Published 2019 on Down Under Flix
Director: Marion Pilowsky
Director: Marion Pilowsky
Stars: Emily Taheny, Eddie Izzard, Luke McKenzie, Vanessa Guide
Marion
Pilowsky’s 2018 comedy The
Flip Side stars comedian Eddie Izzard as Henry, a British
actor on the ascent. Five years ago while shooting a film in Adelaide he had a
romantic fling with set caterer Ronnie (Emily Taheny). Now a restaurateur with
a struggling business and a flaky novelist boyfriend Jeff (Luke McKenzie), Ronnie
is surprised to be contacted by Henry, visiting town to promote his new movie.
A love quadrangle of sorts forms between Henry, Ronnie, Luke, and Henry’s
French girlfriend Sophie (Vanessa Guide) as they embark on a road trip together
and Henry attempts to win back Ronnie’s affections.
For
some viewers Australian comedies are a warm blanket providing comfort and joy,
while for others they’re an acquired taste, the cinematic equivalent of
Vegemite. Ask someone who doesn’t like Australian cinema why they don’t like
Australian films and they’ll say most are either cheap, bleak,
self-flagellating exercises in political correctness or cheap, bland,
low-hanging exercises in broad comedy. The noughties were a particularly tough
decade for local comedies, with some outright disasters (The Wannabes, You and
Your Stupid Mate) and a whole lot of meh. And yet when the Adelaide
Film Festival recently published a list of the top 100 Australian films as voted by Australian audiences, comedies dominated the top
slots: The Castle was
#1, with Muriel’s Wedding and The Adventures of Priscilla clocking
in at #2 and #5. It’s little wonder that Australian filmmakers continue to want
to die on this hill, and keep chasing the brand of daggy, self-deprecating,
crowd-pleasing comedy those three films made fashionable in the 1990s, one which
not even their makers could successfully replicate in later films, though The Dish, Welcome to Woop Woop, Swinging
Safari and Mental all
have their merits.
My
own major complaint about Australian comedies of the last twenty years is they
often lack ambition, identity and purpose. The major comedies of the 70s
– Alvin Purple and The Adventures of Barry McKenzie and
their offshoots – rejoiced in their newly forged opportunity to present
Australian identity on film (even when covertly attacking it, as per Barry
Humphries’ work) and embraced the relaxed censorship and liberal
attitudes of the time. The major comedies of the 80s – Crocodile Dundee and Young Einstein – commodified
that Australian identity for a global audience. And the major comedies of the
90s – Muriel’s Wedding and The Castle and The Adventures of Priscilla –
gave voice to misfits and social outcasts. In contrast, it’s hard not to find
most comedies of the last two decades lacking, individual gems aside. Yes, I’m
aware I’m singling out an exemplary handful of films from the 70s, 80s and 90s
and conveniently ignoring much of the dreck (looking at you, Pacific Banana and A Little Bit of Soul),
but think about it: is there a truly iconic Australian comedy of the last 20
years? There are funny and charming films for sure – The Wog Boy, Crackerjack, Kenny, the often side-splitting A Few Best Men – but nothing that’s
punched a palpable dent in the local film culture.
The
Flip Side is
cut from the same inoffensive, innocuous cloth as films like Danny Deckchair and The Honourable Wally Norman, and shares with many local
comedies an imported star to add a sheen of international selling clout
(see Deckchair’s
Rhys Ifans, Pete Postlethwaite in Strange Bedfellows, Peter Dinklage in I Love You Too, and so on). The horrendous poster – the cheap-looking and
cheesy photoshop job at the top of this review – was the marketing
equivalent of crime scene tape, no doubt turning away many patrons, myself
included. But the film is well shot and milks reasonable value from a likely
small budget. Taheny sympathetically anchors proceedings and shows both comic
and dramatic chops, Izzard is enjoyable, and McKenzie and Guide provide
colourful support. The film is more Sideways-esque
dramedy or French farce of romantic entanglement than broad ocker comedy, and
there’s some genuine wit in how its characters bounce off and rub against one
another.
In
other words, the film exceeded my expectations. However, a couple of things
never quite clicked for me. Firstly, its imported star casting. Eddie Izzard is
inarguably a superstar, but not a movie superstar. On stage he’s a superstar;
on film he’s a character actor, one who’s delivered fun turns in films
like Velvet Goldmine, Mystery Men, The Cat’s Meow, Ocean’s Twelve and Thirteen, and Valkyrie among others, as
well as lending his vocal talent to animated flicks like Cars 2 and The Lego Movie. But The Cat’s Meow (where he
played Charlie Chaplin) aside, Izzard’s not the first actor you think about
when you picture any of these films. Director Pilowsky and company deserve
credit for casting outside the box rather than just going with a Jai Courtney
type, but casting Izzard as a rising Hollywood star ultimately doesn’t work,
despite his best efforts in the role. And The Flip Side sends mixed signals about the
exact nature of his stardom. Jeff tells Henry his work deeply moved him when he
was 11 years old; Henry’s low level enough to do a Q&A to forty people at
Adelaide’s Mercury Cinema, but a hunk enough to inspire a random soused
Hahndorfian to flash her cleavage at him; and towards film’s end he’s cast as a
comic book character and officially makes the A-list, likely riffing on British
comic book alum like Paul Bettany and Michael Fassbender. But all these stardom
signifiers never quite cohere persuasively. Then again, I’ve also said Bradley
Cooper’s country music star in A
Star is Born was conceptually confused – a waning star on a
downward professional spiral who still managed to sell out 50,000+ seat arenas
– and that film made nearly half a billion dollars and scored 8 Oscar nominations. The Flip Side would
probably like to have those problems.
Secondly,
its depiction of Adelaide. I get the cliché of Adelaide as a big country town,
but here’s the thing: Adelaide’s a city. With over one million people. The
pleasant provincial town dramatized (or anti-dramatized) onscreen is not the
Adelaide I know or lived in for 15 years. It may be the version of Adelaide
experienced by many, including the director – the film’s IMDb trivia page notes the idea for The
Flip Side was conceived following an extended stay overseas
and describes the film as something of a tribute to the city – and I get that
cities have facets: Scorsese’s New York is different from Spike Lee’s New York
which is different from Woody Allen’s New York and so on. But I also
think The Flip Side perpetuates
a lazy stereotype in service of its story, or perhaps for the convenience of
production. Setting and shooting the film in an actual regional location may have
been prohibitive cost-wise, but would surely have been more authentic.
Alternatively, instead of sanding down its setting’s contradictory edges, the
film could have embraced them.
The
best Australian comedies made a meal of subverting expectations, smashing
stereotypes, and embracing authenticity. Like so many Australian comedies of
the past twenty years, The
Flip Side takes the roads most comfortably traveled. The film
amuses and achieves its aims, a marker of success for any movie, but its
aims are fairly modest.
Ben Kooyman