Ladies in Black

Seen at the Regent Theatre, Ballarat, VIC

Cecil says: Ladies in Black is the kind of film I could go and see over and over again, and probably always pick up new little insights into life in 1959 (the year of my birth, funnily enough, so I don’t have actual memories of that time myself!). It stands alongside Strictly Ballroom as one of those films I will no doubt see more than once and not tire of, so it must be my top film of 2018, I think.

There are so many aspects that make this a charming watch: the coming-of-age (but not at all in a sexual way) of school-leaver Lisa (one of the big moves she makes to ‘come of age’ is to drop her androgynous name ‘Lesley’ and start a new life at work as ‘Lisa”); the arrival and gradual acceptance of ‘new’ migrants from other parts of Europe than the UK and Ireland; the social limits on behaviour and propriety, leading to some hilarious and some touching moments, as two of the Ladies in Black deal with developing relationships.

It’s all set in Sydney, so any shots with backdrop to the City and CBD are obviously computer-generated, but there is also careful filming on the harbour, managing to avoid any new build that has sprung up since the 1950s, and use of that beautiful old department store building in the city with its original façade.

As a child in Sydney in 1967, I became a geeky ‘collector’ of bus numbers and destinations, so I know that Circular Quay was the main bus destination in those days (rather than the current-day Wynyard), so the child geek in me was pleased to see Circular Quay on the front of many of the buses shown in Ladies in Black.

There were slightly melodramatic characters like Magda, who managed the up-market couture dresses in the store and was obviously used to mixing in finer circles than other shop assistants, but was having to adapt to Australia’s more working-class but increasingly affluent society.

And there were the lovely cameo characters like Miss Cartwright, who had a soft spot for Lisa from the start, and obviously wants her to make the most of the opportunities open to young women in 1959 that weren’t there for women oi her generation. She’s almost the most beautiful character in the film, managing to overcome any regrets at an unfulfilled life herself to wish well to a new generation starting out.

I was a bit confused at first over the two brunettes who were friends and colleagues of Fay. I thought they were the same person at the start, which is another reason to see this film again.

And in a sense, although Lisa was the central character, it was Fay whose story we followed as closely and who spoke for her own generation at the time: intelligent but not educated; fed up with boorish men in their lives; but lacking opportunities to break out, until the arrival of the new immigrants into Australia.

Well, these are just a few of the highlights for me. I’m sure on second viewing, I’ll find more favourite bits to comment on, so look forward to when it comes back to some cinemas for a second run…

*****

Bea says: I was very keen to see this film because when I saw the preview (at the cinema attending another film) I saw that one of the storylines is about the arrival of the "New Australians" during the 1940s-early 1970s and their assimilation into Australian life.  I am very interested in this topic, as I am the daughter of New Australians myself, and I have just started to notice with pleasure more in Australian literature and film on this - I suspect because the children of the New Australians are now well into adulthood and are writing and making films and art about their influences.

However, Ladies in Black in actually based on an early novel by Madeleine St John - who I know from her later, award winning work The Essence of the Thing; I had no idea she was even Australian, and from my (brief) recent research into her after seeing Ladies in Black I don't think she is of New Australian stock.  It turns out she was at Sydney University with Bruce Beresford, the film's director, and I suspect that Ladies in Black is a coming of age, semi-autobiographical work of hers; she is likely to have identified pretty strongly with Lisa (Lesley), who is busy having her horizons opened (by the New Australians) and reinventing herself during her summer department store job, before starting her first term at Sydney University.  I have to say that Sydney University is a pretty magical place; I spent a year teaching there on a contract in 2017, and my heart skipped with excitement whenever I walked through the main campus - it really feels like a historic place where any possibility can happen...

Other than Lisa's storyline, we follow several other of the department store staff, who are all at different moments in their lives and so the film explores such things as finding a partner, marriage and infertility, spinsterhood, work and life decisions, but with Beresford's light touch, wry sense of humour and beautiful cinematography.

It certainly really spoke to me, and to Cecil, but I have heard mixed reviews amongst friends.  But I say - go and see it; it may speak volumes to you about your life, or not, but if not it will certainly be a pleasant diversion, particularly if you have any memories of Sydney life in earlier decades.  I also gifted the DVD to my parents for Christmas.

