Critical Review and Bibliography – Christine Hems
The Fringe Dwellers
(Adapted from the novel by Nene Gare)
Part 1. Film Information
Principal Cast and Credits
Credits
Director Bruce Beresford
Director of Photography Don McAlpine
Producer Sue Milliken
Executive Producer Damien Nolan
Production Designer Herbert Pinter
Sceenplay Bruce Beresford
Rhiosin Beresford
Music composed by George Dreyfuss
Cast
Trilby Comeaway Kristina Nehm
Mollie Comeaway Justine Saunders
Noonah Comeaway Kylie Belling
Joe Comeaway Bob Maza
Bartie Comeaway Denis Walker
Hannah Marlene Bell
Dr. Lymons Wilkie Collins
Bruce Alan Dargin
Phil Ernie Dingo
Matron Dianne Eden
Blanchie Michele Miles
Skippy Bill Sandy
May Anne Saward
Charlie Malcolm Silva
Nurse McCarthy Lisa-Jane Stockwell
Horrie Terry Thompson
Audrena Michelle Torres
Tim Robert Ugle
Eva (as Kath Walker) Kathryn Walker
Rene Maureen Watson
Production Company
Fringe Dwellers Productions Pty. Ltd. in association with OzFilm Ltd.
Produced with the assistance of the Australian Film Commission
Length: 98 minutes
Release Date: October 1986
Box Office Figures: $174,333 www.moviemarshal.com/boxoffice.html
Awards
Best Adapted Screenplay 1986 AFI Awards
Official Selection 1986 Cannes Film Festival
Bibliographic Details of interviews
Malone, Peter 2001, Myth and meaning: Australian Film Directors in their own
words, Sydney, Currency Press, pp.18-27.
The Fringe Dwellers, dir. Bruce Beresford, 98 mins, Umbrella Entertainment, 2004, DVD.
www.moviemaker.com/issues/36/36_beresford.html
Caputo, R. 2002, ‘Selling nuts and bolts: an interview with Don McAlpine’, in Third take: Australian Filmakers talk, Raffaele Caputo and Geoff Burton, eds. Sydney, Allen and Unwin.
Bibliographic Details of reviews
Ball, K., 1986, ‘Fringe benefits’, Cinema Papers, no. 58, pp.14-17.
Roddick, N., 1986, ‘Ordinary people: the fringe dwellers’, Cinema Papers, no. 60, p.39.
Mason, T., 1998, ‘The Fringe Dwellers’, Canadian Dimension,Winnipeg, vol. 32, no. 1, p.42.
Oxford Companion to Australian Film (1999), ed., Brian McFarlane et al, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, p.172.
Australian Film 1978-1994: a survey of theatrical features, 1995, 2nd edn. Murray, Scott (ed.), Melbourne, Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Film Commission and Cinema Papers, p.197.
On-line Presence
An on-line search for information produced many hits for The Fringe Dwellers but few critical reviews, mostly lists of principal cast and crew and a brief synopsis. This film is not always included in Bruce Beresford’s filmography. The following is a selection:
www.imdb.com/name/nm0000915/
www.movies2nytimes/gst/movies/movie.html
www.cinephilia.net.au/show_a movie.php?movied=2530
www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fringe_dwellers/
Part 2. Critical Review of The Fringe Dwellers and its Literature
Critical Review
The Fringe Dwellers tells the story of Trilby Comeaway (Kristina Nehm), a teenager living with her extended Aboriginal family in a camp on the ‘wrong side of the river’ on the outskirts of ‘Curgon’ in Queensland. Trilby has aspirations for herself and her family to rise out of their marginal lifestyle and persuades her parents to rent a Housing Commission house in the white neighbourhood. Trilby is a promising student at the high school and wants to succeed in mainstream society athough she experiences racial prejudice in school and out of it.
Trilby’s sister, Noonah (Kylie Belling) is training to be a nurse at the local hospital and her little brother, Bartie (Denis Walker) appears to be a promising artist. Trilby’s mother, Mollie (Justine Saunders) tries to please everyone, maintain good relations with their extended family and is indulgent to her husband Joe’s (Bob Maza) reluctance to find work.
The family eventually move to the new house but Trilby’s parents appear ill-at-ease in their new surroundings until their extended family arrive and much to Trilby’s disappointment, move in too. Trilby then discovers she is pregnant from her brief liason (at least in screen time), with Phil (Ernie Dingo), a stockman and rodeo rider who has left the area. Trilby does not want the child even though she has the support of her mother, she envisions she will end up like the other women in the shanty town living the lifestyle she is rejecting.
The family fall into arrears with the rent and Joe Comeaway (Bob Maza) loses all the money he was taking to the Housing Commisssion in a card game and subsequently leaves, without telling the family, to find work.
