Mullet

In my family people who don't face up to their responsibilities, who leave suddenly when confronted, are known as bolters.

My Aunt Mary, an extreme eccentric, was a bolter. A heart breaker and also a sudden breaker of leases, she'd turn up 500 miles away in another job if some man was getting too keen. She developed doin' the bolt into an art form. She managed that for 70 years!

Eddie (Ben Mendelsohn) in Mullet is a bolter. He's about thirty and has unexpectedly turned up in his small town. We find that he'd broken at least two hearts by leaving three years before and it seems that he's not too interested in changing his ways.

Eddie, known as Mullet, is selfish and spoilt but sufficiently self reliant to eak a living catching mullet in the local creeks while living alone in a clapped out caravan. He used to be a local rugby league star, destined for the big time in Sydney. But again he bolted.

Mullet is set in a small coastal town south of Sydney. The locals aren't particularly happy even if the town looks very pretty. Mullet is scenic.

His parents (Kris McQuade and Tony Barry) are malcontents who have formed an alliance based on not talking directly to each other. His brother (Andrew S. Gilbert) is a local cop and other friends include Tully (Suzie Porter) and Kay (Belinda McClory). Mullet's sister is played very nicely by Peta Brady.

In fact all of the performances are very good, its just a shame that they weren't able to grace a more worthy script.

Mullet is the third film from director David Caesar after Greenkeeping and Idiot Box. It's only about 90 minutes long but still seems to be padded by a profusion of meaningless set up shots that lead nowhere and a plot with far too little happening.

It's all well and good to establish a scene or a mood with panning shots but lit buildings and front yards only retain a limited appeal. Mullet does have a terrifically moody sound track from Paul Healy.

But it's as if the scriptwriter for Mullet had done the bolt, which is a little strange because David Caesar also wrote this muddy little piece.

3 Underwritten Flys out of 5.

I went to this film with high expectations. While I'm not a fan of David Ceaser's work, I had heard positive reviews from both critics and friends whose opinions I usually agree with. Sadly, either they or I must have seen a different film.

I found the film slow, unrealistic and with continuity holes so large you could drive a truck through them. The characters' personalities were either rammed down your throat or not explained at all.

While I have not spent much time in rural Australia, the film did not strike me (nor any of my friends who have all lived in the country) as an accurate depiction of country town life. I also felt that the emphasis on the naivety of the people living in the area (such as Mullet's father being excited about having a flush toilet) was patronising. In addition, the town is only a couple of hours from Sydney - hardly the outback. I felt this was another example of Sydney-centric film making, showing anyone who lives outside of the inner city as a hick who is overwhelmed by the possibility of going to Sydney, let alone actually living there.

I could go on, but I can't be bothered. It disappoints me that this film has received such good reviews. I was hoping that these reviews were based on the film actually being a good production, rather than being from the 'Oh but it's Australian so we should give it a good review' camp. Sadly this does not seem to be the case.

Not bad as far as it goes, but it needs an ending. It's appalling how many Australian films are made without one. The worst recent offender that I know of is "Russian Doll", but it's only the most naked example - and its very nakedness, when it is set next to "Mullet", almost looks like a virtue. At least "Russian Doll" doesn't have a first-person narrator musing about how hard it is to find endings in real life, and how all endings are also beginnings, and so on, in an attempt to justify the failing.

Still, there's ALMOST an ending, and apart from that there's a fair enough story with interesting characters (more because of the cast than because of the script). I like David Caesar's rather desperate attempts to come up with fish metaphors for what's going on - and the wonder of it is, he succeeds. For the record, though, mullet, the fish, isn't so bad as all that. What little flavour it has isn't unpleasant. (You wouldn't want to have it by itself, that's all.) Worthwhile in a small way, certainly nothing to be despised. Like the film. Hey! Another fish metaphor.

. I did my best to like this film, and it has many good things. A reasonably tight script, a good smoldering performance from Ben Mendelssohn in the lead, fine supporting performances from Andrew Gilbert, Susie Porter, Tony Barry, Kris McQuaide and Belinda McClory, rugby league, nice countryside, stark, open, beautiful cinematography, and even a decent theme; what is there at the heart of the Aussie soul?

Well, mullet is a pretty dull fish, and this celebration of it, if that's the right word, just wasn't entertaining. The film even at 90 minutes dragged. Some contrived drama at the end came to nothing. The characters were understandable, if not likeable, but it really just amounted to pointing the camera at a group of country people and saying `tell us about the hollowness of your lives.' It is partly redeemed by a reasonably upbeat ending. It was like a film school piece made by someone with 10 years experience in the industry. It may have some resonance with Australians who have good attention spans (especially residents of Kiama), and is pretty to watch, but mullet like to swim in shallow waters, which this film never leaves.

The trouble with this film is that it is empty. Ben Medehlson is usually really good but in this little Aussie drama he really struggles to find his character. It's a pity because it had a few things going for it but didn't deliver.