From a script by Bob Ellis and Ann Brooksbank, who had worked on the script for Newsfront. I'll give it points for some ambition - it's about the travails of a woman, played by Judy Morris, pushing 30. It's a small target film though - everything needed to work for it to pan out.
The script is wonky - Ellis complained that the references to Whitlam were cut out and without having read his original version I think it would've helped for the film to be fixed more specifically in a time and space (apparently it's 1975-76 but it's hard to tell).
And occasionally the waffly Ellis dialogue is effective - but it also clunks. Such as an awful sequence where lecturer Mike Preston talks with his students about the bombing of Coventry in World War Two (they include a young Hugo Weaving and Tim Burns) or Leonard Teale having to gnaw his way through awkward dialogue with Morris.
The cast is full of the Ellis gang - Jack Clayton as a real estate agent, Bill Hunter (very good) as a ministerial adviser, Chris Haywood, Michelle Fawdon and Lorna Lesley. I did feel a little queasy to think that every female actor had probably been propositioned by Ellis.
There's Ellis concerns and prejudices - Morris is a mistress, Morris takes part in a threesome with Hunter and his wife, there's singalongs of old songs around the piano. It's full of lecherous men - people are always pawing at Morris, whether it's Hunter, family friend Rod Mullinar, Hunter's wife, Morris' childhood ex Ken Shorter, her boss Mike Preston, travelling salesman Chris Haywood.
Ken Shorter's character votes County Party and is impotent. The Labor voters Hunter and Preston are polyamorous super studs. Everyone is subsidised by the taxpayer (well, the leads anyway) - Morris' research assistant, Preston's lecturer, Hunter's adviser, Shorter's teacher, Teale's minister. And the living is good too - Hunter jets around the world, Morris decides to go to Greece. Chris Haywood is a commercial traveller like Ellis' father was. Preston is sleeping with his students.
The direction is leading - the blocking, art design and photography are particularly poor. Some of it is surprisingly well done - like Morris forming a friendship with Hunter's wife, the impotence scene. But as a whole it doesn't work. Morris doesn't really have any choice at the end except to leave... Shorter is sexually and politically incompatible, Hunter is unreliable and Preston unkeen. I think it was a mistake to have the characters of Hunter and Preston they were too similar. Needed to be a different type of man. Like maybe one of Preston's students or something.
This needed to be a play if anything. But it does have some interest if you enjoy Ellis.
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