Film No. 27 (2016) April 18th. 6.30 PM LUNA Paradiso, Northbridge.
"I just wanted to ask if we could do this again?" (Frank (Anthony LaPaglia) asks Sarah (Julia Blake) if she would mind if he visited her again).
I so look forward to each new film from one of Australia's most fertile cinema contributors, The South Australian Film Corporation. With Matthew Saville (Felony, The Slap) at the helm, a fresh script also written by Saville plus the pairing of two of Australia's best talents in LaPaglia and Blake, I was salivating with anticipation at the opportunity to preview A Month of Sundays. I'm still not quite sure why the sum of all I anticipated left me underwhelmed.
The idea of a middle aged male (Frank), feeling alone in the world as he grapples with loss makes a promising premise for a drama. The passing of his mother, the demise of his marriage, a lack of job satisfaction and the battle to show real feeling towards his adolescent son are the sum of Frank's problems at our first meeting. Then there is a phone call; Blake's Sarah calls Frank by accident and this leads Frank to begin a renaissance of sorts.
How many times have we seen a film which offers so many original ideas enacted with quality performances but where the sum of those parts don't add up? In the case of A Month maybe there are just too many under developed ideas. Sarah's son Stuart (Terrence Crawford) has undeclared issues. Phillip (John Clarke) cares for his sick father but there is no connection between them. This only comes (in an unconvincing fashion) once Phillip brings Sarah along to meet his father. Frank visits the set of estranged wife Wendy's (Justine Clarke) workplace, which is the set of a successful TV soapy, for a series of disconnected conversations.
There is a scene early in the film where Phillip looks at his watch and calls "lunch". Phillip expresses how much he loves lunch then we cut to a prestigious looking golf course where both he and Frank walk and play in business suits. The film is quirky but a scene where the same dialogue took place in a Japanese sushi train restaurant as they chose and ate exotic nibbles would have made more sense. This is my effort to be constructive in my criticism because there is so much I wanted to like about this film. 5GUMS.
I thought the son's name was Damian? [like the demon]. And he works in the armed forces, I believe.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the point of this review was? Factual inaccuracy would suggest you weren't paying attention. 'Lunch' is a euphemism, which was obvious before the cut to the golf course. Matt Saville is one of very few filmmakers in Australia daring to ask the audience to engage at a deeper level with cinema. And he doesn't do it through artistic pretense or intellectualism, but through old fashioned observational engagement. As such, the ultimate rewards are enormous. You've just got to pay attention.
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