Published 2017 on Down Under Flix
Director: Paul Cox
Director: Paul Cox
Stars: Norman Kaye, Wendy Hughes, Jon Finlayson, Julia Blake,
Jonathan Hardy
This
review serves as a somewhat belated tribute to the late John Clarke, who passed
away back in April (make that very belated…).
As one of Australia’s sharpest, savviest satirists, Clarke’s reach and legacy
were impressive, as noted in many of the more punctual tributes following his
death (this one is particularly good). While not his most famous commodities, Clarke was no slouch
on the film front, contributing memorable supporting turns in films like Death in Brunswick andCrackerjack and co-writing
two features with another late luminary, director Paul Cox, 1982’s Lonely Hearts and
1996’s Lust and Revenge.
In Lonely Hearts, Norman Kaye
plays Peter, an ageing, balding piano tuner seeking companionship. Using a
Lonely Hearts dating agency, he is connected to Patricia (Wendy Hughes), a
reserved, sheltered younger woman. They take things slowly, easing into an
affectionate friendship, but Peter feels the tug of ardour stronger than the
sexually inexperienced and reluctant Patricia, leading to a crossing of lines
and a crossroads in their relationship.
Lonely
Hearts merges
the melancholy and sensitivity of a European art film (a Cox trademark) with
refreshing moments of antipodean dagginess (a Clarke trademark befitting the former Fred Dagg himself). Pearls of
comedy are mined from the outset, as exemplified in the opening scene at
Peter’s mother’s funeral. Clarke was recruited by executive producer Phillip
Adams to inject some levity into Cox’s typically morose script, making Lonely Hearts more
accessible and mainstream than the filmmaker’s usual work (see, for example,
the Cox films previously reviewed on Down Under Flix, Human Touch and The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky). By all accounts the
collaboration between Clarke and Cox was friendly and complementary, though
relations between Cox and producer John Murray were less so, reinforcing the
director’s staunchly independent working methods for subsequent films.
Patricia’s
sexual reserve and Peter’s chivalry (to a point) are atypical of the permissive
Australia seen in the films that helped kindle the Australian film renaissance
over the previous decade, such as Alvin
Purple and The
Adventures of Barry McKenzie (in which Clarke appeared). By
modern sensibilities and movie standards, I suspect they’d be downright alien
and antiquated to many younger viewers. Plenty of films are rendered passé by
their tangible trappings over time—the fashion, the hair, the music—and to a
degree Lonely Hearts is
too: in an age of dating apps and readily available pornography, Peter using a
newfangled dating service or watching smut in a movie theatre serve as
cinematic time-stamps. Yet Lonely
Hearts also presents a paradigm of dating and relationships
that is similarly perceived as old-fashioned and rarely seen onscreen nowadays.
But Lonely Hearts is
refreshing and vital partly because it is so anomalous, and partly because its
classical storytelling taps into universal pangs and yearnings. It presents
characters out of time finding solace in each other and facing the tension
innate to all relationships—that between individual wants and each other’s
needs—and is beautifully played (or underplayed) by Kaye and Hughes, both Cox
regulars.
The
film was a modest popular and major critical success, winning that year’s AFI
Award for Best Film and netting nominations for Director, Actor and Actress
(both stars would win the following year, Kaye for Cox’s Man of Flowers and Hughes
for Careful, He Might Hear
You), and Script. I’d rate Lonely
Hearts and last week’s Mister Johnson as the best films
covered on Down Under Flix this year, and if they’re topped before the close of
2017 that would make for a very special year.
Ben Kooyman