Cast:
Geneviève Lemon (Dawn / "Sweetie"), Karen Colston (Kay), Tom Lycos (Louis), Jon Darling (Gordon), Dorothy Barry (Flo), Michael Lake (Bob), Andre Pataczek (Clayton), Jean Hadgraft (Mrs. Schneller), and Paul Livingston (Teddy Schneller) Directed by Jane Campion.
Review:
I suppose I could cover a few more New Zealanders in their vision of filmmaking, so why not Jane Campion? She was born to parents that actually had founded a theater group. She actually studied anthropology in university, but it was her studies with visual arts that helped shape an interest in filmmaking, specifically because she apparently came to a dissatisfaction with the limitations of filmmaking. She directed her first short with Tissues in 1980 and began studying at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School and made more short films. Peel (1986) won the Short Film Palme d'Or. The attention that Campion received for her short films got her to develop a feature, one that would be to "do something modern and something that pursued the interests of my own film generation". Choosing to do this over something she came up called "The Piano Lesson", the eventual movie was written by her and Gerald Lee that had its script developed in spurts over three months in 1987. The movie made a bit of money in its native Australia, and Campion obviously was encouraged to make further feature films, with An Angel at My Table (1990) being among the first of her seven subsequent features in her career.
Calling the movie as one that is revolves around family dysfunction is probably a bit too simple to go with, although the name of the movie sure has one thinking of it in their lives. Of course, the thing with these sisters is that one can gleam that really, they could be thought of as two sides of the "nut" coin. But nothing is what it seems on the surface for its 97-minute runtime that can range from curious to meandering, as if there isn't really one total take to peg the movie, although each of its sisters certainly show their own way of being starved of affection and all-around intimacy (there are those who interpret the movie as having dysfunction that really revolves around sexual abuse, but I mostly saw it as a family of people that simply refuse to accept true reality). Lemon and Colston make for a compelling double act when you look at what lurks at these people beyond the physical viewing, mainly because the movie is more about the unsaid than anything, which can lead to a bit of dark amusement (or haunted expression, but it's a give-and-go). Lemon (who had considerable experience in the theater and Australian TV in what was her second film role) plays this creature of wayward pleas and quixotic aims that we can see even in the smallest way in people we might know* to worthwhile conviction that is just as tragic as it is pathetic to see her towering presence. Heck, you see her first with a boyfriend and you barely even notice when he basically disappears from the picture, that's how much she takes the movie and rolls along in chaos that is very raw and yet is one you can see is the cog that gets things moving in the cycle of enabling and rejection. Colston has the tough task of playing a role that is filled with superstitions and hang-ups that come with a relationship that we only see in bits and parts (specifically one goes from the set-up to "months later"). She does fine enough with playing the uptight nature that comes with another side of chasing something that is hard to define in affection (Lycos merely is the normal one, at least for a guy who has a hang-up about a misplaced tree), suffice to say. Darling and Barry sell the key pieces that come with fractured people and misplaced visions that don't lend to easy resolutions. The stories crash in and out in a way that comes and goes for observations that you just have to look for yourselves when it comes to how people really are beyond words and images, which might hurt just as much as it makes for dark amusement. Ultimately, the movie is whatever you want to believe it is about: family drama, black comedy, or voyage into the strangeness that comes with people and isolation. It makes for a curious experiment for a feature debut that might just work for you, whether you know what lurks beneath the surface.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
*I had a half-brother who was an annoying drunk and a less tolerable person when "sober". He was a miserable person that at a point in time that could even make a crack about how someone walked in their own house. Things can get better, although it didn't occur like this film where they fell from a tree and died, no, it was slightly funnier.