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 Showing exclusively at Blue Room Cinebar [M]
Director: Michael Joy
Runtime: 104 mins
TV commercial director Michael Joy’s debut feature, Men’s Group, is about six Australian men who come together every Tuesday night to talk and listen to each other. As the title suggests, it’s a movie about a men’s group. It seems fair to say that, on the face of it, the prospect of watching a movie about men with various emotional problems talking to each other won’t exactly set pulses racing. But despite the somewhat prosaic subject matter, the film is a remarkably powerful portrayal of Australian men afraid and uncertain of how to confront their own shortcomings, anger, and pain.
Still not convinced? Well, the effectiveness of Men’s Group owes much to Joy’s masterful direction, which gives us a fly-on-the-wall presence within the intimate settings of the group. At times it feels like more of a documentary than a feature film, as we get handheld shots and a gritty, unpolished look at inner city Sydney through the eyes of men whose lives have turned to shit through separation, divorce, abuse, and death. The film looks astonishingly unpretentious and this makes sympathy with its characters both immediate and powerful.
Grant Dodwell, who I still regard as Dr. Simon Bowen from A Country Practice, achieves an outstanding transformation as Alex, a rough, foul-mouthed bloke who virtually lives at the pub and the TAB and wonders why his fifteen year-old son wants nothing to do with him. Don Reid (also from A Country Practice, among other Australian drama series) is Cecil, an aged, articulate widower. Steve Rodgers (The Hollowmen, All Saints) is tragic stand-up comic Freddy, separated from his unfaithful wife and their five year-old daughter. Paul Tassone (All Saints, Home and Away) is the bearded, intense and deeply repressed construction worker Moses, and Steve Le Marquand (Kokoda) turns in an understated yet commanding performance as the silent, dead-eyed Lucas, remarking cryptically during one session that “there’s times you don’t want your Dad to tell you he loves you.”
I suppose it would be feasible to classify Men’s Group as a ‘bloke flick.’ But there aren’t any car chases, guns, or sexualised women (there are actually no women onscreen at all). Instead there are six men helping each other come to terms with themselves, often reluctantly. They don’t want to cry and they don’t want to really admit that there’s even anything wrong with them. But eventually, they begin to learn how to be honest with themselves and each other, and the film itself becomes a revelation. It’s a wonderful piece of cinema that serves as a reminder of what Australian films do best – deliver real, powerful characters while keeping the bullshit to an absolute minimum.
****
ADAM DODD
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