Trilby gives birth to a daughter but is not even interested in naming her and apparently drops her causing her to die. The family having been evicted from the house return to their shack when Joe suddenly turns up and there is a happy reunion. However Trilby is determined not to settle for this lifestyle and she leaves at dawn the next day to catch the bus to the city although she has not told anyone of her intentions. Mollie wakes as she is going and they have brief eye contact but she does not try to stop her.
This film highlights the dilemma of the generation of Trilby and her sister who having been educated in the white system aspire to its promises. Trilby rejects and is scornful of the mythology of her own people and condemns the patronisation and prejudice of white people. As a teenager she is searching to realise her individual identity which is compounded by the tensions between generation and culture.
I would argue that Beresford’s portrayal of the Aboriginals is sensitive and non-judgmental although at times this is somewhat stereotypical, for example the disappearance and reappearance of the male characters indicating their unreliability. During the scene back at the camp when Phil protects Trilby from the attentions of another man and attacks him, the violence with which he does so is gratuitous. I also found the ending of the film messy, the family’s eviction from the house, the death of Trilby’s baby with seemingly no consequence whatsoever, the return of Joe and Trilby’s departure all happen with rapid succession as if Beresford suddenly wanted to end the film.
A strength of the film which for me contributed to the viewing and has mainly gone unmentioned in reviews, is the cinematography of Don McAlpine. As soon as the film opened with shots of early morning Murgon I was captivated and continued to be so throughout. McAlpine’s long shots of action, examples being of the truck loaded with the family’s belongings and of the surrounding landscape were a pleasure to watch. I also enjoyed the attention to detail in the sets and props, I particularly liked the pictures Trilby was looking at in the travel agent’s window of London and Sydney Harbour. The Fringe Dwellers, although not a dynamic film is watchable, is significant for its mainly Aboriginal cast and could bring some awareness of the plight of Aboriginals to a larger audience.
The Fringe Dwellers as a particular type of Australian film and belonging to a genre or genres.
In terms of generic elements I would argue there are interrelationships between the teenpic, the women’s film, the melodrama and the social-problem film. The Fringe Dwellers has been related to Beresford’s Puberty Blues for its handling of teenage issues (see below) and Trilby as the protagonist of the film is first and foremost a teenager seeking her place in the world. The themes present that are encompassed by the women’s film (or the woman-centred narrative) tap into the ‘sacrifice-for-the-child’ category, Trilby does not want a life bringing up children in poverty in the camp and is in transition from childhood herself. Melodrama has been argued as ‘all but synonymous with…the family melodrama, the woman’s film’ (Neale, S., 2000, Genre and Hollywood, Routledge, London, p.181.) There is a melodramatic scene in the hospital when the baby is killed in what is described as an ‘accident’. In considering the genre of the social-problem film, this has been described as being directed towards, besides other issues, ‘poverty, family tension and to lesser degree, racism’. Neals points out that there is often a difference between the resolution of the plot and the resolution of the social problem, a feature common in social-problem films. (Neale, S., 2000, Genre and Hollywood, Routledge, London, pp.112-128.) The Fringe Dwellers conforms to this aspect of the genre in that it depicts poverty and racism but offers no solutions.
Critical Uptake
In her review of the film at the time of its release, Kathy Bail argues that the story is sentimental and sweetly packaged and that the issues of colour, Aboriginality and racism are the sub-text of the film. Aboriginal critique claimed the representations set Aboriginal rights back 200 years. Bail quotes Kristina Nehm (Trilby) words that the film is made for more for entertainment than to show any political argument. However Nehm proceeds to hail the film as a breakthrough in that it shows black actors performing professionally. This emphasis of professionalism however infuriated acivist Bob Merritt, who would rather have seen a black film that subverts the forms of the dominant culture. For Kath Walker (Eva) ‘the film was not to suggest hope but to show it how it is’. Bail proceeds to argue that by not speaking directly to the issues of black representation and instead ‘concern for an Australian family, Beresford lost the specificity that lends complexity to any cultural product’. She acknowledges the enormous determination and resilience required of Beresford and Miliken to make the film.
For Neil Ruddock, in his 1986 review of the film, its greatest strength lay in the fact that the Comeaways were depicted ‘on one level as a family worthy of interest for its problems, not its black otherness’. He proceeds to argue however that this ‘otherness’ eventually emerges as central to their portrayal and ‘realism fights a losing battle with stereotypes’. For him The Fringe Dwellers ends up trapped and subverted by its own liberalism’.
Tina Mason, in her 1995 review found the film ‘surprisingly heartwarming and entertaining’, Joe, the father, was a ‘charming wastrel’ and she saw the community as ‘in many ways a good place to live’. As an indigenous Canadian, who like Trilby had left, she saw many similarities with her Ojibway culture.
