Films in a narrow frame.(Film)(Australian film content)

WHY DO Australian films so often flop with Australian audiences--and with critics, too, these days? I'm not sure if there's going to be a definitive answer to this question in this brief article, but I'd like at least to advance some ideas.

First of all, there is, with several honourable exceptions, a strange disconnection from the reality of Australia, and a consequent cartoonisation of this country. Either it's cack-handed, unfunny comedy, or puppet-show agenda-setting, with good characterisation a long way down the list of must-haves.

Then there's a tendency to go for the quirky, which is often just lame and embarrassing. The stories just don't hold. That applies even for light, enjoyable films like Gettin' Square, which was redeemed by the great acting of David Wenham and Timothy Spall, and some marvellous one-liners, like the immortally larrikin "Piss off, birds!" The less said about most of the dialogue in most Australian films, though, the better.

Then there's little of that certain something--that thing I can only describe as the "hand in your chest cavity, gripping at your heart" feeling which rivets you in place, and haunts you afterwards. Of recent films, Lantana had it (though I disliked some aspects of that film, mostly to do with certain underlying ideas, it's a brilliant piece of work); Till Human Voices Wake Us, Michael Petroni's strange, underestimated ghost story had it too. Blue Murder (a telemovie, not a feature film) had it in spades, as did The Shiralee, also a telemovie, starring Bryan Brown. (Telemovies generally seem to work better, for some reason.)

When novels are (rarely) adapted, it's not often done well--for example, the dreadful Ned Kelly, based on Robert Drewe's poetic and subtle novel Our Sunshine. Of course there's Picnic at Hanging Rock--the film is even better than the book, in my opinion. The recent Three Dollars, adapted by the novelist, Eliot Perlman, himself, was well-made and well-acted, though the film suffers from the fact that the story is, at heart, rather weak and reveals its weaknesses even more glaringly on screen than on the page.

Generally, there's not enough use made of Australian novels--there's some brilliant stuff there, much better-constructed stories than the original screenplays of too many films. And why do Australians restrict themselves so much in subject matter, preferring to stay within "dun-coloured realism"? Why not take a leaf out of New Zealand's book and tackle big epic fantasy, for example? We don't need to go to Britain for our fantasy stories, though. There are lots of wonderful Australian fantasy novels around--which have done well overseas too--which could translate well to the screen: for example, Patricia Wrightson's brilliant Book of Wirrun trilogy, or Lian Hearn's gorgeous ...