Bondi Tsunami

Film Information

Cast

Shark: Taki Abe
Yuto: Keita Abe
Kimiko: Miki Sasaki
Gunja Man: Nobuhisa Ikeda

Crew

Writer/Director: Rachael Lucas
Producer/Production Manager: Anthony Lucas-Smith
Assistant Producer/Director: Naomi Lucas-Smith
Editor/Colourist: Michael Jones
Executive Producers: Arthur and Elaine Lucas
Cinematographer: Rachael Lucas
Music Producer: Rachael Lucas
Production Company: Burlesque Productions

Bondi Tsunami was shown to a select audience of Japanese and Media on the 3rd of September 2004, before the official release date of the 23rd of September 2004 in Sydney.

About Burlesque Productions

Formed in 1999 Burlesque has produced a half hour music documentary Malcolm Hill: The Last of the Wild Bohemians (2000) with CD sound track. Burlesque has also produced promotional and music videos that have been screen at festivals and on television. Bondi Tsunami is the first feature length project for Burlesque Productions and was completed in August 2004 (Nominated for Independent Spirit Award, Lexus IF award 2004).

Interview with the crew of Bondi Tsunami

I was able to source two radio interviews with the crew, which were both done during the promotional road trip. The first of which was done by John Stokes and can be found at http://www.abc.net.au/sunshine/stories/s1232315.htm. The other was done with Megan Spencer on JJJ; Spencer was also at the premiere that took part in Cobar Town Hall 800km west of Sydney. The interview took place 3 weeks after the premiere and was instrumental to the films success, Spencer labelling the film as the “coolest Australian movie ever” the interview can be found at www.JJJ.abc.com.  

What the critics said

www.oystermag.com
“The mainstream medias acceptance of Bondi Tsunami in Australia heralds a new era of low cost commercially accepted DV film making in Australia. The film has already sparked a cult following and its growing popularity is testament to the merging of underground ideas into the mainstream market. June/July 2003

www.filmink.com.au/home
“A startling sexy cast. Glossies from the film look like something out of a high end fashion shoot.” Aug 2003

www.rollingstone.com/
“If the 80’s Japanese cult classic Monkey Magic, was set on the east coast beaches of Australia and the hairy monkey man was actually a Japanese surfy tourist hallucinating along the yellow brick road to Surfers Paradise, then we’d have the premise for Bondi Tsunami.” April 2003

www.sudneyherald.com/
“If Australia can be the setting for a number of Bollywood productions why not begin a Japanese surf movie craze.” Jan 2003

www.macworld.co.uk/
“Bondi Tsunami redefines the conventional surfing travelogue for the Nintendo generation, it is a series of slick music video style sequences held together by a rockin? Soundtrack.” Sep 2003

More reviews

 

www.elevenmagazine.com/features/160405/dvd_reviews_16040502.html
http://nofreelist.com/review/?movieid=1138
http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/veiw.asp?a=9458&s=reviews
http://www.inthemix.com.au/life/film/20697
http://www.memorabletv.com/dvdreviews05/bonditsunami.htm

Bondi Tsunamis’ on line presences in web literature

Billed as “the first Japanese road movie in Australia” Bondi Tsunami was received very well by the critics and not surprisingly so. I bet every critic that viewed the film was a film student at some time and is a connoisseur of the medium, which would have added to their appreciation of the filming techniques used. The film was under pressure due to the hype surrounding it and the lead up to its release lasted a year. This can be seen in the review above from the Sydney Herald 9 months before the film was actually released. I read many reviews stating that Bondi Tsunami is the best Australian film ever and will be a cult classic, the cover of the DVD has 5 separate reviewers stating as much. If this is so then the question has to be asked. If this is the case then why was it not picked up by a distribution company, and why have such a limited cinema release?

