Published 2017 on Down Under Flix
Going into The Dressmaker in late 2015, I expected a tastefully-executed, handsomely-burnished, but ultimately very well-mannered period drama. I certainly didn’t anticipate such a fun, delightfully full-blooded romp, part Merchant Ivory and part Kill Bill. This commercial success and critical darling marked a welcome return to screens for director Jocelyn Moorhouse, whose last Australian film as director prior to The Dressmaker was 1991’s Proof, an equally acclaimed but very different beast. But Moorhouse was no slouch in the interim, producing and collaborating with husband P.J. Hogan on several of his films—including Muriel’s Wedding, Peter Pan, and Mental —as well as directing a pair of American films, How to Make an American Quilt (1995) and A Thousand Acres (1997).
Going into The Dressmaker in late 2015, I expected a tastefully-executed, handsomely-burnished, but ultimately very well-mannered period drama. I certainly didn’t anticipate such a fun, delightfully full-blooded romp, part Merchant Ivory and part Kill Bill. This commercial success and critical darling marked a welcome return to screens for director Jocelyn Moorhouse, whose last Australian film as director prior to The Dressmaker was 1991’s Proof, an equally acclaimed but very different beast. But Moorhouse was no slouch in the interim, producing and collaborating with husband P.J. Hogan on several of his films—including Muriel’s Wedding, Peter Pan, and Mental —as well as directing a pair of American films, How to Make an American Quilt (1995) and A Thousand Acres (1997).
Following
last week’s look at three of Bruce Beresford’s overseas films, this week’s article looks at Moorhouse’s two
American films from the 1990s. I’m not sure what types of projects Moorhouse
pursued or was offered in the aftermath of Proof, but on the surface American Quilt and A Thousand Acres don’t seem intuitive
matches to the subject matter and skill set behind Proof. Rather, they appear
somewhat emblematic of Hollywood’s default assignation of “women’s films” to
“women directors”; indeed, the year before American Quilt, fellow Australian Gillian
Armstrong directed another women’s film featuring American Quilt stars Winona Ryder,
Samantha Mathis, and Claire Danes, namely Little Women. But both American Quilt and A Thousand Acres have their merits, and their
themes would be picked up further in The Dressmaker, a slyer, more subversive Antipodean spin on
the women’s film. As a result, American Quilt and A Thousand Acres serve as a bridge between Moorhouse’s debut and
most recent Australian work.
How to Make an American Quilt
Stars: Winona Ryder, Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn, Maya Angelou,
Alfre Woodard, Kate Nelligan, Samantha Mathis, Claire Danes, Dermot Mulroney,
Johnathon Schaech
Finn
(Winona Ryder) is a young woman completing her Master’s thesis. To finish her
dissertation and contemplate her engagement to Sam (Dermot Mulroney), she
spends the summer at the home of her grandmother (Ellen Burstyn) and grand-aunt
(Anne Bancroft). Over the course of the season, she interviews the older women
comprising her grandmother’s sewing circle, absorbing and learning from their
stories while grappling with whether to settle down or have an affair with a
new acquaintance (Johnathon Schaech).
Like
its titular quilt, American Quilt is a tapestry of lovingly crafted women’s stories and
experiences spanning mid-to-late twentieth century America. These stories are
alternately (and often simultaneously) funny, tragic, and affecting in their
depictions of American women’s trials and tribulations—particularly with the
men who romance, cheat on, and/or leave them—and while some skew towards the
saccharine or the obvious, others have a touch of that same oddball black
comedy that enlivened The Dressmaker. The film’s period recreations are impeccable and bequeathed a
suitably nostalgic glow by Spielberg’s regular cinematographer Janusz Kaminski.
