Criticism of Siam Sunset
Synopsis
Perry (Linus Roache) is a down-on-his-luck paint designer who creates colours for English paint company. Perry’s life is filled with natural disasters, which mysteriously torment him. He is devastated when his beautiful redhead wife is killed in a bizarre accident, and now seeks salvation by finding the perfect colour, to match his late wife’s hair, a colour he can see in his head, which he calls " Siam Sunset". However, Perry believes that " Siam Sunset" somehow bring about his salvation.
An opportunity to get away from the constant misfortune presents itself when he wins an Australian outback coach holiday at a bingo night. Perry travels to Australia. Once in Adelaide, he joins a clapped-out coach full of boring companies for fellow travelers. This turns out to be the world’s worst bus tour, until Grace ( Danielle Cormack) bribes her way on-board in the middle of nowhere after her car crashes. She is on the fun from a violent drug dealing ex-lover, Martin ( Ian Bliss) ,whose stash of petty cash she has stolen and prepared to pursue her to the end of the earth.
After freak storms, sudden earth movements and other natural phenomena by commonplace for Perry, the bus makes one final unscheduled stop, leaving its exhausted crew stranded in a motel in the most desolate, unforgiving part of the Australian outback. This journey takes Perry to places he would never imagine. It is in this most unexpected of places that Perry and Grace both have chances to discover a new life.
Review
Siam Sunset. A dangerously funny romantic adventure about a man’s search for peace in the face of overwhelming catastrophe. The central of the humour, often surrounded by the superstitions of life’s dramas, it gives the film a rather sweet quality and helps to engage audiences with the genuine emotional issues raised.
Personally I found Siam Sunset a very interesting and odd film with its own sharp script. Recording from Paul Fischer words "Scribes Max Dann and Andrew Knight have created a collage of memorably idiosyncratic character that enhance the Landscape traversed by the film’s central character. In this film, the technique works to sublime effect, and as played by marvellous collection of local character actors, the characters burst alive with a unique, comical richness that permeates throughout the film."
Siam Sunset is like a delightful surprise in the film market that is a totally different film rather than the American. This excellence Australian comedy film that prefers to travel an off best path rather then trying to secure easy laughs with a broad, mainstream sensibility like most of American comedy films in the market. For example, in the film’s opening scenes, there is a different from other movies I saw. It is a freak accident which accounts for Perry’s state of despair, and it is staged with a concentration on shock value which makes the thin line between motion and just plain callous pale into invisibility.
For example one of the jokes that occur in the film is where the bus driver is having problems with his passengers and another driver, who has a bigger, nicer bus than him. In his own old wagon he pulls up for the night, and he charges passengers for canvas and tent. His nemesis does not appear over the horizon and disgorges its crowd of panama- htted swingers who blithely start making dates for cocktails in the bar of their superior accommodation. This kind of funny idea is hardly to been seen from American films.
Siam Sunset’s script is far from a formulaic romantic comedy, but the plot like Perry’s dream colour which so far exists only in his head. In his job as an industrial chemist in Britain, he is been trying to produce a new line of paints, but somehow it is stopped being just something to put in a can and become his Holy Grail. If he can find Siam Sunset, he will stop feeling that the universe is against him and find serenity. With plenty of pace set pieces to convince audiences of thinking that something is happening, but it is not! In the end, Perry just learns how to live with of his tragedies. Characters in the film go nowhere in particular, a little like the aborted bus trup that drives pun intended the short story-line. Beside, nobody in the film is taking his believe seriously, Perry actions is as a Paranoid Premise.
But in general, John Polson does have an ability to balance the humour probably the biggest strength of this road comedy. The laughs creep up on audiences, with a surprise, then the humour get under skin until it has totally diffused through the button of the heart.
Discuss the critical review of the film both at the time of its release and subsequently.
Siam Sunset had received different reviews among film journals, movie shows and internet-movies databases.
"Black and quirky, Siam Sunset sparkles with originality, and is peppered with enough black humour to displace your epicentre."
"The cringing critics of characteristically Australian films have missed the point, and will probably miss Siam Sunset. This is a terrific film!""It’s funny, sexy, intelligent and deliciously rewarding, and a journey well worth travelling"
"A lesson on why black isn’t always the colour of funny"
"The screenplay, by Max Dann and Andrew Knight, is well constructed and very inventive. In fact, Aussie scripts are getting better!- and first-time director John Polson does a terrific job with this basically familiar fish out of water movie material."
Siam Sunset did not provoke any response in international journals, which indicates the limited local market. This is relating to domestic distribution and the performance of Australian films that in the local market place have always been matters of great interest to local producers. Siam Sunset shows potential, but its dry humour sometimes falls flat, and outrageous sequence of events are not always convincing. Audiences need a great patient to finish this film, especially audiences never watch Australian film, that will not please every audience.
Outline the circumstances of its production and release and its box-office.
The Australian Film Commission today released a focusing on the Australian film distribution sector. At the time with the industry is receiving a boost from the tremendous box office success of Two Hands and the imminent release of several new titles, including Siam Sunset.
Promoting through word of mouth and optimistic cinemas reports were part of the marketing strategy for Siam Sunset. It was released in September 1999, opened after much fanfare and publicity - rather softly; and it had a production time for almost two months. After the first week of showing, it was in the list of top 10 box office, earning AU$112,866. It was in the top 20 box office for four weeks. Comparing with the other Australian films at that time, Siam Sunset was performing quite good.
Siam Sunset, which screened in Critics Week at Cannes, opened the 48th Melbourned Intl. Film Festival on July 21, and also won the Rail d’Or-popularist prize award.
