Published 2016 on Down Under Flix
Director: Gillian Armstrong
Director: Gillian Armstrong
Stars: Lisa Harrow, Kerry Fox, Miranda Otto, Bruno Ganz, Bill
Hunter
Twelve
years before he acted out the last days of Adolf Hitler in Downfall, Bruno Ganz acted
in The Last Days of Chez
Nous. And now that low-hanging fruit is out of the way, let’s get
on with the review…
In
my Radiance review, I lamented the small percentage of women directors in the
Australian film industry. Unbeknownst to me, this coincided with the announcement
of a great new Screen Australia initiative, Gender Matters: Brilliant Stories and Brilliant Careers,
to help fund more female-driven projects. The use of “Brilliant Careers” in the
title reflects the continued relevance of Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career to
Australian women’s stories on film, as well as Armstrong’s importance as the
country’s first major female director. Ever since that film’s success launched
her own brilliant career (not to mention Judy Davis’), Armstrong has alternated
between local productions (Starstruck, High Tide) and Hollywood fare (Mrs Soffel, Little Women) and found success
in both industries. The Last
Days of Chez Nous is one of her key Australian works.
Like
the aforementioned Radiance, Chez Nous is a film about
three women from different generations under one roof, though here it is not an
absent mother but a philandering husband who shapes the dramatic trajectory of
the story. Beth (Lisa Harrow) is the matriarch of the household, by biology as
well as circumstance: her daughter Annie (Miranda Otto) is in her final stretch
of high school, while her immature younger sister Vicki (Kerry Fox) returns
home from overseas travel, pregnant and without job prospects. Beth is also in
a relationship with JP (Bruno Ganz), who she married to help bolster his
permanent residency application. Whilst their home is outwardly vibrant and
lively, discontent brews beneath the surface: JP feels neglected, Vicki is idle
and directionless, and Beth struggles with her marriage of convenience and in
her dealings with her father (Bill Hunter). Matters escalate when JP and Vicki embark
on an affair.
There’s
a nice symmetry to the fact that this film, focused heavily as it is on three
women at different junctures in their lives, was also steered behind the scenes
by three notable female creators. In addition to Armstrong directing, the
film was produced by veteran producer Jan Chapman (whose credits include The Piano, Love Serenade, Lantana, and more
recently The Babadook and The Daughter) and boasts an
original script by Helen Garner. Garner has written only three screenplays in
her long and prolific writing career (her first was co-scripting the 1982
adaptation of her novel Monkey
Grip) and it’s a pity: Chez
Nous’ script is a textured, witty meditation on relationships,
family, mortality, identity, and womanhood.
Like Human Touch, there’s also a healthy
strain of human pragmatism in a story that could have veered into easy
histrionics. While there are exceptions, that pragmatic attitude shorn of
surplus melodrama does seem the norm in a lot of Australian dramas: it’s what
separates a flick like Caddie from,
say, Stella or Diary of a Mad Black Woman, to name two random American
films that explore similar terrain. Where the resolution of Chez Nous’ unfortunate love
triangle could have been excessively melodramatic, it is handled with grace and
thoughtfulness.
Armstrong’s
direction throughout is neutral and unflashy, giving Garner’s script and the
performers room to breathe (see Starstruck,
to be reviewed in a fortnight’s time, to see Armstrong working in a more overt
style). The director has played a pivotal role in the careers of several local
actresses (e.g. Judy Davis, Cate Blanchett) and here elicits great work from
her leads. Harrow’s character is multi-faceted and at times contradictory – a
warm mother and sister, a distant and independent partner, a needy and
vulnerable daughter – as befitting most human beings but not necessarily most
screen characters. All these layers cohere nicely in Harrow’s performance. I’m
a long-time Kerry Fox fan (Shallow
Grave forever!) and her work is equally strong and
multi-faceted, with a façade of brash and bravado disguising a deeper well of
sadness and vulnerability. While it’s reductive to tether a filmmaker’s later work
to the preoccupations of their earlier films, My Brilliant Career’s shadow looms large over
Armstrong’s filmography. Consequently, it’s tempting to read Beth and Vicki as
beneficiaries of the trails blazed by women like Career’s Sybylla at the start
of the twentieth century – both women are afforded the independence and
autonomy that Sybylla craved and toiled for – as well as inheritors of a new
set of challenges at century’s end. Beth has both career and marriage, but
struggles with the latter; Vicki can be a single parent but is reluctant, and
has career opportunities but lacks drive; and both women cannot
compartmentalize the “love” issue as easily as Sybylla did.
Elsewhere
in the cast, Miranda Otto – super young but already a veteran – gives a fun and
spirited performance as the youngest of the family, while Bill Hunter does that
cantankerous patriarch thing he did so well in the 1990s (see also Strictly Ballroom and Muriel’s Wedding). And while I
seized upon the low-hanging fruit of Bruno Ganz’s famous and endlessly memed (and, it should be said, very
striking) performance as Hitler in 2004’s Downfall at the start of this review, he
makes for a classy addition to the Australian ensemble cast, giving a
sympathetic performance as a character culturally displaced and at an emotional
impasse.
The Last Days of Chez Nous is a thoughtful, textured ensemble drama from three of
Australia’s premier women creators.
Ben Kooyman