Review - Unfinished Sky - Sydney Morning Herald - Thursday 19th of June, 2008
WILLIAM McINNES does sadness very well. He uses subtraction, draining his face of any suggestion that life could have anything at all to recommend it.
Needless to say, it is a skill to be employed sparingly. Cross that fine line between true sorrow and raging self-pity and there is no going back - a fact that occurred to me during Unfinished Sky's opening scene. It treats us to the full impact of McInnes's brand of despair, with close-ups of his bloodshot left eye, downturned mouth and stubbly cheek, and it is not the most enticing way of ushering you into a film.
Fortunately, McInnes's John Woldring, a reclusive Queensland farmer, has a good excuse for surrendering to such abject misery, but it takes a while before you learn what it is. He has lightened up by then and Peter Duncan's film - a reinvention of a Dutch hit, The Polish Bride - has negotiated so many deft plot twists and smooth changes in tone that you are ready to go wherever it, and McInnes, want to lead you.
Woldring is jolted out of his self-absorbed state one morning when he spies a young woman staggering across the paddocks towards his homestead. She is bruised, bleeding, terrified and exhausted, and speaks no English. He grudgingly takes her in and during the next few days, having survived the awfulness of his cooking, she gradually makes up her mind to trust him. One reason is the gentle persistence he shows in trying to breach the language barrier between them.
Another is his dog, a blue heeler called Elvis. Memories of Heartbreak Hotel make her laugh and it's a crucial turning point. Not only does her laughter warm the room, it opens up the film's potential as an unlikely love story of charm and tenderness.
But it is delicate stuff. Clearly, it won't be a romance born of cosy, confessional conversations by the fire. These are both prickly characters and every confidence is hard-won. It also has to be conveyed through fractured sentences rife with the risk of misinterpretation. Woldring finally works out that Tahmeena (Monic Hendrickx) is an Afghan refugee, and as he worries away at the rest of her story, he reveals bits of his own. For years he has restricted himself to cramped quarters at the back of the handsome old house which has been his home since childhood. Now he and Tahmeena begin gradually to enjoy the homestead together. The film's title refers to the expanse of sky in an unfinished jigsaw puzzle spread out on a table. Seeing it there soon after she arrives, Tahmeena adds a piece to it, only to be bawled out for daring to touch it. But eventually, the puzzle becomes a metaphor for their part-told stories as she and Woldring work on it together.
Hendrickx, who starred in the original film, is a grave, dark-haired beauty with an engaging sense of mischief, which makes a nice foil for the McInnes gruffness. Both know how to light the film's silences with flashes of humour. You like them together, and as Tahmeena's turbulent past begins to impinge on their cocooned state, you find you very much want them to stay together.
This is Duncan's first feature since Passion, his 1999 biopic about the composer Percy Grainger and it is a lot tighter than anything he has done before.
I could have done without the score's nagging. You don't need it drumming out warnings of trouble in store. More potent threats are supplied by Bille Brown and Christopher Sommers as a couple of locals who clearly know quite a bit about the events leading up to Tahmeena's appearance on Woldring's doorstep.
The ensuing action is adroitly handled. So is the ending, which has Woldring stepping back into the wider world as he and Tahmeena face their inevitable showdown with the implacable paradoxes of the immigration system. It may be a small film, but it has a big story to tell.
Needless to say, it is a skill to be employed sparingly. Cross that fine line between true sorrow and raging self-pity and there is no going back - a fact that occurred to me during Unfinished Sky's opening scene. It treats us to the full impact of McInnes's brand of despair, with close-ups of his bloodshot left eye, downturned mouth and stubbly cheek, and it is not the most enticing way of ushering you into a film.
Fortunately, McInnes's John Woldring, a reclusive Queensland farmer, has a good excuse for surrendering to such abject misery, but it takes a while before you learn what it is. He has lightened up by then and Peter Duncan's film - a reinvention of a Dutch hit, The Polish Bride - has negotiated so many deft plot twists and smooth changes in tone that you are ready to go wherever it, and McInnes, want to lead you.
Woldring is jolted out of his self-absorbed state one morning when he spies a young woman staggering across the paddocks towards his homestead. She is bruised, bleeding, terrified and exhausted, and speaks no English. He grudgingly takes her in and during the next few days, having survived the awfulness of his cooking, she gradually makes up her mind to trust him. One reason is the gentle persistence he shows in trying to breach the language barrier between them.
Another is his dog, a blue heeler called Elvis. Memories of Heartbreak Hotel make her laugh and it's a crucial turning point. Not only does her laughter warm the room, it opens up the film's potential as an unlikely love story of charm and tenderness.
But it is delicate stuff. Clearly, it won't be a romance born of cosy, confessional conversations by the fire. These are both prickly characters and every confidence is hard-won. It also has to be conveyed through fractured sentences rife with the risk of misinterpretation. Woldring finally works out that Tahmeena (Monic Hendrickx) is an Afghan refugee, and as he worries away at the rest of her story, he reveals bits of his own. For years he has restricted himself to cramped quarters at the back of the handsome old house which has been his home since childhood. Now he and Tahmeena begin gradually to enjoy the homestead together. The film's title refers to the expanse of sky in an unfinished jigsaw puzzle spread out on a table. Seeing it there soon after she arrives, Tahmeena adds a piece to it, only to be bawled out for daring to touch it. But eventually, the puzzle becomes a metaphor for their part-told stories as she and Woldring work on it together.
Hendrickx, who starred in the original film, is a grave, dark-haired beauty with an engaging sense of mischief, which makes a nice foil for the McInnes gruffness. Both know how to light the film's silences with flashes of humour. You like them together, and as Tahmeena's turbulent past begins to impinge on their cocooned state, you find you very much want them to stay together.
This is Duncan's first feature since Passion, his 1999 biopic about the composer Percy Grainger and it is a lot tighter than anything he has done before.
I could have done without the score's nagging. You don't need it drumming out warnings of trouble in store. More potent threats are supplied by Bille Brown and Christopher Sommers as a couple of locals who clearly know quite a bit about the events leading up to Tahmeena's appearance on Woldring's doorstep.
The ensuing action is adroitly handled. So is the ending, which has Woldring stepping back into the wider world as he and Tahmeena face their inevitable showdown with the implacable paradoxes of the immigration system. It may be a small film, but it has a big story to tell.
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