Contemporary Australia: Women

46 Paul Goldman Australia b.1970 Suburban Mayhem (production still) 2006 35mm, colour, Dolby digital, 95 minutes Opposite Warwick Thornton Australia b.1970 Kaytej people Samson and Delilah (production still) 2009 35mm, colour, Dolby digital, 100 minutes Sexual catastrophes Women seeking intimacy through sex is seen as disastrous in a number of films in Australian cinema. The inability to gauge the suitability of sexual partners leads invariably to tragedy. An extremely needy woman dominates John Curran’s Praise 1998, which Andrew McGahan adapted from his own novel. Sacha Horler’s sexually voracious woman meets a man who is pretty empty, played by Peter Fenton. Eventually, it is clear he’s incapable of satisfying her — or unwilling to — because her sexual demands imply others he’s completely unable to meet. For her, the meeting of her sexual demands validates the problems she experiences with her body, both in terms of her weight and her eczema, which plagues her. Strange, then, that she should choose a man with such limited emotional assets, but therein lies the drama. In Fran 1985, Noni Hazlehurst gives an award-winning performance as a woman whose need for a male partner and sex overcomes her responsibilities towards her own children. She, too, chooses the wrong man to fulfil her. This is a film written and directed by a woman, Glenda Hambly, whose view of her protagonist is simultaneously critical and compassionate. This is also true of Cate Shortland’s heroine Heidi in Somersault 2004, played with winsome appeal by Abbie Cornish in a career‑making role. She searches for validation through casual and ill-considered sexual liaisons, beginning with her mother’s boyfriend. Although the sexual partners Heidi chooses are, for the most part, despicable, the most significant one with the troubled son of a local grazier (Sam Worthington) has a gentle sadness to it, with neither of them able to give the other what they need. She needs love and he, we’re led to believe, needs a man. Rachael Blake. Another significant marriage depicted in Lantana has sexual dysfunction at its core, but it is perceived as a man (Geoffrey Rush) unable to fulfil his wife’s (Barbara Hershey) emotional needs: ‘It’s like trying to fill an empty well’. The theme of the unseen woman in a marriage — the woman who desperately wants to feel a connection with her partner — recurs frequently in films by men. Is the response to neediness inevitably denial? The same theme is explored in Gillian Armstrong’s TheLast Days of Chez Nous 1992, with a screenplay by Helen Garner. Lisa Harrow’s wife–mother is in despair at the lack of connection with her husband (Bruno Ganz), who conveniently takes up with her much younger sister (Kerry Fox). There is emptiness at the core of the relationship between husband and wife; she tries too hard to engage him; his love has turned to irritation and anger. But, despite the bleakness of the film, there is something of a release for Harrow’s character at the end, as he says to her, ‘You were proud and I made you humble’ — evidence of that terrible tendency to destroy the thing you love the most. However, the most ignored woman in Australian cinema would have to be Muriel’s mother in Muriel’s Wedding 1994. Jeanie Drynan reveals the pathetic nature of life in a family where you are treated with contempt by both husband and children; you are not considered, you are not loved, you are merely the drudge. I writhed in agony when she is picked up by the store detective for failing to pay for the shoes she’s put on her sore feet. She is ineffectual in the face of her husband’s bombast, and, as her despair deepens, it is ignored by the whole family. Never has an image conveyed such a powerful portrait of human devastation than the blackened backyard which she has burned because not one of her sons would mow the grass.