BAD BOY BUBBY (1993)
"Bubby ain't like other kids."
3.5 out of ****
Starring Nicholas Hope, Claire Benito, Carmel Johnson, Ralph Cotterill; Written and Directed by Rolf de Heer; Cinematography by Ian Jones
He has spent his entire life in an awful little apartment, raised and cared for and imprisoned by his domineering mother. She inspires his love and his fear, and instills in him a similar love and fear of Jesus. He has a rudimentary grasp of language, mouthing monosyllables and repetitions of his mother's phrases. He is taught that the world outside is fatally poisonous; his mother dons a gasmask whenever she goes out the door. He is 35-years-old in body, but a child in mind and spirit.
He is the premise for BAD BOY BUBBY, a defiantly original Australian movie about a man called Bubby (Nicholas Hope) who has spent his entire life in an awful little apartment, etc., etc. Then one day his father (Ralph Cotterill) appears. His father is a shabby down-at-heels priest who appears to have permanently misplaced his religion. Unsurprisingly, he is not thrilled with the way "his" boy has turned out. He is, however, rather pleased at renewing his acquaintance with the mother (Claire Benito), and, more to the point, her ample breasts. Soon they are copulating on the dingy couch, while Bubby crouches, confused, in the next room, acutely aware that the mother who had devoted all her attention to him has a new interest.
Bubby's relationship to the world may be warped, but it is at least stable. The father's arrival disturbs his precarious balance, causing an Oedipal conflict which ends--Freud would be pleased--in violence and, as a result, freedom. Bubby intuits from his father's arrival that the air outside is breathable: he leaves the apartment, his past, his world, behind.
So far, so good. The first thirty minutes or so of BAD BOY BUBBY, which bring us to this point, are quite brilliant. The movie is at its best when its stays within the constraints of Bubby's hermetic two-room universe. It follows through unrelentingly on the implications of its premise: Bubby is used by his mother for sex, he unwittingly suffocates the pet cat with cellophane, he is terrifed by the notion that Jesus will beat him senseless if he sins. It is grim and savage and appalling, but also strangely tender--de Heer, having imagined a life as bizarre as Bubby's, does not exaggerate for comic or grotesqe purposes, but simply empathizes. He observes what it might be like.
The intensity of these opening scenes, with their minimalist mise-en-scene, immerses us in a claustrophobic environment which seems to be a decayed stratum of our own world, and owes much to David Lynch's ERASERHEAD, not least the ambient industrial white noise of the soundtrack. For thirty minutes, the movie maintains the feel and mood of a reality that does not seem far removed from our own. Then de Heer lets Bubby out, brings him into contact with our world, and the film never quite recovers.
Our unlikely hero finds himself in Port Adelaide, where he wanders the streets and meets people, where he suffers and learns and survives. He is seduced by a young woman from a Salvation Army band (how an anti-social half-wit with no sense of hygiene manages to get laid mere hours after his escape is not the sort of question the film encourages, wisely); he is given free pizza by a sympathetic waitress; he insults a traffic cop and is punched in the stomach; he shares a few beers in the back of a truck with a rock group; he is imprisoned and raped; he becomes a translator for mentally handicapped people whose speech is impaired beyond comprehension; he is loved by a motherly large-breasted nurse (Carmel Johnson) . . .
It goes on, by turns inventive, silly, tasteless, endearing, and sometimes all of these things at once. De Heer never seems to be sure how Bubby should interface with the real world: the tone shifts, uneasily, from fable to realism to satire and back again. The scenes which try to touch base with a believable version of reality are the weakest; the film is best understood as a kind of parable, and, indeed, the religious implications of Bubby's experiences are foregrounded: icons of Jesus on the cross hang from the mother's walls, Bubby dons a priest's collar stolen from his father, a church organ-playing atheist lectures him on the necessity of unbelief, the woman who redeems him is named Angel. The manifold stresses of our world do not shatter Bubby's mind, do not fragment him into psychosis; rather, the world accomodates him, and heals him.
Although de Heer's touch is at times overbearing, Bubby's salvation is touching; what seemd at first a harsh lesson in the damaging effects of the social construction of reality becomes a naïve humanist tale of improbable hope. A hapless rock group write a song about Bubby and sing it for him and so give him the gift of community. He returns the favour when he steps on stage one night and becomes their frontman, turning the fragmented impressions of his experiences into performance art, and turning the band into a popular draw. Innocence triumphs. Bubby becomes a holy fool, an idiot savant, and graces us with wisdom. It's a strange turn of events, but by now we shouldn't be surprised, because BAD BOY BUBBY ain't like other movies.
Subjective Camera: Movie Reviews by David Dalgleish
subjective.freeservers.com
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