A Critical Review of David Williamson’s ‘Brilliant Lies’
Ben Letham, 960788C
It is safe to say that we couldn’t sustain civilisation as we know it without the aid of that great human invention, the lie. Most of us lie every day of our lives, usually about something trivial, and we think nothing of it. However, when one starts to depend upon the lie to advance oneself in life, one can find oneself in some unpleasant situations. Fictional narrative film is full of such characters, and so is real life as a matter of fact. David Williamson’s Brilliant Lies (Richard Franklin, 1996) has two such characters as its protagonists, or more correctly antagonists, and it’s their thoroughly unpleasant natures that are pretty much the downfall of the film.
The film opens with Susie (Gia Carides) giving her account of the gross sexual misconduct of her former boss Gary (real life fiance, Anthony LaPaglia) to a sexual harassment conciliator. According to Susie, he had been making lewd phone calls to her for seven months, which culminated in him asking her to stay behind one night and threatening to sack her if she didn’t perform fellatio. Then we hear Gary’s story that he had been unhappy with her standard of work and had asked her to stay behind to see if he could talk to her about it. He claims that she thought the work was boring and that she had a party to go to, she then stalked out. The short of it is that this repeats itself a few more times and we come out with a winner. However, there were another 80 minutes to fill out so we are subjected to dialogue, and a lot of it.The other major plot line is introduced with Susie’s sister Katy (real life sister, Zše Carides), whom she lives with and freeloads off. Susie needs Katy as her sole corroborating witness to her emotional distress. Katy didn’t see any, and so she is forced to lie despite the fact that she believes her sister’s story. Katy has something to gain out of the dispute. Susie picks her damages sum to be forty thousand dollars because she "…read somewhere that some woman got [it]" for a similar case. With the money, she plans to open a cafˇ with Katy, who is a qualified architect but forced to drive a taxi to make a living.
When Susie is describing the critical event a second time, she says that Gary grabbed her breasts from behind using the phrase "The twin peaks of womanhood". Katy backs her up for the conciliation, but back at home she confronts Susie with her real source of that phrase. It is here that we discover that their alcoholic father sexually abused both women as teenagers, and that’s the term he used. This tells us two things, that Susie lies to her own sister, so we are unlikely to hear the truth out of her; and both their characters are defined almost totally, but quite oppositely, by that abuse.
Their father, Brian (played with excellent dipsomania by Ray Barrett) was once a multi-millionaire but has become a miserable old pensioner after losing it all in an unspecified stock market crash. We learn that he is in ill health, and requires a triple bypass or he will die very soon. The operation will cost thirty thousand dollars, which is obviously going to give Susie another impetus to win her case, and a quandary as to whether this man deserves it. The first scene with Brian, when he’s around at Katy and Susie’s house for his birthday provides one of the genuinely funny moments in the film. Katy is so sure that his taste buds have been ruined by alcoholism that she puts cask wine in an empty Wolfblass bottle. We then see him singing the praises in a lilting tone of how they never make a bad drop.
Meanwhile, Gary is planning his defence. On his side is her reputation as a party girl. She was incompetent, but sore at being fired, so she’s looking for an easy way to score some cash. Besides, even if he did do anything, she asked for it by the way she dressed. On the other hand, he has his own reputation for affairs with secretaries and his boss, Vince (Neil Melville) is unwilling to put too much of the company’s money behind Gary. Faced with this, Gary decides that his friend can go take a running jump, and he buys out the company with the help of some merchant bankers.
The conciliation process breaks down because Gary refuses to pay forty thousand and Susie refuses to take anything less, despite the fact that the arbiter advises her that twenty thousand is "in the range of what I would consider fair". When Susie gives her evidence in the public hearing, she gives another differing recollection, which is unsurprising. However, this time, for the first time, she shows some emotion, tears. It seems more believable. In this version, which is similar to her first telling of it, Gary is far more aggressive and demeaning. The experience is humiliating enough that it is believable that Susie never spoke of it before.
This testimony is obviously taken to be the truth, as she is awarded her damages. The last scene, obviously a few weeks later, has the family at a barbecue. We learn that Susie has funded her father’s operation, thereby forgoing her dream. We also learn that she had to be talked into it by Katy. Brian is finally made to realise what an awful thing it was that he did to his girls and the film ends on a conciliatory note.
It becomes apparent fairly early on that Susie is what the Victorians would have termed a ‘woman of loose morals’. David Williamson has laid out the character in a none too subtle way. Susie’s exits from about half her scenes are to a ‘party’. We are never shown them, or any of her plentiful friends so they do not advance the plot. Williamson also beats to death the trivial point that she "took ecstasy once". This is in there purely to reinforce her image as a risk-taking party animal. She also looks extremely glamorous in every scene, but in a cheap kind of way. She looks so unlike her sister that I wouldn’t have known they were really related were it not in the credits. All this creates further doubt in the viewer’s mind as to the veracity of her story. It is quite easy to believe that she may have been a willing participant in any sexual relation between her and Gary. In fact, in her final testimony she reveals that they had been having an affair initially and she had been leading him on to a certain extent, but after she broke it off is when the harassment started. However, before the viewer is made aware of this, her behaviour is suggestive of that which Gary accuses her, she is a schemer who is too lazy to work and is taking advantage of a system that usually believes the woman under those circumstances. Despite her traumatic childhood, she is rather an unpleasant character, and it is hard to sympathise with someone so willing to deceive.
