Australia / 105 mins / Icon
Screening September
Director Jonathan Ogilvie
Writer Jonathan Ogilvie
Producers Michelle Harrison, John Brousek
Executive Producers John Cairns, Bjorg Veland, Mike Klein
DOP Geoffrey Simpson ACS
Editor Ken Sallows ASE
Production Design Pete Baxter
Key Cast Hugo Weaving, Rose Byrne, Matt Le Nevez, Luke Carroll, Pia Miranda
When you are watching Jonathan Ogilvie’s second feature The Tender Hook – his noir romance set during the Jazz Age in 1929 – you get the feeling that you’re being watched. It sounds strange, but it’s like someone is standing at the side of the cinema with a big stick, occasionally prodding you and whispering “do you geddit?” You see, The Tender Hook is a film with Subtext.
The film returns Ogilvie to the noir genre he explored in his black and white first feature Emulsion and also to the underbelly of humanity where he clearly finds inspiration, but this time the results are jumbled.
Ogilvie has littered the screenplay with many historical and lyrical references; he has written entire sequences based on obscure events in Australian history and his leading villain (played with relish by Hugo Weaving) sings deliberately anachronistic songs by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen when he’s not quoting Shakespeare. This razor-wielding crime lord, called McHeath, also seems to be a throwback to his namesake in “The Three Penny Opera”, and the film itself seems to self consciously labour over that stage play’s underclass themes.
The narrative clings to these subtleties so much that problems arise if the viewer doesn’t catch them, as the storyline isn’t really compelling enough and has too many subplots to hold the audience in its grip. Just as the film begins to explore an interesting subplot about the racist attitudes towards black sportsmen in Australia at that time, it veers off into a subplot about a Japanese beer racket; which is later resolved so easily that one wonders why it was ever introduced to the narrative in the first place.
The other parts of the film work in spite of the material. Byrne is luminescent as Iris, the femme fatale at the apex of the love triangle with McHeath and Art (Matt Le Nevez), the young bolshie boxer based on the real-life Sydney boxer Art Walker. Luke Carroll and Pia Miranda also make the best of roles that don’t leave them much room to maneuver and DOP Geoffrey Simpson gives the film a soft, sumptuous look.
SIMON DE BRUYN