*****

Hello Hemingway

Seen at the Latin American Film Festival at the Westgarth Theatre, Northcote VIC

Cecil says: I went to this one on my own as part of my Vintage Victoria project, because I wanted to see the Westgarth Theatre. So I just chose whatever film they had on next.

I was really pleased to see this Cuban period drama made in 1990 so not a new release, but interesting as it was set in 1956 as political unrest was growing in Cuba.

Funnily enough, it came hot on the heels of our seeing Ladies in Black (still not quite done our review of that one), which was also set in the 1950s and had as its central focus a school girl coming-of-age.

The Cuban one was fascinating and showed the difficulty of the bright, bookish Larita, who dreams of getting a scholarship to study in the States, but is up against a bunch of posh kids from private schools. It's not her education which lets her down, but her lack of connection and her rather unsettled home life.

Things are difficult at home as the uncle she lives with (along with her Mum and auntie, cousin and grandmother) loses his job as a policeman. It's not a job he enjoys anyway, as he has to see things he can't describe to the ladies at home (presumably torture of left-wing revolutionaries and activists), but he is the main breadwinner in the household.

Suddenly Larita's dreams of university and getting to America seem stupid romantic fantasies to the rest of her family, and indeed to her revolutionary boyfriend Victor who wonders why she'd want to leave him and the Association just when things are getting interesting.

It's a classic tale of dreamy teenagers, passionate politics, poverty and survival, with some lovely observations on life threaded through it.

Hemingway is visible but out of reach. That is Hemingway himself, since he lives in the mansion up on the hill and he is seen from time to time, but never seems to be home when Larita needs his help.

But also Hemingway's novels, which Larita discovers via the most endearing character in the film, the guy who runs the local bookshop, but which her boyfriend Victor regards as romantic rubbish and a fantasy.

I loved the shots of the coastline in Havana, the Malecon. Especially as I have been there for one of my old jobs. What intrigued me even more was that this film was made three years even before I was there in 1993 so must have looked pretty similar to what I saw myself, even though supposedly set a few decades earlier. (After all, one of the beauties of Havana is the old buildings and cars, since nobody has had money to do terrible 'development' since the revolution in 1959).

I really enjoyed this film and was very glad I had timed my visit to the Westgarth to coincide with its start in the Latin American Film Festival 2018.

****

The Bookshop

Seen at the Theatre Royal, Castlemaine, VIC

Cecil says: I had no idea what to expect from The Bookshop, except that I – correctly – assumed it would revolve around a book shop…

Funnily enough I realised as the voiceover began that I had been expecting a quaint American small town book shop and some story built around that. Just shows how ingrained our expectation of American culture is on our screens. But, no, The Bookshop is filmed mostly on location in Northern Ireland (we recognised some of the coastal scenes), and I was interested in how many of the credits rolling by at the end of the film seemed to be of Catalan origin (and sure enough, the film was written and directed by Isabel Coixet from Barcelona, and she involved lots of Catalan folk in the production – good for her, I say).

However, this says nothing about the film itself. The voiceover runs right through the film and I won’t do a spoiler on who the character turns out to be whose voice it is, but another surprise only a few seconds in was the appearance strolling into sight over the horizon of Bill Nighy. I had no idea he was in the film at all, but I knew Bea would be pleased, and if I was a betting man, I’d have a good chance of winnings if I bet on Bill Nighy appearing in pretty well every film we see these days.

The premise of the film: outsider comes into small village in (not totally clear what era – but since Lolita has just been published, it suggests 1950s) England with a desire to convert on old house into a bookshop. Against her is one of the local dignitaries, who has aspirations to have a local arts centre housed there; and at the first party the prospective bookshop owner attends, she gets fairly short shrift from most locals, who are either definitely in the Duchess’s camp or are clearly not interested in books.

So far it smacks a little of Vicar of Dibley. But there isn’t much humour here, and the pace is fairly slow. But the plot does develop nicely and relationship between Emily Mortimer (Florence Green) and Bill Nighy (Edmund Brundish) is rather nice to watch as it slowly develops, though never quite materialises, rather like in Remains of the Day.

Looking at the book industry today (not that I know much about it), it’s gratifying that there are still independent book shops doted around the place, and we always try to drop by on our travels. It can’t have been easy even in the 1950s to make a bookshop in a small village profitable, but it’s unimaginable now that such a bookshop – in a village that can’t have had that many inhabitants altogether – would take a gamble and order 200 copies of a new release like Lolita. Is there any book today which might sell like that?

