Arts Snap
Film & Theatre Reviews
At the heart of the arts Where you went last week...
Hits and misses on the silver screen and the bareboards around town.
■ Theatre
the name because they “can replace anyone, just as the mountain range can”.
Until July 15 / Belvoir Street
It’s a tenuous metaphor, and the morality of their pursuit is equally questionable. Is it OK to sleep with your fake father, or an oedipal tragedy? Is it wrong to hope a car accident victim on life-support will die, so you can step into her shoes? These and other moral conundra are faced/ignored by Monte Rosa on her daily rounds, via a series of vignettes that could have been penned by Samuel Beckett. The major drama comes when she tries to turn fiction into reality. And in Lanthimos’s Greece, fiction is hard to escape. It’s the only protection against social breakdown.
OLD MAN So often in the theatre, the storylines seemed contrived. The plot turns seem unlikely, the characters seem over the top, and you just end up thinking “that would never happen.” Sometimes that’s totally fine and absolutely the point, but in other cases, supposed ‘naturalism’ is anything but natural. Old Man’s greatest success is that it never feels forced, despite dealing with some pretty emotional material. Each moment of fear or heartbreak is truthfully rendered by a great cast, under the perfectly measured direction of Anthea Williams.
brett chan - rescue the future
PICS :: KC
Set in Newtown, Old Man brings us into the mind of Daniel (Leon Ford) a youngish father who along with his wife Sam (Alison Bell) are bringing up their kids (Tom Usher and Madeleine Benson) in the inner city. Daniel’s father left him when he was barely a child and the play centres on his fear of history repeating. It plays out more as a study in the aftershocks of leaving a family and as such, leaves the audience with more than a few scenarios to ponder.
15:06:12 :: China Heights :: 3/ 16-28 Foster St Surry Hills
Despite not being autobiographical, the play is obviously deeply personal, with playwright Matthew Whittet creating a nuanced family full of love, frustration and confusion. Williams and the cast have brought them to life with the same amount of love with which they were written; the family dynamic is perfect among the four as we watch the siblings fight and the parents cave. The acting is truly superb. Ford’s central performance is outstanding as he takes us from the extreme paranoia to extreme charm (the scene where he is doing his son’s homework is too adorable), while Bell allows us into Sam’s vulnerability with apparent ease. Even Usher and Benson seem perfectly at home in the intimate downstairs theatre, which is the perfect setting for this sort of life-laid-bare production. Henry Florence ■ Film
ALPS
sydney film festival hub
PICS :: KC
Winner of the Sydney Film Festival Official Competition
15:06:12 :: Lower Town Hall :: 483 George Street, Sydney
Arts Exposed What's in our diary...
The Wall presents
CONFESSION BOOTH
Alps is as black as a black comedy can get before it’s not a comedy anymore, but a Munchian scream into the abyss. With jokes. It’s a funny but disturbing modern fairytale by writer/director Giorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth), about middle-class Greeks who fill their lives with ersatz relationships, complete with 100% play-acted emotions. Are they scared of reality? Definitely. Does “real” even exist in a world like this? Maybe not. That’s a cold prospect, but Alps manages to turn down the temperature while being constantly engaging. Poker-faced Dogtooth star Aggeliki Papoulia returns in Alps as Monte Rosa, a young nurse who moonlights as a “stand-in”: hiring herself out to newly-bereaved families as their replacement daughter, to help them adjust to the loss (or to help them pretend it didn’t happen). Monte Rosa is so-called because she’s part of a group of stand-ins called “The Alps”. Group leader, paramedic Monte Blanc (Aris Servetalis), gives them
Oscar-nominated Dogtooth was hailed as a breakthrough for a new generation of post-GFC Greek filmmakers known as the ‘Weird Wave’. But the moniker doesn’t aid in the interpretation of Alps. ‘Weird’ suggests that it’s being wilfully bizarre or silly, and neither is the case. The use of the absurd may not be naturalistic, but it’s a valid technique that only serves to deepen the exploration of the meaning of life (or lack thereof). Camus describes “the absurd man” as the most enlightened of all because he knows the search for meaning is futile, but perseveres anyway. By that measure, Alps is a tour de force. Maybe if Australia was in as bad a place as Greece, it would be more immediately relevant – but we all have our fictions. Nikos Andronicos ■ Film
THE CABIN IN THE WOODS Until June 27 / Chauvel Cinema It is true what many of you have heard: The Cabin in the Woods is best experienced with as little knowledge of its narrative and conceptual goings-on as possible. To a degree, of course, this is true of most storytelling. All prior knowledge of plot points or subtext colours your experience of the film or show or book, and for those of us who are dedicatedly anti-spoiler, being led blindly and trustingly through the story by a skilled teller is one of the narrative arts' greatest pleasures. A film that relies entirely on a twist, however, is a poor film indeed (the difference between, say, The Sixth Sense and The Village). I went in smugly unspoiled and I was consistently delighted by each deft new revelation of the plot. If you too value going in blind, just know that this is an incredibly surprising, clever and fun addition to the horror/fantasy pantheon, and a must-see for anyone who appreciates Whedonesque meta-commentary. Now stop reading (and avoid the film’s Wikipedia page, because the entire plot is laid out in detail). I won’t discuss the central conceit of the film even vaguely, because as noted above, the way it reveals itself one careful detail at a time is masterful. The film was produced by pop-culture auteur Joss Whedon, directed by Drew Goddard (who wrote several episodes of Buffy, Angel, Lost and Alias, as well as Cloverfield) and co-written by both. Whedon’s involvement in particular, as well as the film’s genresavvy self-awareness and quips, have
Wednesday July 4 from 7.30pm / Top Floor World Bar
Lou Sanz, with typewriter
20 :: BRAG :: 468:: 25:06:12
The Wall are onto a good thing with their Confession Booth series; it turns out no-one doesn’t like hearing funny/clever people tell embarrassing personal stories. Their next event will feature Melbourne writer-slashcomedian Lou Sanz (Please Don’t Use My Flannel For That), bloggerslash-broadcaster Max Lavergne (reallyreallyreallytrying.tumblr.com), Sydney comedienne Gen Fricker, writer-slash-broadcaster Shaun Prescott (2SER / shaunprescott. com), Vine/TwoThousand/etc writer Bethany Small, and Sydney musician, scientist and radio journalist Joel Werner (Off Track on ABC Radio National). Lists! It’s hosted by A.H. Cayley, and it’s FREE.
Richard Jenkins, Fred and Josh Lyman in The Cabin In The Woods
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