Siam Sunset

I really enjoyed this movie, as did the two others who attended with me. The humour is quirky and often unexpected. The message of the movie is, in my view, make the best of what life throws at you -- and for the main character, life throws quite a bit!!

This movie had me laughing from start to finish. I saw it at the Ft. Lauderdale Film Festival, and I can't believe it wasn't their closing night feature. It was far more enjoyable than the other films I saw there. Great comedic performances and a very funny script make this a film not to be missed.

The latest Australian film Siam Sunset is a mixed bag, a blend of styles and ideas, often attractive and entertaining but as a whole pretty sloppy. But there's enough there to ensure a pretty rosy sunset.

An English paint technologist (that's new!), miserable after the on screen, bizarre, death of his wife (remember this is a comedy) wins a bus tour from Adelaide to Darwin. The other tourists are ugly Aussies.

Once the quirky Australian flavour is established, most effectively by Roy Billing as Bill Leach the tour bus operator from hell, predictably, the tour becomes a comic nightmare, and a rather formulaic one in spite of some surprising plot details.

The English fish out of water in our bush theme has become something of a tradition in recent Australian films. Oscar And Lucinda, Welcome To Woop Woop, Sirens and even Priscilla Queen Of The Desert where the proper, effete and English Terrence Stamp drag queen tries to make sense of outback customs spring to mind.

Getting back to nature, or at least nearly perishing in the Australian desert seems to be considered to be a sure way to personal growth according to this genre. And not just for foreigners.

On this particular bus to hell, an Australian Vietnamese, an atrocious singer songwriter, a masculine female army reservist, an overbearing tour bus operator, assorted be holidayed subrubanites and an urban lass on the run, face comic, sometimes ghastly dusty terror and learn from the experience.

But for the most part the bit players aren't afforded enough interest by first time feature director John Polsen. They're just character bit players in a film full of bit playing plot elements.

Danielle Cormack (the pregnant lead in Topless Women Talk About Their Lives) plays Grace, the female foil for our pommie paint specialist Perry played by Linus Roache (Priest). She's stolen a lot of money from her crooked doctor boyfriend Martin (Ian Bliss) and to escape joins the bus tour.

She has the look of jail about her from the start, a hardness that is believable and more remarkable given her very different role and demeanor in Topless. Grace and Perry are effective even if they have to make do with some terrible scenes, especially one where they decide to throw paint against a wall.

Some of the set ups just don't work, some are very effective. The elimination of the head villain is memorable but his character is for the most part far too obvious.

Siam Sunset begins with an atrocious factory scene, a poorly imagined car washing (would you believe) sequence and then a strange death. But I can't stand car washing or room painting scenes featuring Paltrow young love!

Hopes of another Sweetie or Love Serenade, Death In Brunswick or at least Welcome To Woop Woop sprang to mind; macabre Australian black comedies, but Siam Sunset only gave hints.

John Polsen (the gay boy in The Sum Of Us) just flirted with that and with about six other genres and left us with a film that was much less than the sum of its parts.

When you know some of the people behind the making of Siam Sunset, you will know what to expect from this film.

It is co-written by Andrew Knight who is the creator of some of the most successful comedy on Australian TV in recent times including Fast Forward / Full Frontal and SeaChange. There's Al Clarke, who produces Siam, who was also the producer of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert as well as Nineteen Eighty-Four (now there's an odd paring). Most tellingly though is that it is directed by John Polson - the man behind Tropfest - the fun and popular short film festival in Sydney.

Looking at those names should tell you that they will make a fun film with comedy slightly on the dark shade, some unglamorous characters who are realistic in some respects yet totally absurd in others, plus . . . er, a big bus in the middle of Australia's outback.

And that is what you get with Siam Sunset.

Perry (Linus Roache) an English industrial chemist for a paint company (he makes colours) has his life going just the way he wants it with his wife and work. This is turned completely upside down (or should I say crushed) after a freak accident and begins to feel that he is a curse for everything and everybody around him. From being happy and content, he is now a wreck. He wins a trip to Australia and uses that as a kick start to regaining some of that inner peace that he so dramatically lost. This is expressed in his search for a colour that he calls siam sunset.

He joins up with a bus tour in Adelaide and soon wishes he hadn't. Well, at least until he meets up with Grace (Danielle Cormack) who is on the run from her drug dealer boyfriend. Grace helps Perry to find his siam sunset. The help partly involves some very dangerous sex (it involves a bed on the verge of collapse, a ceiling fan that is set to fall onto the bed, some dangerously protruding steel coat hooks, dodgy electrics and a taipan snake sleeping underneath the bed just for good measure - the sex scene had to be coordinated by the stunt people).

John Polson is unashamedly a populist as demonstrated in Tropfest and in the fact that this film won the audience award at Cannes. So with Siam he gives us an amusing and entertaining 90 minutes, but it is by no means going to strike up post-film conversations on it's stunning originality or whether it's OK to have an open marriage.

This is Polson's feature directorial debut and he has relished the use of the wide screen format. He captures plenty of beauty of the Australian landscape.

Roache is suitably fish-out-of-water without slipping into English stereotypes. Cormack (who was in Topless Women Talk About Their Lives) as Grace is an enticing addition to the film and the rest of the cast are great fun to see.

Siam includes all of the ingredients of recent successful Australian films - that's a good and bad thing at the same time, but if you enjoyed movies like Priscilla, Muriel's Wedding and Two Hands then you should enjoy this film - just don't expect it to change your life.

Maybe if you are uptight and too serious you will not like this black comedy, but the four of us loved it! "We" were from 23 yrs to 53 yrs, including Japanese, New Zealand, and American nationalities. I often steer clear of black humour because it can be too weird and cruel, but the Aussies did their normal brilliant work on this film and I do recommend it.

There are so many small and big things in this movie that are hugely LAUGH-OUT-LOUD, that we thoroughly enjoyed it.

So, grab a drink, put up your feet, forget about being being conventional, expect the unusual... and prepare for a FUN time (with some serious messages under all of it as well!).