Bill Bennett tries something a bit different - a 1930s/40s colonial epic about sexy times among anthropologists.
The location work in the islands are impressive though I don't know why it's shot through a yellow filter. Maya Stange was given a great opportunity but simply feels like a NIDA grad plunked in a big film. She never seems real. In her defence, the character has to spout all these clinky platitudes like "they're not savages" and "I'm an anthropologist too" and talking about her thesis. She takes her clothes off and shaves her head and goes all out but she's simply not up to it.
There is no native character with any dimension.There are just chanting natives. At the end when the Japanese come the whites just wave good bye. And when after the war Stange comes back she seems utterly uninterested in what happened to the New Guineans who were there.
Martin Donovan takes Maya Stange to New Guinea and is a sex anthropologist which is pretty progressive. Then he's controlling. But nice. Then he dies. Then Rufus Sewell comes along and he's perfect.
Look, there's two ways you could've gone. Have Stange and Donovan be this kinky couple who explore sex habits of the locals (have some local characters please not just jabbering extras). Sewell comes along and he can't quite "get" it. Make it sexy. Have her seduce Sewell.
Or... play it safe, have Stange and Donovan as siblings and Stange get a sexual awakening.
Either of those would have an arc. This film doesn't know what it wants to be. Or it does but Bennett and Jenneifer Cluff aren't up to it.
I enjoyed Max Cullen's officious officer. Sue Lyons' racist wife is just there to make the leads look less racist. John Howard has an unfortunate accent and Rufus Sewell a worse American one.
Old school Bennett would have sent actors into the jungle and filmed it on 16 mm and got them to ad lib. They couldn't have come up with worse dialogue.
This is a cranky review but they wasted so much money, and wasted a potentially great subject.
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