The
telling of these tales provides great showcases for both younger and older
actresses, with Ellen Burstyn, Anne Bancroft, and Samantha Mathis particular
standouts in the uniformly good cast. Winona Ryder provides the glue that holds
the film together. As a child of the 1980s and teenage boy of the 1990s, I was
the exact right age to be susceptible to Ryder’s charms and elven princess
features, though as a teenage boy of the 1990s I wasn’t necessarily the target
audience for American Quilt (nor Little Women), which is a shame as it would have made me a better man in the
2000s. Ryder’s a solid anchor for the film, providing a generous sounding board
for the showier work around her. On the male side of things, Johnathon Schaech
of Welcome to Woop Woop plays Ryder’s romantic temptation, which kinda, sorta,
almost works if you squint and forget everything you know about Johnathon Schaech.
A Thousand Acres
Stars: Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange, Jennifer Jason Leigh,
Jason Robards, Keith Carradine, Colin Firth, Pat Hingle, Michelle Williams,
Elisabeth Moss
Geoffrey
Wright and Justin Kurzel aren’t the only Australian directors to adapt Shakespeare to film, and Bruce Beresford’s not
the only Australian director to helm a film starring Jessica Lange about a trio of wounded sisters grappling with their family history. Moorhouse did both in A Thousand Acres, based on a Jane Smiley
novel based on Shakespeare’s King Lear.
The
story transfers the plot of King Lear to a thousand acre farming estate in Iowa. Lange, Michelle
Pfeiffer, and Jennifer Jason Leigh play sisters Ginny, Rose, and Caroline, the
film’s substitutes for King Lear’s Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia. When Larry Cook (Jason
Robards), the patriarch and film’s Lear surrogate, bequeaths the estate to his
three daughters, older daughters Ginny and Rose welcome their inheritance while
favourite daughter Caroline expresses reservations. Larry shuns Caroline and
begins to disintegrate mentally and exact verbal and emotional abuse on his
long-suffering eldest daughters, making them the scourge of the local community
and forcing them to confront the darker corners of their family history.
Smiley’s
novel is a revisionist feminist take on a canonical work redistributing reader
sympathies to characters previously cast as villainous or other, in much the same vein as,
say, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, a feminist and postcolonial re-reading of Jane Eyre (likewise adapted to
film by an Australian director, in this case John Duigan). In both book and
film of A
Thousand Acres,
Goneril and Regan, as well as their absent mother, are explicitly presented as
victims of their father’s physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, something that
is arguably implicit in Shakespeare’s text but not necessarily elucidated in
all interpretations. The result is a sympathetic portrait of characters too
often reduced to stereotypical villains, one that justifies their rejection of
their father and condemns his patriarchal transgressions. While it lacks the
Bard’s gravitas, it delivers on the source text’s tragic denouement.
Lange
and Pfeiffer are typically great, with Pfeiffer in particular capturing Rose’s/Regan’s
steely resolve and simmering resentment, but also her sisterly and motherly
compassion. Leigh doesn’t feature prominently enough to make a strong
impression, but that’s symptomatic of the Cordelia role on both page and stage.
Elsewhere in the cast, Keith Carradine is likable as Ginny’s husband, Colin
Firth is handsomeness on a stick as an object of Rose and Ginny’s mutual
temptation, and while Lear/Larry is sidelined for much of the drama, Robards
cuts an imposing, cruel, but ultimately sad figure. On a side note, both
Michelle Williams and Elisabeth Moss—two actresses who’d similarly go on to
play women fighting against patriarchal toxicity in the likes of Mad Men, The Handmaid’s Tale, and My Week with Marilyn—appear as Rose’s daughters.
As
suggested above, both American Quilt and A Thousand Acres serve as bridges between Moorhouse’s feature debut Proof and 2015’s The Dressmaker. Not only do American Quilt and A Thousand Acres mark a shift towards
women-centred stories, but foreshadow a number of The Dressmaker’s themes and preoccupations,
most notably the role of women at historical junctures favouring patriarchy and
conformity and the trials of strong women shunned and ostracized by
small-minded communities.
Ben Kooyman