Author: BRWC

‘The Adored’ is a drama about an intense love triangle. Largely the story revolves around Franky (Laura Martin-Simpson), A photographer who has been hired to do a homely and intimate shoot with Maia (Ione Butler), A beautiful and rather reserved model. During the course of the shoot we learn more about the back-stories of each character as Franky tries to get Maia to relax and open up. As the story unfolds at the cosy cottage they are photographing in, it begins to intercut with a man, Adrian (Jake Maskall), in therapy about a violent incident involving his wife, Maia. As the weekend moves on Franky struggles to keep her growing lust and obsession with Maia in check but as Maia opens up about her troubled marriage the pair grow closer. The story builds steadily to a violent crescendo where the three finally come face to face on a clifftop.

This movie is your average straight to DVD drama, the pacing and story are good and the cast manages to give performances that are at least watchable and save the lacking script and bad direction. The main problem that becomes apparent is that none of the characters are likeable, Franky is bat-shit crazy, Maia is needy and dull and Adrian just seems to have two emotion states, Violent and Vacant. All in all I just didn’t really care what happened to any of them and when the credits rolled I got on with my own little life.

4/10

You’ll never want to drink alcohol again. Unless you don’t already, in which case, good for you.

Peter O’Toole, excuse me, Garry Bond stars as restless teacher John Grant who is embarking on a Christmas trip to Sydney. Forced to work in the one-horse town of Tiboonda as part of terms of a government deal he is looking for some rest-bite from the teeny town with a trip to Sydney. Before he gets there though there is a stop over at the town of Bundanyabba (“The Yabba” as locals call it). Deciding to get himself a quiet drink he winds up getting drunk with a policeman (Jock Crowford), introduced to a simple came called two-up Mr. Grant sees a way out of his financial strangle hold but shockingly things don’t go his way and he ends up loosing what little money he had. Hungover and essentially stranded he takes to another local pub where a man in look of conversation offers to buy him a drink, thus continuing what ends up being a five day cycle of being hungover, drinking, getting into ridiculous situations and repeating until John finally breaks.

For anyone who has lived the cliched life of a uni student, been on an extended drinking holiday or has even faced alcoholism they is much that will be uncomfortably familiar and something nostalgic about the films treatment of booze. The title Wake in Fright seems to be a comment on the action itself. Suddenly coming to in a panic about where you are and what you’ve done the night before. The trajectory of teacher John Grant from well spoken and well-to-do to abject misery is quick but never feels rushed. He quickly falls down the rabbit hole of despair all brought on the inviting locals who all just want to drink.

If you’re the sort of person who feels ill at ease meeting new people, especially if your a bookish type being introduced to confidant sporty types the uncomfortable first meeting is perfectly summed up in the films unsure meetings between Grant and the locals, you can talk to anyone when you’re smashed. The film runs with a constant feeling of unease. Every time Grant finds himself in a new situation with a different person, who eye’s him up to get the measure of him, there is always a sense that violence is not far behind. It’s that underpinning theme that have led some people to label Wake in Fright as a horror. A social horror film absolutely. Instead of avoiding a killer’s blade though Bond has to avoid an inviting beer.

The unrelenting heat of the Australian outback sizzles through every frame. Every sip of a first quenching beer, every dry gulp of a sick inducing hangover beer is perfectly realized. The photography is beautiful. The opening shot reminiscent of the opening of Once Upon a Time in the West, a train track, a saloon and nothing for miles around. In all seriousness Garry Bond could be Peter O’Toole’s brother in both look and voice. He manages to convey Grant’s frustration, struggling dignity and eventual collapse with aplomb. Donald Pleasance, everyone’s favourite go-to crazy from the 1960/70’s plays crazed alcoholic this time round. A constant reminder to Grant that what he could become if he let’s himself go to drink. Pleasance is amazing as a doctor and and intellectual who has simply given in and accepted that he is an alcoholic. One moment eloquent, the next destroying windows whilst screaming for no reason.

Their are graphic scenes in the film of an extended kangaroo hunt that some may find problematic. To be honest I got a little tired of seeing kangaroos getting bullet riddled for real and the general treatment of them seems to go to far. Story-wise it shows Grant’s increasingly messed up surroundings but did so many kangaroos have to die on film? That aside Wake in Fright is a lost gem that has finally and thankfully been unearthed. Terrifying, funny, well acted, well shot. It could very well be the Film of the Year so far, made in 1970.

Boomerang Family is a South Korean dramatic comedy, or a So-Ko Dram-Com (Too much? Too much), based upon 2010 novel Ageing Family, charting the misadventures of a motley menagerie of maudlin misfits (too much. This has all become too much) and begins with the attempted suicide of its protagonist. Comparisons to Little Miss Sunshine are well founded as, during the film’s running time, the family slips further into darkness and despair.

However, unlike LMS, Boomerang Family skews very, very strange. Elderly relatives are suspected of whoring themselves for grocery meat, uncles are found pleasuring themselves with their nieces underwear on their heads, and somewhere towards the end of the film, it becomes, for some reason, a bloody crime drama. Little Miss Guncrime? Shut up, Adam.

In fact, as it progresses, the film shifts in tone so much that the escalation of sex and violence threatens to upend all of goodwill generated by the sweet well-observed family comedy that comes before it. It’s hard to know where asian culture shock ends and weird grotesquery starts, but the balance feels like it takes a sharp turning at Fifth and Fucked Up.

Because, crucially, it’s a well-made film. The characters are well-drawn in their broken, individually dismal ways; a suicidal director reduced to directing pornos called Rosy Milf and Titanic Melons (I laughed at Rosy Milf for far, far longer than I should have – about twelve minutes); a double divorcee about to embark on marriage number three; her stroppy teenage daughter; a ex-jailbird brick-wielding farting manchild of an older brother. But together, their family dynamic convinces. The dinner scenes, the bickering, the quiet connective tissue moments between the big scenes, are sweetly scripted and well-performed. It creates a picture of a family that is quirky, yes, for the comedy, but ultimately recognisable.

There’s warmth here, which makes it all the more problematic when things go a bit, well… rapey in places and the entire last act turns into Reservoir Dogs on a dime. It doesn’t feel like a betrayal of everything that’s come before, but there was, for me at least, a crucial break in empathy. What was once a strange but relatable family So-Ko Dram-Com (sod it, I’m sticking with it), became simply strange, deadening an admittedly very sweet plot development in the film’s closing moments.

I would recommend it though. It sweet, well-intention and bizarre enough to satisfying South Korean culture tourists. It’s just a shame that the family tends to split to its weird component parts by the end. It was once so well-knit.