Locating information

I used the Internet mainly to source my information, which was quite easy to find to a degree. Reviews and facts about the movies were easy to come across, but because the film is so recent (it was only released on DVD 4 weeks ago) and its limited cinema release. It was difficult to find box office earnings, which would have reflected the public’s opinion in a more concrete manner. The film also missed out on the awards ceremonies that the mainstream Australian films are privy to. So while it was easy to find a myriad of reviews raving about the latest style in Australia sub culture cinema it was difficult to back this up with any evidence. I did how ever ask a few of my film geek friends what they thought of Bondi Tsunami and only one had heard of it and hadn’t seen it. I myself was aware of the film and was looking forward to seeing it but I will cover that more when I review the film latter in this assignment. The sites I found most beneficial were the official www.bonditsunami.com.au web site. www.imdb.com as always proved to be invaluable as were www.afi.com.au and www.afc.com.au.  

Synopsis

Four punked up Japanese surfers venture up the east coast of Australia in a 1961 EK Holden to the tune of many a song. Shark (Taki Abe), Kimiko (Miki Sasaki), Yuto (Kieta Abe) and Gunja man (Nobuish Ikeda) stumble up the east coast on a surfing road trip passing some classic Australian landmarks on the way such as the big pineapple, big merino and the big banana. Stopping along the way to reflect, get drunk and experience some of the best surf Australia has to offer.

Critical Review

Rachael Lucas makes her feature film debut with Bondi Tsunami a brave experimental movie that she calls “music video motion picture”. The film rightly deserve this sub title due to the fact that it contains no less than 18 songs squeezed into the 85 minute running time. It is a ‘pop cinema fusion’, which maybe hard to digest for those who enjoy a more linear style of cinema and may become a frustrating experience. Others however who enjoy a more experimental style cinema with multi platform viewing will enjoy this experience which plays out more like back ground wall paper than a real movie.

What ever your thoughts are of this Japanese road movie there is no doubt that there is something more going on here than meets the eye, more than one viewing is needed to absorb the several themes that run through this film. Lucas has made this film with a definite vision and purpose, which may not be apparent on the first outing, and even if you don’t understand it fully the second time around, you will feel like at least you are getting closer to understanding some of the sub plots. There is no doubt that Bondi Tsunami is eternally cool, many reviewers have labelled it the “coolest Australian road movie ever.” For my tastes it is not, but one could see how a cult following would argue that point, shaking their surf board wax in the air and whipping their dreadlocks around in a frenzy at the mere mention of a film that could be its equal. Bondi Tsunami does however deserve more than a passing glance and is a must see for any aspiring film student or even for the Spielberg’s of the world if only to see what else can be achieved in the medium of film making.

Shark (Taki Abe) the quiet chain smoking type picks up his hyperactive pubs and clubs friend Yuto (Keita Abe) from the airport in his iconic two tone 1961 Holden EK station wagon. They are hell bent on surfing the best waves the east coast has to offer on their way to Surfers Paradise. Not a word is spoken in the films opening sequences (which last ten minutes) instead the film relies on the tone of the music and action to convey the emotion or pace of the film. Shark is the films narrator talking the viewer through much of the film using Zen poetry, Japanese philosophy and haiku, this gives the film a stoner reflective feel but sometimes feels hit and miss and over used. During the pairs search for the ultimate wave, ultimate beer and ultimate landmark they rediscover Kimiko (Miki Sasaki) the ex-girlfriend of Shark. She seems to appear from nowhere during a pit stop the pair make at a land mark, Shark wants little to nothing to do with her so she clings to Yuto. So the two become three and they continue north until they meet a lone Japanese man standing on the side of an isolated road wearing only jeans and sporting the best Japanese dread locks the film industry has seen. Gunja man (Nobu Hisikeda) speaks very little and all we know is that he is from Nimbin and is going to Nimbin. As a normally linear film style audience one must ‘suspend disbelief’ constantly during Bondi Tsunami the plot is so thin one must not ask where or how Kimiko or Gunja man came to be where they where or question many of the films obvious short comings. This is not a story, it is a well-buffed experience for the eyes and ears, the audience must have no preconceptions if Bondi Tsunami if it is to be enjoyed for what it is intended to be.

