Skip to main content

Bondi Tsunami (2004)



Published 2016 on Down Under Flix

 Director: Rachael Lucas
Stars: Taki Abe, Kaita Abe, Miki Sasaki, Nobuhisa Ikeda
First viewing, via DVD
Bondi Tsunami is the first of two surf-themed movies being covered in September on Down Under Flix. But the word “movie” doesn’t quite convey the very particular flavour, or the somewhat acquired taste, of Rachael Lucas’s flick. The film’s promotional tagline, “An original music video motion picture experience”, does a much better job.
Chilled slacker Shark (Taki Abe) and animated goofball Yuto (Kaita Abe) are two young Japanese men in Australia who embark on a surfing expedition. On the road they pick up two other Japanese travellers, a young woman named Kimiko (Miki Sasaki) and a hitch-hiking stoner-surfer-philosopher (Nobuhisa Ikeda), who join them on their road trip from Bondi Beach, NSW to Surfer’s Paradise, Queensland. There isn’t much more plot to describe, as Bondi Tsunami isn’t all that concerned with narrative: it’s part music video compilation, part travelogue, with amusing vignettes and enigmatic narration thrown in. 
Bondi Tsunami is the epitome of independent filmmaking. Director Lucas, making her feature debut (and, sadly, sole film to date), fulfilled multiple other functions on the film including writer, cinematographer, composer and costume designer. With a small budget and crew she travelled through NSW and Queensland with her non-professional cast, filming and improvising along the way. That sort of D.I.Y. daring is admirable, and that spirit of adventure permeates the film: in its sun-kissed, sun-bleached enshrining of travel and surf, Bondi Tsunami is a film drunk in love with the road and the coast.
Having said that, I found the first third of Bondi Tsunami a tough watch: it’s pretty much just travelling, surfing, and constant music, and I was somewhat confounded by and resistant to its very specific groove. But the film picks up with the introduction of Kimiko, where the glimmer of a narrative thread emerges. Yuto initially goes gaga for their new travelling companion, but the novelty of female companionship soon wears off and Kimiko becomes a third wheel in the mobile bro’s club. The film thereafter milks the men’s arrested development and Kimiko’s resilient cluelessness for laughs.
The actors are lively avatars for this adventure, and I use the term “avatars” rather than characters quite deliberately. As befitting a feature length music video, the characters are fairly one-dimensional, and the non-professional cast spend a lot of time adopting music video and advertising-style poses and posturing. But the fact they’re non-professional gives them an endearing quality: they’re interesting to watch and relatively unmannered. Miki Sasaki in particular has a likeable screen presence and gives a spunky and spirited performance, even if her character errs to stereotype.
Any assessment of Bondi Tsunami is bound to be highly subjective: there’s no real barometer or common grammar to size it up. Whatever its shortcomings, as Australia’s first and only Japanese-language, surfing-centric, feature length road movie music video, it’s a bona fide original.
Ben Kooyman

Popular posts from this blog

Beyond Innocence (1989)

Published 2017 on Down Under Flix Director:  Scott Murray Stars:  Katia Caballero, Keith Smith Scott Murray is one of the premier commentators on Australian cinema. He’s best known as editor and contributor to  Cinema Papers  and  Senses of Cinema , as well as for editing, authoring, and contributing to various volumes on Australian film, including one particularly indispensable resource for my work on Down Under Flix,  Australian Film 1978–1994 . In the 1980s, Murray directed the film  Beyond Innocence , also known as  Devil in the Flesh . It was both his theatrical feature debut and swansong, though he’d later helm a music documentary,  Massenet: His Life and Music . 
Read more

Six pack: Furiosa (2024), Force of Nature (2024), No Escape (1994), The New Boy (2023), Mary and Max (2009), and Sweet As (2022)

  There used to be a nerdy adage—at least until contrary instalments countered the point—that even-numbered Star Trek films were better than their odd-numbered counterparts. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar adage emerges about the Mad Max films: while the obviously odd-numbered original was a trailblazer, it’s The Road Warrior and Fury Road that have commanded universal acclaim, while Beyond Thunderdome and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) have proven divisive. There are striking moments—as expected in both a George Miller film and a Mad Max film—in Furiosa , and Miller remains the most idiosyncratic generator of sequels: Furiosa (technically a prequel) is his sixth, after a Babe sequel, a Happy Feet sequel, and three other Mad Max sequels, with none of these offshoots feeling the same. However, if you’d told me Furiosa was based on a five-part prequel comic book series, I’d believe you, based on its chapter structure and the narrative dead end it arrives at. As it stand...
Read more

Malcolm (1986)

  When penning my review of Black and White , starring Robert Carlyle, I was reminded of my two theatrical viewings of The Full Monty : one in a packed theatre with patrons lapping up the film, the other a few weeks later in a large theatre with less than a dozen, far more polite punters. As a dumb teen, I took away the wrong lesson: that the film didn’t work/wasn’t successful outside a packed auditorium. As an adult, I have a more rounded appreciation of the film and its grace notes that aren't dependent on an enthused opening weekend crowd — the thoughtful, non-condescending working-class milieu it sketches (much more effective and less caricatured than the likes of Billy Elliot ), the lovely work from Lesley Sharp, and so on—but the two distinct viewings remain an instructive lesson in the role of an audience in galvanizing each other and collectively elevating a film experience [1]. Malcolm (1986) is a film I’ve also watched twice—albeit at home and with a much longer interva...
Read more