Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train

This provocative Australian drama takes a sharp look at the games people play, showing how men use women and how one woman, in turn, retaliates by building male egos and then callously deflating them. By day she's a Catholic school teacher, but every weekend on the overnight express to Sidney she dons a different costume and assumes a different personality, luring men to her bed where, after demanding cash, she loves and then leaves them.

The absence of any character names puts the story on an intriguing symbolic level, but all it takes is one tall, dark, and handsome stranger (Colin Friels, playing a Down-Under 007) to have his way with her before the erstwhile heroine turns suddenly submissive, falling headlong into a political assassination plot which is hard to connect to anything preceding it. It's either the longest introduction to a murder mystery, or the lamest ending to what could have been a fascinating character study; either way, the payoff can't hope to match the elaborate set-up.

Based on an idea by director Bob Ellis, producer Patrick Juillet and Denny Lawrence, the narrative for this Australian film centers on Jenny Nicholson aka The Girl (Wendy Hughes), a Melbourne Catholic school art teacher who subsidises her income by working as a prostitute on the weekend train to Sydney. Jenny rationalises the activity as a means to finance the supply of morphine to her disabled athlete brother Brian (Lewis Fitz-Gerald) but she also sees what she does as a social service, to `increase happiness' of `potential murderers'. However Jenny's quest is challenged when she meets The Man (Colin Friels) who seduces her so that she will murder for him.

Although Hughes isn't the prostitute type, there is fun to be had in observing her sociopathic reactions to each man she chooses, as well as in her changing hairstyles, speech and manner. She is funniest with The Singer (Steve J Spears), passive with Brian, and the most relaxed with The Man, who gets the worst of Ellis' reknowned brand of ennui eg `Everyone seeks a system of belief and everyone has to believe their system of belief is correct', and `In a reasonable society, no man should be held responsible in law for what happens after 3 a.m.'.The Man also gets to quote Robert Frost and has a laugh line in that his target for assassination `has a publicised fondness for trains'. The `warm nights' of the title refers to both Jenny's adventures and Brian's situation, where he describes an overdose of morphine as the same, whilst Jenny's train room being the `Judy Garland suite' isn't as funny as intended. In spite of an indeterminate accent, Friels is extraordinarily sexy, and director Ellis creates suspense in the moment where a poison device cannot be disposed of, and skill in his use of montage.

Unbelievably tedious movie. Colin Friels as a sex object?? I don't think so. And the men that pay to have sex with Hughes would pretty much have to pay to have sex with anyone. She a bit dull, and the dialog is inane to the point of tedium; but the train steward adds a lovely touch of melancholy to the piece. The ending is so dull though, that you wonder why you even bothered.

Oh, well, here's why:

Lewis Fitz-Gerald is brilliant. Dark and disturbing, the movie only gets interesting when he shows up. He's mastered the challenging physicality of the crippled brother, as well as the psychological damage that losing everything does to a person, and lays it all out for the audience in less than 10 minutes total screen time. Sadly, none of the other actors can compete.

This movie offers extremely poignant perspectives on the human condition.

We follow the prostitute (played by Wendy Highes), as she works to supply drugs to her brother (very codependent relationship).

Within the self-sacrificing martyr's life that she has chosen (mostly, it appears, as a heroic loyalty for her family) we sympathize with her position because of the way the movie is portrayed.

We are shown the fear of letting her brother go, that she endures.

Enough of that though. The movie is hilarious. The beginning scene in a parlor-car carriage of a train at night, features dialogue between two fascinating characters in almost Quentin Tarantino'esqe pulp.

Upon first watch of this movie, the shades of moderate pathological narcissism (of the woman whoring herself) are unidentifiable in this scene.

Then as the movie gradually moves, we begin to see her ploys adapted to manipulate men. Whats more, the movie progresses in such a way so that because we are being gradually introduced more and more into her daily reality (caring for her brother, teaching, etc); the culmination of her expressing her opinion (that she is actually providing male clients with a worthwhile and much- needed service) never seems audacious.

I am not sure whether the intentions of the producers were to portray this girl in such a light, but her sociopathic rationale never seems sociopathic because of it. Indeed we see that it would take someone with her problems to behave in that way.

From the moments of communion in church; being binded from a long-term emotionally supportive romantic partner (as opposed to just sex); the effort she puts into 'rescuing' her emotionally and physically crippled brother; being a beautiful woman - more often-than-not in the sack with wrinkly, sweaty, drunken and sometimes obnoxious old men - who gets abandoned and used by one of if not the only 'handsome' man in the movie.

Not only is this a very human movie, but it is done in a way that people young and old can absorb and understand it's symbolic eulogies of human doings and happenings (maybe this is due to Peter Sullivan's exquisitely mellow soundtrack that relaxes the deep substance a little).

As an added bonus it is extremely entertaining.

I recommend that this movie needs to be watched many times over a lengthy period, to truly absorb its humanity, its message, it's genius.

This review is based on Memory, We saw it somewhere in the 1990's Mainly because of Colin Friels & Wendy Hughes. We had seen both in other films & came across this one in a Blockbuster type store.

The basic story is intriguing to say the least.

I do not know if this ever had a US theatrical or TV release, it sure should have, The story was interesting & with an unusual plot. The acting was first rate.

With this film & a few other Australian made movies has made the land down under recognizable. There film Industry is to be commended on the fine films they have made over the years. This was just one of them

I highly recommend searching for it the next time you are in a video store. You will not be disappointed.