There is definitely a lot more to Bondi Tsunami than meets the eyes and ears, but what does meet the eyes and ears is aggressively constructed and designed. Bondi Tsunami is refined and honed on every level it uses saturated colours, snappy edits and larger than life images and is no more and no less than playful eye and ear candy, which of course is just the way the director wanted it to be. On the surface it is a not so serious film, taking from music videos, comic books, cut and paste pop music, fashion, design and mashing all these things together to achieve ‘pop fusion’. Beneath that surface there is a bigger message that Lucas wants to get across, and she trust that this generation of movie going audiences can handle it.

All four actors in Bondi Tsunami are unknowns, they were working backpackers who where confronted by Lucas and asked, “do you want to be in a movie?” Little did they know the experience would last four years and catapult them into cult star status. The entire film was shot on DV and cost $150 000. Lucas maxing out her credit card to the tune on $40 000 shows her belief in the project. She also used family members for crew and took on a lot of the extra load her self, which makes Bondi Tsunami a real labour of love. There is a sense of improvisation in a lot of the scenes and using a lot of surfing footage gives Bondi Tsunami an almost documentary feel, this feeling however does not transfer to realism in the story. The story is very geographically incorrect and the story so wafer thin that it is hard to relate or even have emotion for any of the characters involved. Relationships between the characters never develop despite promising foundations being laid and the repetitious jokes and editing style might grate after a while, but Bondi Tsunami definitely shows what can be achieved with a digital video camera these days and is fairly pleasing to the senses.

Pop Cinema Fusion

“A new style of film pop cinema fusion is a collective term for pop inspired mixed media (often digital) films that are inspired primarily by the stylistic elements of the mass media, music, pop video, documentary, advertising, visual art, fashion and genre cinema over traditional narrative form. It is a cinema born of other cinema rather than the experience of the writer and will often twist and satirize cinematic archetypes and clichés with rebellious structural form. Pop cinema fusion often reinvents familiar classic pop imagery via a unique or unfamiliar text.

Bondi Tsunami is a highly stylised example of Pop Cinema Fusion; it is loaded with familiar iconography and refers to Spaghetti Westerns, Asian karaoke videos, 1960’s 8mm home movies, vintage surf movies, guerrilla documentary, soft drink/surf culture, advertising and music videos.”
www.bonditsunami.com

 

Genre of Film

The director of Bondi Tsunami Rachael Lucas describes the film as a cross between “Kabuki, MTV, The wizard of Oz and Monkey Magic.” For me I would call it a road trip surfer movie but it is more accurately described by www.imbd.com when they call it a music/comedy/doco/adventure/drama. Depending on which culture or social standing you are from Bondi Tsunami would appeal to the viewer in different ways. It has the strong elements of a road movie with the car being a main character onto its self and a destination that has to be reached. It also has elements of comedy in it but due to the lack of dialogue it is hard to call this a reoccurring theme. It is essentially a 90 minute film clip with philosophical musings, there are no story line peaks or defined moments of disequilibrium so it is hard to label it a drama but there is emotion in Sharks narration which makes Bondi Tsunami dramatic at times. I have no doubt that there is no other Australian film on the shelf that I could have chosen that would be harder to define, and as I illustrated above elements in the movie will mean different things to individual audiences.

Value and position in Australian market

Bondi Tsunami has only been released for a short time but the critical uptake is astonishing, with critics heralding it as a break through in Australian film.   
Time will tell if Bondi Tsunami will be the cult classic we are promised, will it be a Puberty Blues? Or a Romper Stomper? It is very unfortunately titled for the moment with the Boxing Day Tsunami still fresh in the publics mind but hopefully with time the film will be judged on its merits as the pre Boxing Day reviews have done.