularly of the Right Wing kind, is what gets right up his nose in "Al Franken: And God Spoke". This campaign trail documentary is pretty much the film companion to his book of a couple of years back, "Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them". Franken is a former "Saturday Night Live" performer and 20-year comedy veteran who has turned to politics. He somehow retained his sense of humour and loves nothing more than to turn it on the frothing hate-mongers that populate US talk radio and the kind of Bush propaganda TV that masquerades as Current Affairs. Franken gets to face his rivals, set up a radio show to counter the crap and follow the last US election to its inevitable conclusion. Franken's mind is as sharp as his wit and he's tearing slices from his foes not just launching custard pies at their faces. Although it's wicked fun to see him verbally slap around the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, it's ultimately disheartening and more than a little terrifying to see the hold these chuckleheads have over American airwaves. You know you've got the chumps on the run when they set up a website to smear you (www.frankenlies.com) but for a serious laugh and a healthy dose of the truth you're better off at www.al-franken.com. Great to see Tsui Hark in Melbourne to introduce his new flick, "Seven Swords", but while it makes all the right martial arts moves, it's a very familiar story. A mountaintop village is assailed by bandits who are collecting souvenir body parts to cash in for a royal bounty on political troublemakers. The villagers engage the services of seven mysterious Fu masters who will make new friends, be kind to children and animals and woo a maiden or two before taking out the bandit trash. You've seen it, you get it, you liked it last time. "Seven Swords" is a slick production but I kept wishing I was watching the new "Miami Vice" remake instead. Hark's "The Blade", back in 1995, was the pinnacle of his dusty, smoky, dirty, sadistic, blood-drenched noodle Westerns. After that, following John Woo's lead, Hark's ventured to Hollywood to make not one but two movies with Jean-Claude Van Damme! Stinging from "Double Team" and "Knock Off" (Jean-Claude is a fashion designer who fights terrorists with Rob Schneider as his sidekick. Unlike "Double Team", it was MEANT to be a comedy) Hark fled back to Hong Kong and has been turning out some decent movies like "Time and Tide" and "The Legend of Zu". "Seven Swords" makes it over the line, mainly due to the creative swordplay, bizarre gothic costumes and exotic weaponry. "Rampo Noir" was a mixed bag, being a collection of four horror stories or what used to be known as an anthology or Portmanteau film back when Vincent Price or Peter Cushing would typically anchor the cast of this type of movie. Based on the work of Japanese writer Edogawa Ranpo (say 'Edgar Allen Poe' in a bad accent) the short stories ranged from truly disturbing to a touch confusing. In "Mars Canal", Asian hunk Asano Tadanobu runs around in the buff screaming while he flashes back to some rough sex - thankfully over in a matter of minutes. "Mirror Hell" was much better, a supernatural whodunnit with cursed mirrors sucking the life from vain housewives. "Caterpillar" ramped up the dread with its depiction of a sexually sadistic beauty who keeps her hubby on a short leash - literally. The final chapter, "Crawling Bugs", tipped the audience over the edge. Amputations, crazed artisans and kinky sex paled in comparison to a loner with a skin condition who builds an altar to the one he loves out of the one he loves! I first began working at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 1993 and continued until 2005. During that time I watched a gajillion movies in order to program the festival. I got to attend some fine overseas film festivals but never, until this year, got to attend MIFF as a genuine popcorn-munching, cola-belching, "Hey, you with the afro, down in front!"-yelling audience member. I knew with absolute certainty it was the best film festival in Australia, Asia and a big chunk of the rest of the world. With more than 400 features, documentaries and shorts it's also one of the biggest festival programs on the face of the planet. Still, I got confused when people would ring the MIFF office10 months in advance to check the dates just so they could book their holidays and spend them up the back of a dark cinema. I'm not confused any more. MIFF is a remarkable event with mobs to offer everyone from the hardened movie buff to the casual Kung Fu fan. If you can't find five fantastic films to watch every day for 19 days straight, then you just haven't looked in the program guide fool! Out of the 48 films I saw, my strike rate was one dud and a handful of ordinary flix. Where else are you going to have that much luck and cheap entertainment outside of a government subsidised brothel with door prizes and a rock, paper, scissors tournament? Brett Woodward's new book of cartoons, "IT'S TIME TO GO HOME WHEN THE FERRIS WHEEL BREAKS", is out this month. Have a look at myspace/brett_woodward for details and sample funnies. Why not say "High" at ferriswheelbreaks@gmail.com 27 September 2006 australianrules.com.au |
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