On a Rainy Afternoon

While hunting around for some bright-young-things to promote on Portable’s new blog, I came across Kim Spurlock, the maker of several gentle, elegiac shorts.  My favourite so far is the atmospheric Buou Chieu (Afternoon, 2005).  Shot on 16mm, it’s a tale of a lost ghost who, on a rainy afternoon finds her way across the world to her family.

It’s 1985 – ten years after the fall of Saigon. Somewhere in America, a young girl plays at fishing with her grandfather.  They attach paperclips to coloured paper fish and then catch them with rods made of string and magnets.  Outside it’s raining, and the shots of the house are close – heavy with the feeling of being indoors all day.  A row of incense sticks quiver in the breeze, empty slippers sit waiting in a row and the girl and her sister curl in tight around their mother for an afternoon nap. This opening is one of the truest images of home I’ve seen in a long time – a whole sensory atmosphere is created in just a few short shots – the rain outside, the smell of the incense burning, the quiet neatness of the sideboard, and the warm sleepy feeling in the overhead close-up of the two girls on either side of their mother.  Everything is close and slow and tender – the characters even move slowly, as if half awake.  The camera is near without being intrusive.  When the father/grandfather dies, the scene is shown with a single still shot looking down on the daughter from behind as she realizes her father has passed.  No frontal shots are needed, all the love and sadness is shown in the way she leans forward to press her face against his.  Big ideas are alluded to, while the images themselves are clean and clear – lovely.

Fish (2003) also hangs on an intergenerational connection.  In this black and white film, a young boy wants to rescue a fish from the fish market.  He has just enough money, but his mother pulls him away, sending the coin flying.  An old man witnesses the boy’s desire, retrieves the coin, and buys the fish.  He packs the fish into his briefcase, takes it to the river, and lets it swim free.  I’m not sure how long the fish is going to survive the muddy tides of the Hudson, but that’s beside the point.  The beauty of the film is in the way the story unfolds shot by shot, without any need for explanation or dialogue.

Spurlock is a wonderful visual storyteller who makes clear shot choices – no shot is superfluous, gratuitous or there just because it looks cool.  It’s a motion of dissent to make quiet films in this noisy world, and I love her for it.

The Last Days of Chez Nous

One of the lovely things about going back to study is that I’ve discovered films I would probably not have otherwise watched. One of these is The Last Days of Chez Nous (Gillian Armstrong, 1992), a film that has shot whatever-used-to-be-my-favourite-Australian-film off the list to become my favourite Australian film. Yay! And it’s not hard to see why – writing in the online journal Bright Lights, Richard Armstrong likens the emotional tone to Cassavetes and Woody Allen. With a script by Helen Garner, The Last Days of Chez Nous is a quietly shot urban drama with the breakdown of a marriage at its core.

Set in a labyrinthine terrace in Sydney’s inner west the film is visually arresting, and the elusive structure – the house is constructed as a series of interlinking rooms, one space opening into the next as the characters move through them – reflects the twisting, intersecting relationships of its inhabitants. Just as we never get a feel for the layout of the house, the film refuses to provide an easy to read map of the characters. The tensions between Beth (Lisa Harrow), JP (Bruno Ganz) and Beth’s sister Vicki (Kerry Fox) sizzle like an electric wire, but the film refuses to give them any resolution. Ian Craven observes that the characters are ‘caught in a complex network of drives,’ all desiring things that don’t seem to be able to live together. Beth, a writer, wants to maintain her autonomy, and at the same time have her marriage, while JP feels neglected and unloved by her strong, dominant way of managing things. Vicki wants to become a writer like Beth, but lacks the discipline to actually sit down and write. I was reminded here of Woody Allen’s Hannah and her Sisters, where Hannah (Mia Farrow) takes care of everyone and everything so well that the other characters drift away from her, wanting to feel needed.

Armstrong accentuates the tension with the use of high angle shots and off kilter close-ups where the characters faces sit awkwardly in the frame, reflecting their unease. Armstrong loves close-ups, and she uses them well, drawing attention to the domestic details of her characters lives to give them breath. A pen, a desk, a bed, the food they eat, the bowls they use are all lovingly shown. We catch glimpses of their interior spaces through doorways and windows. Beth’s study is frequently observed like this, and it is a sacred room in Vicki’s eyes; Beth’s space, where Beth creates. More than anything Vicki wants what Beth has, and in the end she gets JP. However the listless way she begins cleaning their new apartment suggests that what she thought she wanted may not be what she wants at all.

Armstrong’s most recent film is the disappointing Death Defying Acts, but I hope she makes more films like The Last Days of Chez Nous – stories where we are dropped into the lives of others, where we watch them struggle and grow as they learn something about themselves, where we recognise ourselves, where we wonder what we would do and how we are, because after all, we are always traveling.