While you’re not looking

Home­grown ani­ma­tor extra­or­di­naire, Paul Robert­son, pepped up my day with his hilar­i­ous homage to pop cul­ture (Thanks, Alex!). In this video, my high­lights were the ambiva­lent Chan­nel 7’s cor­po­rate zom­bies and babies explod­ing from the girths of sub­ur­ban trash. The hor­i­zon­tal pan that is so quin­tes­sen­tially in plat­form games evoked flushes of child­hood arcade mem­o­ries and the stun­ning one-shot fight sequence in Old Boy, which was to me the best part of the relent­less film.

Speak­ing of relent­less, today’s fine com­pli­men­tary expe­ri­ence care of Radio National was Sarah Watt’s My Year With­out Sex. I will burn in Baby Boomer hell for say­ing this but there is next to noth­ing redeem­ing about her work. My Year has improved mar­gin­ally com­pared to her direc­to­r­ial debut. Her heavy handed exe­cu­tions and clunky writ­ing with unre­al­is­tic dia­logues is a com­mon issue with her work. In this film, the hus­band played by Matt Day was only a vehi­cle of sto­ry­telling, a sup­port­ing char­ac­ter in the most lit­eral sense. It had no depth nor devel­op­ment and yes, mind as well be a card­board cut out. The scenes he was in were merely to make or empha­sis an unnec­es­sary point. Redun­dancy is a reoc­cur­ring theme in Watt’s work. The shot of a lot­tery ticket left behind was indeed need­less. The point was made when the son ran­domly picks them with­out care. If a visual cue is needed, a close up shot of his action would have suf­ficed. Another is the awk­ward moment of the cou­ple in bed after a long sep­a­ra­tion. The dia­logue seemed unwor­thy when there were so many poignant issues needed to be addressed to give the char­ac­ters or the film depth. But instead, Watt decided to use as a device to cre­ate a neatly wrapped up end­ing. The list goes on… She tries too hard to be clever and as a result her work lacks earnest­ness. The shot selec­tions to make Mel­bourne generic is an obvi­ous attempt to reach the inter­na­tional mar­ket. The inter­minable monthly chap­ter titles and their painfully bla­tant dou­ble enten­dres seemed only a con­straint to ful­fil the film’s name and cre­ated a stac­cato expe­ri­ence. Some redeem­ing fea­tures were Sacha Horler’s stun­ning per­for­mance in resus­ci­tat­ing the script. The edit­ing style at the begin­ning was a poetic reflec­tion of set­ting scene and its con­trast­ing style com­ple­ments the protagonist’s change was appro­pri­ate but could improve with cre­ative tech­niques. Over­all, stay well away and don’t set­tle over curios­ity because it will hurt.