According to the Oxford Companion to Australian Film (1999) The Fringe Dwellers is seen as significant as being the first mainstream feature with all principal roles played by indigenous actors. It is also acclaimed for its positive inflection of Aboriginal social values. However, it argues that because Beresford translates the narrative as a family drama, the plot is formulaic and though well meant is unable to deal in any depth with the issues it raises. (Reference is also made of frequent comparisons of The Fringe Dwellers to Steven Spielberg’s The
Colour Purple).
A similar view is held in Australian Film 1978-1994. Here, it is argued ‘the use of a novel written in 1961 is an uneasy attempt to relate the situation of black Australians today to a specific time’. It claims that though earnest, The Fringe Dwellers is ‘backward looking and complacent’ unlike the book which was, in its time, controversial and inspirational. It is also claimed to be far too sentimental with far less impact than other dramas covering the same ground.
Circumstances of production and release.
Beresford had wanted to make The Fringe Dwellers before Breaker Morant, but encountered great resistance when seeking financial backing. Apparently investors considered the content a commercial risk. Eventually Virgin Films (the cinema branch of Richard Branson’s Virgin Records) agreed to a pre-sale and was able to finance it under a particular clause. (Ball, K., 1986, ‘Fringe benefits’, Cinema Papers, no. 58, pp.14-17.) The budget for the film was $1.26 million. The film was set in Murgon, Queensland which was renamed ‘Curgon’, Nene Gare’s novel was actually set in Geraldton, Western Australia, but location costs were too great to go there. Many of the extras were ‘local’ people who had walked from Cherborg a journey of some days. Filming took six weeks.
Situation of The Fringe Dwellers in relation to subsequent and prior work of the director and cinematographer and lead actors.
Beresford’s Australian filmography began with The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972). The Fringe Dwellers however relates more to Puberty Blues (1981) in which according to the Oxford Companion to Australian Film (1995), he deals tenderly with the problems of teenage girls.
Beresford had spent some years in Nigeria as Film Editor for the Nigerian government and had been the only white person in the unit. He felt he gained some insight into the African point of view and when he subsequently came across scripts dealing with cultural and racial conflicts he believed he had some intrinsic understanding of them. He had been attracted to Nene Gare’s novel from when he first read it.
Following The Fringe Dwellers,Beresford went on to direct The Robe (1991) a co-production with Canada, set in the seventeenth century when the French were trying to colonise the Indians. Beresford contacted Sue Milliken, (the producer of The Fringe Dwellers)toinvestigate the Australian-Canadian deal which was eventually accepted (with Miliken as producer). Beresford remarks however that similarities between the situation of the Indians and the Aborigines although present were not really an issue in the deal.
Cinematographer Don McAlpine was Director of Photography for a number of Bruce Beresford’s films including The Adventures of Barry Mackenzie and its sequel, Breaker Morant and Don’s Party, he has since worked mainly in Hollywood. Moulin Rouge (2001) was his most recent Australian engagement.
According to a cast and crew audio commentary included as a DVD extra, Kristina Nehm was a member of a dance troupe immediately prior to the making of this film, she has subsequently had parts in three other films: Till There Was You, The Dreaming and The Dirtwater Dynasty. Justine Saunders and Bob Maza had both appeared in films prior and subsequent to The Fringe Dwellers. Also included on the DVD is a profile of Ernie Dingo, the part of Phil was his first feature film casting and he went on to appear in a number of other films including Crocodile Dundee ll and Dead Heart.
The Fringe Dwellers and the general position of Australian film and its value.
The Fringe Dwellers is acclaimed most for being the first mainstream film in which all principal roles are played by indigenous actors and the gentle and sympathetic light in which they are portrayed.
Australia has been forging a national identity and Australian cinema has reflected this since the ‘new wave’ of the 1970s, the absence of a particular culture has been a challenge for Australian filmmakers on the international scene. The size of budgets available compared to those of the USA, UK and Europe has resulted in a prioritising of relationship and social problem films portraying minority groups and those at its margins. The Fringe Dwellers lies within these parameters.
The claim of Aboriginal and Islanders as ‘first peoples’ came to the political and moral fore in the 1970s along with other major issues such as land rights, deaths in custody and reconciliation. Indigenous communities are a ‘problem’ for government and bureaucracies and as O’Reagan notes, issues of health, drunkeness and housing structured The Fringe Dwellers. He further notes cinema is built upon ‘problematisations’.
Australia is still a ‘new world society’ and its cinema reflects this and will not reach large international audiences its value lies in contributing to the expression and greater understanding of the national identity.
O’Regan, Tom, 1996, Australian National Cinema, Routledge, London and New York.