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SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL RAISES ITS REWARD TO $60,000
55th Sydney Film Festival review by Wendy Dent published on Filmfestivals.com June 2008
There have been more red carpets than a Persian carpet showroom at the Sydney Film Festival this year. The festival ends its ‘red carpet marathon’ this evening with the Australian premiere of The Square, competing for a record $60,000 Sydney Film Prize with 11 other official competition films, each one graced with a red carpet gala for its opening night premiere.
The festival is the most important film event in the Australian calendar, and the festival team knows it too.The message of this year’s festival, bannered by the $60,000 Sydney Film Prize, is that the Sydney Film Festival has launched itself into the starry stratosphere of seriously prestigious events.You won’t find unknown indie gems here – the programme looks exclusively reserved for widely distributed films by those with claim to name and fame.
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Directed by young Australian actor Matt Newton, who is most famous in the press for his recent alleged assault of his soap-star (now ex) girlfriend and for being the son of Australian TV star Bert Newton, the ‘director profile’ in the SFF programme lists Matt Newton’s long profile of TV acting credits. No directing credits are noted at all.
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A rising star in the Australian film industry since winning Tropfest a few years back (and brother of well known Australian actor and co-writer Joel Edgerton) Nash Edgerton’s shorts have been action packed, punchy and full of promise and his much anticipated feature debut The Square is unquestionably the local favourite for Best Film.
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Featuring Colin Farrell as a hapless first-time Irish hit man who finds himself “in hell” – i.e. in Bruges, and Ralph Fiennes almost unrecognisable as the delightfully nasty low-life boss who has sent him to Bruges as a “last happy holiday” before he kills him, this film wowed the audience with a script that sparkles, and some spirited comedy that was outrageously politically incorrect; Even midgets are targeted in this film. And the comedy hit its target too – the audience was in uproar. And I was in uproar listening to an unexpected echo of the script throughout the screening - a man next to me translated the Irish accents of the film into English for his wife next to him. At one point the audience also wondered if the film was interactive and in 3D, when an Irishman in the cinema dress circle yelled at another audience member to move out of his way so he could “f’n” see properly – using rather fruity language that was also rather frequent in the film.
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Featuring noble performances from Ryan Philippe and Australian Abbie Cornish, and directed by Kimberly Peirce in her second feature following Oscar nominated Boys Don’t Cry, this is a competent film that brought an injustice to the public eye and some emotion into an otherwise intellectual debate, but somehow I sensed the audience didn’t quite take a bullet to the heart. The post-screening Q&A was fuelled with talk of the pressing issues, showing the director Kimberly Peirce has thrown her heart and soul into righting a wrong with her war-time drama. For that alone, she deserved her place on stage and the film deserves its place in the Official Competition – let’s hope it can generate the talk globally that it did after its Sydney Film Festival Australian premiere.
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Fortunately Waitt’s film-making prowess exceeded expectations and surpassed certain other performance problems he bravely reveals… delivering an earnestly funny and confessional diary-doc that was also surprisingly sweet. If there was one film that has earned and deserved the ‘buzz’ of the fest, this is it.
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A company psychologist is asked to investigate the mental state of his CEO. His boss is paranoid and delusional. Or is he? As the central character lost the plot, so too did the audience. They walked out of the film during the screening, one by one, and those who stayed to sit through some very long enigmatic scenes seemed to be waiting until the end for enlightenment – they rushed out as the credits rolled muttering ‘what the hell was that all about?’.
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“Lets talk about sex, baby”, could have been his pitch for this feature collection of seven short-film vignettes. The film brazenly looked at, and showed, the topic from every angle and position. It was seriously cheeky, with unexpected moments of vulnerability and genuine connection that made all these ‘trivial matters’ seem a lot less trivial. The audience left more than satisfied, perhaps simply too polite to scream out for more.
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It was one of those delicious films where you hope that the actors weren’t paid by the word, because while their big expectant eyes spoke volumes, they don’t say much at all. Two somewhat goofy and awkward loners start to get to know each other, and just maybe start to fall for each other- because they’re lonely, or because they’re meant to be, we really never can tell. They’re at times aloof, at times soppily romantic, and seem to fall in love as if it’s a pot-hole –but it works; An interesting choice for a first-date movie, and a beguiling Mexican love story that is bound to cham beyond borders.
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Any doc that depicts an army turning young women into young men is sure to be gripping. But this doc is delivered with a fragile hand, revealing the girls’ femininity and compassion together with their strength. They talk of actions they regret. A young woman wrestles with her shame as she remembers getting her photo taken for fun next to a Palestinian corpse that had just come in – with an erection. They talk of doing things that are ‘not normal’, but that how everything in the Gaza conflict is not normal so somehow it makes sense. While the doc is a shocking indictment of the Israeli army’s treatment towards Palestinians, it also engages real empathy with the young soldiers profiled, as they very openly recount the inner conflicts and trauma they experienced being on the front line of war.
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A group of men meet every week to talk about the problems in their lives, with so much pent up anger that the tension and testosterone in this film went off the Richter scale. Their predicaments also clearly registered with a predominantly male audience – one man watching in the audience was wiping away quiet tears. The film was indeed compelling, to both genders, until the crucial climax. I envied the man sitting on the other side of me though, who accidentally missed the ending when he went to the bathroom in what turned out to be the final few minutes of the film. After 100 minutes of such emotional ferocity and realism, created in classic Mike Leigh style, the ending truly shocked and angered me in its un-believability. Take 2- ending redraft, please!
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With full houses in most cinema sessions over the last week, the festival can already boast a success at its half way point, and it’s sure to be another gripping seven days of cinema.
reporting from the Sydney Film Festival
More reports from the Sydney Film Festival:
Lessons From the Kung Fu Panda: Sydney Film Festival Australian premiere
More Published Articles & Reviews
International Audiovisual Festival of Azerbaijan ; an indie film-maker's odyssey
Florence Festival Dei Popoli REVIEW The Motorcycle Diaries (Viva Magazine REVIEW)
DaKINO (Bucharest International Film Festival) 2005 REVIEW
Interviews with Directors:
A Converation with Selvaggia Velo, festival director River to River Florence Indian Film Festival
Sydney Film Festival images and article (c) Wendy Dent
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Nash Edgerton, director of 'The Square', & Wendy Dent
The State Theatre
Matt Newton, director of Three Blind Mice, with Gracie Otto
actor Barry Otto
Kimberly Peirce, director of Stop-Loss
Wendy Dent & Lynden Barber, SFF director 2006
Essie Davis, Sydney Film Festival Juror
Gillian Anderson, Sydney Film Festival Jury President
Lucy Bell, actor 'The Square'
Margaret Pomeranz, ABC TV film critic'
David Stratton, ABC TV film critic'
Anthony Hayes, lead actor 'The Square'
Best dressed at the 'In Bruges' premiere
Clare Stewart, Sydney Film Festival Director
Wendy Dent in The State Theatre at the World Premiere of 'The Square'
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AWARD WINNING Documentary;KISSED BY A CROCODILEPress Release festival news |
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