***

Bea says: I am a life long book lover, and hence a bookshop lover, so any film that purports to be about either is onto a winner with me, and if it also has Bill Nighy in it – well even better.  You would think that would mean I would give this a 5 star rating, but actually the plot is a little slow, even for me and I am pretty tolerant of that, and I just didn’t feel I got enough inside the head of the main character to really embody the film – I watched the “action” (such as there was), rather than embodying it, so I felt a sense of distance.  I noted in the credits that it is adapted from a novel and I would now like to read the novel, to see if the sense of distance is the same.  I did like the neat ending, where we see the legacy of children being around books, bookshops and book lovers, and it did let me dream a little about running a small bookshop in a small town….

Overall recommended for book lovers everywhere, for a Sunday afternoon or cozy winters evening.

***1/2

Carol

Seen at the lovely 1930s Empire cinema in Bowral, NSW

Cecil says: Lesbian love in the 1950s. Starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. With its slow build-up and sense of forbidden feelings about it, this film had as much the feel of Brief Encounter as anything else more recent.

I actually liked it less than I thought I would. There was something about the relationship that didn't ring true for me, and it was more to do with social class than gender or sexuality. How likely was it that women from such different social backgrounds would be attracted? What actually attracted them to each other? From the way the characters developed (or didn't), you'd be excused for thinking the attraction was based purely on lust or physical attraction, though perhaps I'm being unfair and wouldn't judge a film portraying a heterosexual relationship in the same way. I'm not sure.

Cate Blanchett's character Carol was not attractive, that's for sure: very much the lead in the relationship with the come-ons and not so subtle hints about where they might go next. But she was also the person with more to lose, in a conventional way of looking at life, as she had the lady-of-leisure, kept woman lifestyle. Was it well acted by Blanchett, so we are not supposed to like her, or was it actually mis-cast?

Therese was the one who started with nothing, serving on the counter in a department store, wearing bohemian clothes with great style. But we didn't really learn much about her background, her family, her loves (except that she had played with train sets as a little girl).

I did like the 1950s setting, though: the cars, the clothes, the shops. And this was early 1950s so really not far into the great consumer society and the 'never had it so good' world.

***

Bea says: 

I liked this more than Cecil did, unexpectedly so, as after reading a couple of reviews and seeing some trailers of it I felt ambivalent about the older woman/younger woman relationship and, like Cecil, could immediately see in those trailers that the Carol character was rather unlikeable.

What I didn't expect, and what really made me enjoy the film, was relating so much to Therese - the younger character.  Therese's young life in the city reminded me - nostalgically - of my own young life in my early years of living in London.  The first few years I was there I lived alone in a staff accommodation bedsit-type set up, and it seems the mid 1990s was remarkably not unlike the 1950s.

I too made and received emotionally laden phone calls from the corridor phone.  I too had young men calling, both on the phone and in person (although unlike Therese I didn't have older women calling - however, for me this film was rather more about first "love" than it was a lesbian relationship).  I too have had the experience of spending a Sunday (which can be a long, lonely and quiet day when you have no family and only new, not well-established friends in a big city) with a new love, and having all go rather wrong and have ended up crying all the way home to my depressing, empty bedsit and the prospect of a working week to come.

I did not like the character of Carol - and like Cecil am not sure if this was an intentional device from the director or not.  Not liking the main character of a film can make it difficult to care what happens as the plot progresses.  Blanchett seemed to play Carol in a removed way, as if observing from a distance, so it was hard to get under the skin of the character.  As a result, I enjoyed Mara's performance much more, and like Cecil loved the costuming and styling, although I thought the stylist borrowed much too heavily from Audrey Hepburn in their styling of Therese - at least one of the outfits (the tartan pinafore), if I am not wrong, is a dead ringer for something Hepburn wears in one of her films.

And, if I'm not mistaken, one of the final scenes in which Mara walks through New York on a misty evening and hails a taxi is quite a lot like the one of the final scenes of Breakfast at Tiffany's.  Not a bad thing to do, just derivative.  Now, I haven't read the book nor checked to see if Breakfast at Tiffany's is an influence or reference-point for the book, or whether it was just that the plotline of the young ingénue in the city reminded the styling and directorial team of the film.

If you like Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, vintage styling or if you've ever lived alone in a city as a young person and made your way in the world from there, you might enjoy this film.

***