Sunday (2014) is an Australia/New Zealand co-production about an ex-couple at a relationship crossroads. After months of separation, Australian Charlie (Dustin Clare) and New Zealander Eve (Camille Keenan) are reunited when Eve tells Charlie she’s pregnant. Over 24 hours in Christchurch, the couple must decide about their and their unborn child’s future. Sunday is gentle, cleanly executed, and at a tight 70 minutes economically told. Director Michelle Joy Lloyd co-wrote the film with her actors, and befitting the story the production feels intimate and propelled by its time and narrative constraints. It also nicely utilises its backdrop of post-earthquake Christchurch, adding thematic heft.
I have a fondness for Australian films that share titles with better-known overseas productions, among them Fair Game, Thirst, and now Disclosure (2020). Clocking in at 80 minutes and with nary a Michael Douglas, Demi Moore, or VR machine in sight, Michael Bentham’s Disclosure is another economical and intimate drama, albeit here focused on two couples and confined to a single location. The story centres on the gladiatorial verbiage exchanged between two affluent married couples (creatives played by Mark Leonard Winter and Matilda Ridgway, politickers played by Tom Wren and Geraldine Hakewill) around an incident involving their children. While based on an original screenplay by Bentham, Disclosure feels like a stage play adapted for film with its single location, small ensemble, and dialogue-driven narrative. In particular, it carries whiffs of Roman Polanski’s film adaptations of Death and the Maiden (with its political dimension) and especially Carnage, similarly a civil dialogue between two married couples regarding their children that progressively degenerates. Disclosure isn’t as meaty or unique as either of those titles, but it's well-executed and acted and evocatively scored to the ambient sounds of the surrounding Australian shrub.
Ben