It is this early negativity which leans viewer sympathy towards Gary. In our first private moments with him, we learn that he has got to where he is through hard work. He has come from a poor upbringing to be comfortable middle class with a couple of children and a substantial amount of debt. He claims that he never touched her, and that she is playing him against a system that is heavily biased against the white middle class male. She can see that it is a no-win situation for him. He either settles out of court, or gets dragged through the mud at a public hearing, which would probably besmirch his name no matter what the outcome. This gives the viewer the idea for the moment that Susie is an opportunistic schemer trying to undo an honest man because she can take advantage of a world gone mad on political correctness. However, it doesn’t take long to find out that Gary I just as big an incorrigible liar as Susie. He’s also a chauvinist, and adulterer and a dishonest businessman. With two protagonists that are as bad as each other, the viewer ends up just not caring who wins.
Katy is the only other character worth analysing, if only to compare her to Susie. Katy is represented as a feminist lesbian, a phrase that is repeated often throughout the movie, just in case we missed it. It becomes apparent that both women have each gone to the widest extreme of sexual behaviour that pop psychology will allow them. Their characters have obviously both become as a reaction to their childhood abuse. There are obviously many factors which lead to a person becoming a sexual being, but for the sake of this play it is apparent that it all goes back to the childhood. Susie sleeps around a lot because she’s trying to find the same misplaced affection in men that she got from her father. While Katy has become so distrustful of men that she doesn’t want to have anything to do with them at all. It is disappointing that a writer of the talent of Williamson has allowed the characters in it to be so simplified. Gary is a new age chauvinist who believes in the finest business points of Gordon Gekko. Paul (Michael Veitch), their brother is a sideshow. He plays the stereotyped Christian do-gooder who doesn’t really know what’s going on. The only interesting character is that of Brian, who displays mixed emotions of regret and remorse, and then pride and stubbornness. He is really the only character who goes through any kind of emotional journey, and a top-class screenplay should really do better than that.
Richard Franklin has been around a long time, but is still not one of Australia’s better-known director’s. He has yet to really make his ‘break’ film that could turn him into the next George Miller or Bruce Beresford. He’s had enough pedigree as he used to work on location with Alfred Hitchcock in the 1960s, and went on to direct Psycho II (1983). Probably his best known film of the 1990s has been Hotel Sorrento (1995), which was also originally based on a stageplay. This is a precarious practice, because stageplays are all about dialogue, and to successfully make the transition to film, they need to have some visuals injected into them. Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) is an excellent example of how this can be achieved. Adrian Martin says this as well, and singles out Franklin as one who needs to work at it.
For Martin Australian scriptwriters are encouraged to ‘craftily and precariously cultivate what they want to say’ and not what ‘they want to see and hear’ (Martin, 1988:97). Martin later claimed that Franklin’s Hotel Sorrento (1995) was flawed in this regard – keeping too close to the stage play on which it was based." (O’Regan, 1996:206)This seems to also be the case with Brilliant Lies. David Williamson has had a number of stageplays make it to screen, but it’s only Don’s Party(Beresford, 1976) that has made a name for itself, if only in Australia. Gallipoli (Weir, 1981) would undoubtedly be his finest film, but that was written directly for the screen. There is no doubt that he is one of our country’s finest ever playwrights, but there is something to be said for letting him stick to the stage.
Brilliant Lies exists in what I consider to be the B-List of Australian film. It’s almost as if these films get made to justify there being an industry, but they are not really ever expected to do well commercially. At the time of its release, it was best known for its nepotism in the close relationships of the three main stars. It was not, however, known as a good film, but simply a film. Brilliant Lies is fairly typical of the type of film Australians do make, but not of the type they are well capable of making.
Martin, Adrian (1988) ‘Nurturing the Next Wave: What is Cinema?’. In P. Broderick (ed.) Back of Beyond, 90-101.
O’Regan, Tom (1996) Australian National Cinema, London: Routledge.
CAST Susie Connor: Gia Carides Gary Fitzgerald: Anthony LaPaglia Katy Connor: Zše Carides Paul Connor: Michael Veitch Brian: Ray Barrett Vince:Neil Melville Marion: Catherine Wilkin CREW Director: Richard Franklin Screenplay: Peter Fitzpatrick and Richard Franklin Based on the stageplay byDavid Williamson Cinematography: Geoff Burton Producers: Sue Farrelly and Richard Franklin Editor: David Pullbrook Produced by Australian Film Finance Corp and Bayside Pictures
Brilliant Lies was released in Australia on 8 August 1996 and in the United States on 11 June 1997. The box office figures are unavailable, but it was not a commercially successful film.
As it is a fairly recent release, it is not well covered in print, however for a mediocre film it has fairly good presence on the world wide web. The following are URLs to some sites for the movie.
Evan Williams’ Review in ‘The Australian’
‘LA Times’ Bob Heisler’s Review in Hollywood Online
Law academic’s perspective from Picturing Justice
‘Sydney Morning Herald’ Bernard Zuel’s article about its release
Dr Sara Feldman-Schorrig’s review on her Sexual Harassment Page
Peter Keough’s review for The Boston Phoenix
MG’s review for the Smart Devices home page
As was mentioned before, the recent release of this film has meant that libraries are yet to catch up with new enough books in their collections. This really doesn’t matter all that much because, as can be seen above, Brilliant Lies has a decent web presence. Fortunately it also has a fairly unique name. It would have taken all day to find a similar collection of URLs if its name had been Titanic or Computers. Most of those URLs were found through Metacrawler, which is a composite search engine. It takes the submitted search and runs it through half a dozen of the most popular search engines. This ensures that one doesn’t spend a long time going through them individually, sorting out bad links and duplicates. A number of those links also came from The Internet Movie Database, which is a very prominent web site for films.