Situate the film in relation to the subsequent or prior work principally of the director but also the cinematographer, producer, scriptwriter and lead actors.
Cast:
Linus Roache, Danielle McCormack, Ian Bliss, Roy Billing, Alan Brough,
Rebbecca Hobbs, Terry Kenwrick, Deidre Reubenstein, Peter Hosking,
Victoria Eagger, Robert Menzies.
Linus Roache, began acting career with a two week appearance as a young Barlow on " Coronation Street" ( 1960) at the age of 11. He also played a boy with the Bubonic plague in " Onedin Line, The" ( 1971). Spent much of the next two decades on stage. In 1986, he had brief appearances in Link ( 1986) and No Surrender (1985). He was brought to attention in 1994 after appearing in the BBC TV series " Seaforth".
Danielle Cormack is as Actress, Notable TV guest appearances Actress. She is from Topless Women Talk About Their Lives, the smart New Zealand comedy of a couple of years ago.
Producer: Al Clark, who is a specialist in the use of the outback road movie as a vehicle for unlimited mayhem. Siam sunset is his third. After The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, he went on to do Heaven’s Burning, the story of a demure Japanese bride who flees her Sydney honeymoon and embraces a lurid life of gun-toting action on the road with an ex-bank robber.
Script: Max Dann and Andrew Knight.
Director: John Polson, who is debut of AFI award winning, also as actor, director, producer and writer. He joins the work with Mission Impossible 2.
Cinematographer: Brian Breheny
Editor: Nicholas Beauman
Music: Paul Grabowsky
Running time: 92 minutes.
Rated: M
Company credits for Siam Sunset (1999) Production Companies:
Channel Four Films (aka Film Four International)(aka Channel 4 TV) [uk]
Showtime Australia
Artist Services
New South Wales Film & Television Office [au]
The Australian Film Finance Corporation [au]
South Australian Film Corporation [au]
Distributors:
United International Pictures (UIP) (Australia)
Use the film to estimate what it is uptake and current place on contemporary critical and market horizons tells you of the general position of Australian film and its values.
Aussie movies satirizing the outback and its plethora of quaintly oddball character have often been a trademark of Australian cinema. Most recently the ploy was attempted but failed miserabley, for example Welcome to Woop Woop. So Siam Sunset may feel like familiar territory. It is directed by first-time feature helmsman John Polson, the film is a wonderful surprise, a highly engaging comedy with a dark edginess to it rarely seen in Australian movies.
It seems that Australia audiences are easier to accept comedy movies rather than other kind of movies. As this film, a comic ideas going to waste, Aussie actor John Polson’s directorial debut is a good one. After a stylish start and a promising middle, the latter stages disintegrate into slapstick. It is as if he had been influenced by outback road movies, with that quirky Aussie humour that like blood on the windscreen.
In the context of this film, Australian cinema can bee seen as limited into Australian market only, the local audiences prefers its local humour. Australian value and culture are involved heavily in Siam Sunset, in some way, it limited its market audience. With this kind of image, you can image that England, Ireland and Canada will still believe that is Australian culture, since it show them everything they ever wanted to believe about barbarous quirky Australians. If this film is show in international market, this ocker style of the film and production would not quite accepted by international audiences. There is no attraction for audiences to go to theater; compelling with American films which has mass international culture value and big budget.
There are some parts of the film are involved tasteless jokes, it is seemingly takes us straight into the 70’s Ocker films, when the Australian film industry was beginning its resurgence. While the surreal characters like Perry’s travel companions, they make up an index to all the least endearing aspects of the national character without necessarily making them funny. There is also cheap and nasty to use the image of Choung Dao as the ‘silent Asia’ in the film.
Situate the film in relation to Australian National cinema as a medium sized English language cinema.
In English language cinema, American films have stronger competition than Australian film, even though in local market. Therefor, if the Australian film want to attract attention from audience, they have to create different ideas from American. It is difficult for Australia film industry. Because of Anglophone are sharing the similar culture value. ( O’Regan, p.77, 1996) Siam Sunset is special in the way that it has its own balance of having its own " characteristic " and still can communicate with Anglophone culture.
Although more and more Australian films had break boundary between Australia and others, like, The piano, Mad Max and the Adventures of Pricilla Queen of the Desert. It seems that the international audiences have started to accept Australian culture value. Basically, Siam Sunset is producing local communicates to local audience where Australians think is funny. If John Polson would like to open its market in international, they have to consider about other countries’ cultures value.
Bibliography
Due to Siam Sunset’s pure commercial factor, and it was not a big hit in box office, there was not much attention from media, interviews and reviews appeared.
Book:
Tom O’Rgan, Australian National Cinemas, Routledge, London, 1996,p.77.
Journal:
Variety, no.375, May, 31, 1999; p.31 ( David Stratton)
Variety, July, 19, 1999; p.15 ( Mark Woods)
Bulletin with Newseek, Step., 14, 1999; p.110 ( Susie Eisenhuth)
Encor, Step., 10, 1999; p.11 ( Bob Ellis)
The National News Paper, Step., 9 (Sandra Hall)
Presence online:
There was no official web page for Siam Sunset. There had some presence in the web literature, most of information relates to principal cast, credits and short synopsis. It was easy to search for film information, but no mention was made of Siam Sunset when referring interviews.
AMG- All Movie Guide
Includes: two plot synopses, release dates, location, database user ratings.
Internet Movie Database
includes: plot synopsis, location, database user ratings release dates, technical information.
There are not many resource to used in both Murdoch University Library, and Curtin University Library. Most of journal collections are imperfect; Siam Sunset still considers as new film, most of film literature index does not include the film.