Set in Kiev in the Ukraine, this is the low-key, sweet story of a lonely, isolated man trying to make a family. He seems to have lost his parents and siblings, so is hiring actors to play their parts in typical domestic scenarios such as sitting around watching tv or celebrating Christmas. The man, Emerson, has the local amateur actors wear simple costumes for the scripted scenes which he films on a camcorder for his home movies, and captures in snaps which he pins on the wall. The girl who plays his sister works in the local Mexican takeaway and tends to go a bit off-script. When she doesn't turn up one day, the whole project gathers steam and takes a swerve.
Despite being set on the outskirts of Kiev, A Family is an Australian film, commissioned for the Melbourne International Film Festival. The first time film makers set this story is the former Eastern Bloc to achieve a foreign, othernesss for this universal tale. The first effect is to unsettle the audience with low-grade footage to prepare us for the assured telling of this unusual fable. Emerson has a clear idea how his family should act. The filming is very deliberate with carefully lit frames of absurd domesticity and with a bleak European, art-house feel, and the design is magnificent with careful colour coding. The time is some recent past with clunky computers and landline phones. The action mostly occurs inside a very basic house with the ensemble acting of the family members endearingly deadpan. It is perhaps absurdist or Dadaist, wicked and playful, most reminiscent of the work of the great Finnish director, Aki Kaurismaki. The music featured is wickedly silly and the overall effect humble, subversive and poignantly nostalgic. A Family is also audaciously beautiful, sad, mature, existential, philosophical, smart, tender, difficult, funny and humane. (All budding auteurs, cinematographers, actors and philosophers should see this film.)
I'm pretty sure that David Lynch, Luis Buñuel and Lars Von Trier would greatly enjoy A Family, which I deem to be high praise. It's lovable, layered and intentionally perverse; the anti block buster. It is the most original film to come out of Australia (at least for a long time) and is bound to achieve cult status with no risk of mainstream success. My first reaction was to want to see the delightful A Family again, which I did.
