Australian film fans, cover your eyes! Yes, the whole three of you out there are in for a bit of a shock. Sick and tired of our own flailing industry and determined to kick the yankees out of our state of the art facilities at Fox Studios in Sydney, Aussie short filmmaker Andrew Lancaster has directed his feature film debut in Accidents Happen, although unfortunately proves that yes, sometimes they really do.
While this film proves Americans, Australians and the British can co-ordinate an effort that is not war, the result is a film lacking in identity. Nobody will believe these characters are actually Americans, certainly not the Americans themselves…and especially not with another Erik Thompson cameo.
This is the story of a regular family, the Conways, torn apart by horrifically tragic circumstances that suspend the mother, Gloria (Geena Davis) and her remaining two sons, Larry (Harry Cook) and Billy (Harrison Gilbertson), in grief. After a car accident leaves them without the beautiful daughter they once had and takes the life out of Larry’s charismatic twin Eugene – leaving him a vegetable, we jump forward eight years and enter their consequent world. As a coping mechanism Gloria Conway develops an acidic wit, Gene hangs on to life in a nursing home, Larry is a devastated teenage alcoholic and fifteen year old Billy lashes out at his predicament by via escapism in the form of developing a close bond with Gene’s ex-best friend – neighborhood troublemaker Doug Post (Sebastian Gregory) – and getting up to no good.
Tragic circumstances are peppered with hilarious skits portraying their misfortune and asserting it is not deserved, leaving the audience unsure of whether to laugh or cry and the reviewer at a loss for how to define it; dramedy? black comedy? obsessive compulsive polarity disorder? Like any other Australian movie since the turn of the century but scarily overemphasised, consider The Black Ballon or Beautiful Kate on steroids and still, Accidents Happen feels like the Big Mac meal of Australian cinema.
We are asked to laugh at the characters before us, but the stark contrast between extreme hilarity and extreme tragedy makes us feel like a-holes. The true conclusion is that this movie is actually about the serious catharsis of a dysfunctional family experiencing ferocious and unrelenting grief and their attempts at atonement and healing via escapism. In moves that often feel more like jabs at the American way of life rather than representations of it – a bookend Desperate Housewives style narration and a quietly pot-stirring neighbour – are random influences to the story that avoid impacting the film for everlasting moments. In a move that will hardly be popular with an American, Hollywood fed audience, the lack of an audacious ending probably won’t be too well received either.
While Lancaster’s international short film acclaim makes him the ideal to begin an Aussie filmmaking resurgence, the brilliant cinematography and well written story – by American screenwriter Brian Carbee – will not avoid viewers leaving a screening sans experiencing a nagging confusion. This uncertainty exists in questioning why such an obviously Australian movie in direction, acting and financing, was not made with an Australian audience in mind? Why is this, fellow nationals, is not a movie for us? Cue Rove, “WHAT THE?!”
Astoundingly, the wittiest screenplay we’ve seen in years has been brought to life via dodgy, faux American accents and set in an indistinct upper north shore sydney version of suburban Connecticut, USA. There are no overtly American features, aside from the accents, which cannot hide the audible twangs of Australiana anyway. Consequently much poignancy is lost at crucial moments of the movie while spectators lose focus, as I witnessed during this screening, distracted by the cacophony they turned to one another with mocking quips of “oi, did you hear him try and say that?”.
Only two fathomable reasons for this exist, a) Screen Australia has completely given up on our domestic film market; If we fill an Aussie film with the sound of Uncle Sam’s dialect then maybe we can fool our movie-goers into watching it. Geena Davis’ character could not have explained her audience’s predicament better than when her character tells a pair of cops they “swallowed a shit pie, covered in chocolate”. Reason b) IS Geena Davis herself. She’s stunningly beautiful, funny and plays a role so cut by what she has experienced there would be no doubt about an Oscar nomination, if this were a truly American film. Again, the limitations of fence sitting do bite.
Adelaide’s own Harrison Gilbertson, a genuinely nice kid, was on hand before the screening to talk about this movie and his upcoming projects. As the protagonist of Accidents Happen, his character’s experiences with the wrath of an angry universe meant Gilbertson had a perfect chance to push his acting talent to the limits, and he doesn’t disappoint. On the plus side, he’ll be chased by casting agents for a long while to come. Look out for him in Beneath Hill 60 as well as in the directional debut of Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black’s What’s Wrong With Virginia? out later on this year…it looks to be a cracker.
Verdict:
Achingly funny and sad, but quirky in all the wrong places. Far worse than any American ills are Aussies trying to speak like them.
