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| First-up triumph sets the scene 3 September 2004 A small-town drama from New Zealand was a powerful start for the Sydney Film Festival, writes Garry Maddox. An opening night film can set the tone for a festival. A triumph reminds everyone what's great about movies coming from distinctive voices around the world but anything less triggers grumbling around the venues for days. This year, the 51st Sydney Film Festival has opened with its strongest choice since Lantana in 2001. And the New Zealand drama In My Father's Den has much in common with Ray Lawrence's brilliant thriller about trust in relationships. It centres on the way a mysterious disappearance - in this case, a teenage girl in small-town New Zealand - affects a network of teetering relationships. A jaded war photographer, Paul, returns
home after his father's death. He befriends a curious Told partly in flashbacks, In My Father's Den is a gently-paced and haunting story about how events years earlier can affect the present and shatter lives. Its strengths are the truthfulness of its small personal moments, the clever unfolding of a mystery with many possible solutions, the sharp portrayal of small-town life and two brilliant performances from little-known Matthew Macfadyen and Emily Barclay. While slow to build, the drama showed Brad McGann is a sensitive and thoughtful director. Like Whale Rider last year, In My Father's Den shows New Zealand is producing high-quality personal dramas. The Australian euthanasia documentary, The Mademoiselle and the Doctor, could hardly be more topical, with the Nancy Crick case in the headlines again. It shows a vibrant French-Australian woman, Lisette Nigot, reaching a carefully considered decision to end her life before turning 80. It was a controversial case in 2002 because Nigot was healthy and neither lonely nor depressed. She was simply tired of living and wanted a peaceful death before her body had deteriorated any further. "There is no point in living if there is nothing to live for," she says in the documentary. Director Janine Hosking's film shows Dr Philip Nitschke, the pro-euthanasia campaigner, holding workshops on assisted suicides and demonstrating an assisted suicide device. It includes harrowing footage of the last days of Max Bell, the Broken Hill taxi driver who was in severe pain from stomach cancer but was prevented from legally ending his life in 1996. Nigot, a deliciously outspoken retired academic, consults Nitschke about whether her collection of barbiturates will kill her. She plans to change her answer phone message and have a lethal drink with a vodka and fruit-juice chaser after her nightly cup of tea. The Mademoiselle and the Doctor gives only glimpses of the other side of the debate, including a banner reading "Hitler also loved euthanasia" when Nitschke speaks at an American conference and a criticism of Nigot's actions by the Prime Minister that was hissed at the premiere screening. Through Nigot and others attending the workshops, the documentary reveals there is a demand to die with dignity that is not confined to the terminally ill. Another documentary, Rhythm Is It!, was considerably more upbeat. It shows English choreographer Royston Maldoom preparing 250 untrained teenagers for a dance performance with the Berlin Philharmonic under conductor Sir Simon Rattle. Many of these teenagers are from marginalised backgrounds in Berlin and they struggle with confidence, focus and motivation as they practice. Maldoom is a tough teacher: demanding discipline from, among others, a struggling German girl and a Nigerian immigrant. Culminating in a dynamic performance of The Rite of Spring, Rhythm Is It! shows the importance of creative expression. In the words of the Nigerian student, whose parents were killed before he came to Germany: "Music sweetens my body." One of the most anticipated films in the festival, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, has Geoffrey Rush playing the screen comic best remembered for The Goon Show, the Pink Panther movies, Dr Strangelove and Being There. It shows him as a radio star breaking into movies through his brilliant mimicry, stealing scenes in the first Pink Panther, rising to Hollywood stardom, marrying Britt Ekland and finally getting to make Being There before his health declines. It is the archetypal warts-and-all biography, which shows Sellers was more than a whimsical, charming, screen clown. Director Stephen Hopkins's drama shows Sellers as a neurotic who was ruthlessly ambitious and driven to succeed by his mother. He abused his fame with drugs and sex, had cosmetic surgery and relied on a psychic to make decisions. The film, which whimsically plays with the conventions of the bio-pic, is based on a controversial biography by Roger Lewis and co-stars Charlize Theron as Britt Ekland, Emily Watson as his first wife and Stephen Fry as a compromised psychic. An early scene reveals Sellers's dark side: when his young son helpfully paints a racing stripe over a scratch on a flash new car, Sellers storms upstairs and stomps all over the boy's toys. Now you know how I feel, he says. More childlike and destructive behaviour follows - Sellers falling for Sophia Loren, then comically settling for her understudy when he is rejected, for example. Rush shows his brilliance in dozens of roles - including the characters in Dr Strangelove. At times, this virtuoso performance works beautifully. Other times, like when Rush is playing Sellers's parents, it seems like an awkward device more suited to the stage. For further information please contact: Elizabeth Trotman, Hoyts Distribution DDI: +(64)
9 306 7525 Kathleen Drumm, NZ Film Commission DDI: +
(64) 4 382 7685
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