Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

great_white22 I saw this film at the 3rd Adelaide International Film Festival at the Palace cinemas, and was totally switched onto it in the opening five minutes. Thanks goodness for a film that ignores all the rubbish we often see in Australian films that seem to revolve around a)race b)gender and c) class, in favour of er...dare I say....jolly good cinema. The producer, a shy, slightly eccentric chap called Alex Frayne introduced his film, made with a bunch of his mates near the town he spent much of his childhood. Apparently he's spent much of the last year traveling the world with the film, mostly in Europe. The world the film creates is both brilliant and arty, not least because of strange and disconcerting editing style, the Gothic characters, and the surreal sense of time and place that draws viewers into its nightmarish realm.The producer returned for the Q + A after-wards. Someone asked him what his inspiration was - he replied "South Australia." Hear hear! Another asked him what a 'day in the life of alex' entailed. He replied that he drives an old Ute, that he has breakfast at the same table at the same restaurant that he's jolly well eaten at for the past 8 years! and that he plays piano which helps him to think. He doesn't drink booze and plays cricket once a week. Then the Q and A session ended abruptly because of the next film screening - so my thoughts are that for the next festival, they need to extend the after film sessions.

campington John and his wife Emily, accompanied by their child Edward venture from the comfortable environs of suburbia to the village where the husband spent some of his childhood. There has been a death in the family and John must begin proceedings to take control of an old ramshackle cottage, situated by the seaside and once inhabited by an old man who has apparently committed suicide.Sceptical about the circumstances of the death, John divorces himself from his family and from reality, puts his own life in peril, and puts on the clothes of the old man who is now dead.The film now changes - nothing is what it seems - the people of his past appear, in full Gothic/hillbilly glory - his wife worries about his mental state - and his son disappears into the reeds.John finds that the old man didn't commit suicide, that his death is far more mysterious and strange. In a spine chilling finale, we learn that the events of the film actually never happened and that the entire narrative was imagined by the little boy, Edward, who is struggling to come to terms with his parents' divorce proceedings.Modern Love is a macabre piece of high art cinema, a puzzling and perverse piece of pretentiousness, full of vague suggestion and unexplored red-herrings. It is humourless and seemingly unconcerned with current Indie trends which both validates its creators, but also renders it passé.But the weaknesses of this Australian film are fully outweighed by its sheer muscular cinematic vision, its bloody-minded and uncompromising precision and its oddball Euro horror. The bastardry of script norms and lack of slick dialogue pales into insignificance against a backdrop of noir and a lead performance that needs to be seen to be appreciated.One of the most aggressively weird Australian films in years.

edweiland I caught this movie at the Bend Film Festival last night. First note is the audience reaction was not good. That could have been because the crowd was in sort of a silly, upbeat mood since it was Friday evening and had viewed a couple of humorous shorts before "Modern Love". This movie is dark, moody and humorless, which might have worked better on a Sunday afternoon with a more serious crowd. That said, I still have some problems with this movie. Some technical things were done well. The use of darkness and light in the first part of the film is neat and the two leads, Mark Constable and Victoria Hill, do a good job of portraying a passionless couple without wasting time on getting into the reasons for the state of their marriage. Later Constable does a good job of going slowly from serious, hard-working family man to what may or may not be a crazy person. There was also some great photography. That aside, I can't say I liked this movie. It seems the director is trying to emulate David Lynch and fell short. There were too many long scenes with very little dialog and this got tiresome by the end. The characters from the small town were just strange. They weren't lovably strange, quirky or even interesting. As the movie goes on you're sort of waiting for an explanation for the behavior of John, the main character. When that finally happens the revelation isn't particularly earthshaking. I haven't seen many Australian movies, nor do I know much about the place and that might skew my feelings some. But in general I found this movie dark, dreary and increasingly difficult to watch as it wore on.

linda hetzel Jingofighter I agree with some of your comments, but I have to disagree on a couple of things. First, this film is nothing like THE CARS THAT ATE Paris. Not IMHO. Nothing like it.I think the film had elements of surrealism, but I think the basic approach of the film maker is not "surrealist" per se. therefore its not really like CARS Paris, I think more like a weird Euro work, with some scenes bearing the hallmark of "wierd" not surreal.Secondly, I think the music by Heuzenroeder is brilliant. They used whistling, that old sound from Country and Western records, and its waaayyy better than most Aussie films which usually team the film maker up with a dumb sounding Indy band that the company wants to push.As for the name of the film - I don't know why it's called Modern Love, I was kinda hoping for David Bowie to appear dressed in drag and lipstick... opps I'm starting to show my age.