Something to watch tonight: Thursday 27 November
Separation City (Middleditch, 2009)
Joel Edgerton is getting major plaudits for his superb work in Train Dreams. There’s talk of awards contention that might only be hampered by not enough people seeing the film.
If you like him in Train Dreams, you could do worse than seek out his supporting turns in The Underground Railroad or Animal Kingdom.
I first noticed him as an unsatisfied Wellington public servant in Tom Scott’s locally made Separation City and, while there was little or no evidence of the intensity he has shown in various roles since, he makes a decent leading man. Scott was a political columnist and cartoonist in Wellington for many years (and also had some success on the stage) and this is a world he knows well.
It’s not that great a film, truth be told, but they can’t all be bangers and if you are an Edgerton completist you should seek it out.
Because privileged white males haven’t had a fair suck of the sav in recent times when it comes to arts funding it seems only fair that the Film Commission should try and redress that injustice with the new Tom Scott-scripted comedy Separation City.
Aussie Joel Edgerton plays Simon, a normal kiwi bloke who has a gorgeous intelligent wife, a beautiful house on the beach in Eastbourne, a job steering affairs of state for a cabinet minister and a mid-life crisis caused by nothing more dramatic than a lack of action in the bedroom. He falls for beautiful cellist Katrien who may or may not be Dutch or German but has the cut glass English accent of London-born Rhona Mitra (last seen in skin-tight leather as a vampire in Underworld 3).
She has recently split from her womanising artist husband (German Thomas Kretschmann) and, despite the better judgement of both, they conspire to get it on at a climate change conference in Berlin. Meanwhile good friend Pip (Stephanie Paul) had decided she’s a lesbian, her husband Keith (Phil Brown) has started a men’s group so he can deal with his emasculation and the Minister’s secretary Julie (Michelle Langstone) wants to get it on with either Simon or ratbag Tem (Grant Roa) but doesn’t want to be seen as a sex object.
Aussie Les Hill plays the Tom Scott part – the cynical, deadpan Press Gallery hack with the heart of gold – and he gets the best of the dialogue: Scott’s clever one-liners are plentiful and delivered with aplomb but neither he nor director Paul Middleditch have managed to locate a beating heart under the flippant surface. It’s like watching one of those Circa plays where the cast rush through the emotional and intellectual content because they don’t trust their audience and then deliver the gag lines very deliberately to make sure the audience is still there… You could call this Circa-vision.
Most frustratingly, if two scenes at the end are anything to go by, the real message of the film reveals the creators to be about as old school phallocentric as anything produced in the bad old 1970s – conservative and reactionary, it will go down a treat with a certain kind of crowd.
Incidentally, this was the only review that I’ve ever had to apologise for. That wisecrack about Circa Theatre came back to bite me almost instantaneously as I was working at the time for their Wellington professional theatre competitor, the late and very much lamented Downstage. My boss received a letter from the Circa Council — their board — suggesting that while I had the freedom to write whatever I wanted in a review, doing so while working in our small community was “uncollegial” to say the least.
It was strongly suggested that I write back to them regretting that I’d put the excellent relationship between the two theatres at risk which I did.
I still stand by the opinion, however …
Also reviewed in that fateful Capital Times column: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (“I think I actually intellectually regressed during the film and I am now 118 minutes stupider. And I don’t mind.”), Audrey Tautou in Coco Avant Chanel, Daniel Craig in the indie Flashbacks of a Fool and a terrific local conservation documentary, Earth Whisperers/Papatuanuku.
Where to watch Separation City
Aotearoa: Digital rental from NZ Film On Demand
Rest of the world: Not currently available online1
There is a Blu-ray available from Amazon in Germany.