Director: Harry Sinclair.
Starring: Danielle Cormack, Joel Tobeck, Ian Hughes, Willa O'Neill, Shimpal Lelisi.
Topless Women Talk About Their Lives falls into that category that I mentioned in The Devil's Advocate: movies that have a brilliant beginning but don't know how to end. It begins by introducing us to a selection of characters who all know each other. There is Liz, who oversleeps and so is running late for her appointment, Prue who is getting married, Geoff, Liz's boyfriend, Neil, her previous boyfriend, Ant who has written a screenplay. For the first hour, we get to know these people through everyday activities, as they talk on the phone, go out to dinner, hang clothes on the line. The interactions seem so truthful and guileless that it is almost as if the film-makers hid cameras around the place and filmed these people unbeknownst to them. At times, the events border on the ridiculous, like the screening of the film, but they still seem in keeping with the characters and their lives. This doesn't sound like a brilliant premise for a film - "we just follow a lot of people around who are vaguely related" - but it's the execution of the idea that makes Topless Women Talk About Their Lives so engrossing.
Unfortunately this level of honesty isn't maintained. With about half an hour to go, a sense of impending doom invades Topless Women Talk About Their Lives and from there is descends into melodrama. Such a disappointment after such a brilliant start.
The actors are all quite good with Ms. Danielle Cormack as Liz being particularly impressive. The energy of her character is palpable and is a major reason the movie is so watchable. A lot of the performances are a bit rough around the edges but this suits totally the documentary feel of the film. It seems like these are real people we are watching rather than actors playing roles. That is why the melodramatic turn of events comes as such a shock. Up till that point, I was transported to this world where these real but mildly insane events were taking place. While the final half hour is not beyond the realms of possibility, it's unlikely in a way that is jarring to someone caught up in the world of the film. Not just the events, but also the tone of some of the end is wrong, clashing strongly with the sense of fun that has preceded it.
This is not to say that Topless Women Talk About Their Lives is not a good film. As stated above, the first hour is superb and even the end is above average. It just takes a turn which means that an otherwise brilliant movie loses some of its gloss.
Rating: D (HD-High Distinction
D-Distinction
CR-Credit
P-Pass
CP-Conceded Pass
F-Fail)
© Nikki Lesley 1997
--
Nicole Lesley http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~nikki/ Basser Department of Computer Science, University of Sydney ph: (02) 9351 6098 rm: G90b email: nikki@cs.usyd.edu.au Movie Reviews: http://www.cs.su.oz.au/~nikki/m_r/Intro.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews