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AUSTRALIAN CINEMA (MED231/ 431)
Assignment 2. Critical Review
Perfect Strangers (2003)
"………An Intense Romance, Unpredictable and Disturbing to the end."
Cast
Sam Neill………………….The Man
Rachael Blake…………….Melanie
Joel Tobeck……………….Bill
Robyn Malcolm…………Aileen
Madeleine Sami…………Andrea
Paul Glover……………….Jim
Jed Brophy………………..Pete
Sawae Yoshino…………...Ex-Girlfriend
CREW
Director/ Producer/ Writer Gaylene Preston
Producer Robin Laing
Associate Producer Jay Cassells
Cinematographer Alun Bollinger
Production Designer Joe Bleakley
Editor John Gilbert ace
Location Sound Recordist Ken Saville
Line Producer: Trishia Downie
First Assistant Director: Terri Kilmartin
Costume Designer: Helen Bollinger
Make Up Supervisor: Majory Hamlin
Make Up Artist/ Hair Stylist: Jane O'Kane
Gaffer: Bindy Crayford
Key Grip: Hamish Mcintyre
Continuity: Pat Robins
Sound Designer: Tim Prebble
Re-recording Mixer: Mike Hedges
Music: Plan 9
Post Production Supervisor: Shara Corner Hudson
Unit Publicist: Anne Chamberlain
Stills Photography: Geoff Short, Guy Robinson
Running Time:
96minutes
Film Locations:
New Zealand
Released Dates:
2003
Awards winning:
VLADIVOSTOK International Film Festival – Rachael Blake wins Best Actress.
Year 2001: Fantasporto Film Festival in Portugal - Rachael Blake wins Best Actress.
ABC awarded the film a five star rating and located it in an impressive traditional of female 'anti-romance' films.
Bibliographic details of reviews
http://www.artfoundation.org.nz/gaylene
http://www.perfectstrangersthemovie.com/
http://www.samneill.com
http://www.flyingfish.co.nz
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325968/
http://www.timeout.com/film/81346.html
http://www.joblo.com/index.php?id=2421

Critical Review of the Film and its Literature:

FILM SYNOPSIS

One fine day in a country town, Melanie (Rachael Blake) a working class lady heads to a tavern with her friends. She meets a perfect stranger (Sam Neill), a tall handsome gentleman who helps her to light up her cigarette. It was love at first sight as she is attracted by his charisma and attentiveness. A chilling romance set in motion when she walks off with him.

He brings her onto his boat where they spent a romantic dinner and wine. She then passed out drunk, only to find herself on the moving boat when she wakes up the next morning. Fear overwhelmed her when she found the cabin locked. He lets her out, only to give excuse that he promises they will return the next morning. He sails the boat to a deserted island, where his "humble castle", a rundown house, was. His attraction for Melanie turned from a love at first sight attraction into obsession, and romance into rage when she became more and more fearful of his obsession and rejected his passionate true love for her. Melanie, only then, realizes she has been kidnapped. Torn between fear and desire for this man, Melanie tried to escape but her ardent admirer, time and again, had her coming back into his arms.
CRITICAL REVIEW
PERFECT STRANGERS

Perfect Strangers is a women-oriented film directed by Gaylene Preston. Gaylene, who worked as the art director on Middle Age Spread and gritted her teeth at the macho joke telling and being nick-named, 'Bruce', was sufficiently ignited to want to intervene in the 'man alone' discourse and craft a film that presented a female and feminist perspective on aspects of being a woman in New Zealand society. As she reflects later, "I wanted to make a film that didn't have a car scene, didn't have rape scene and didn't have playing the tortured neurotic male with a gun and chooks. She is a creative film-maker who has achieved great success, both in drama and documentary format. This film, which is used by Gaylene to express her idea, spans a few styles, such as feminist thriller, romantic thriller and fairytale. Perfect Strangers is a film where the viewer is invited to reflect on how the unconsciousness of the people in the film can affect their external relationship. Two important characters in the film, Melanie and 'Perfect Stranger' thrill the viewer of how their relationship in the beginning of the film can change throughout the film. Melanie (Rachel Blake Lantana) is an ill-tempered, cranky and stubborn lady with feminine vulnerability. Melanie works as a shop assistant at a fish 'n chip shop in a small town. Since young, she is abandoned by both parents. Melanie's early childhood neglect caused Melanie to have negative images of both man and woman. In addition she finds it difficult to form a secure sense of self. Melanie tries to fill her inside emptiness through sex. She is outwardly a fairly down to earth woman of the world playing with a seductive. She fantasizes about meeting the perfect stranger. Astoundingly, this female hero's dream is realized when she met a suave and silent stranger who remains unnamed. Bill, a solid and reliable person, later becomes the third in an entrapping triangle. Bill was rejected by Melanie at the beginning of the film. Soon Melanie realized that her Prince Charming is in a fact a psychopath. Her dream turned evil and Melanie knows that she must gather her strength to free herself from the stranger. The struggle turns violent and the man was seriously wounded. When the stranger dies Melanie sinks into further unconsciousness. Knowing that her only way out of eternal entrapment is to enlist the man that she killed, she turns to rescuer.

Perfect Strangers is a film that truly reflects the ideas of completeness, consciousness and the roles of masculinity and femininity in a relationship. Perfect Strangers is celebrated for its narrative twists. The film defies classification. It has been described as "a challenging ride", "a macabre romance" and "a chilling story about obsession".

Gaylene's vision for Perfect Strangers is to explore romantic love for the roles, processing them from the simple "falling in love" into "falling in love into a state of madness" and slowly evolving into a more complicated and twisted reflection the female's desirous mind.

The subjects of exploration in this film is focused on Melanie – her exploration of empowerment – where she explores her domination in the narrative, experiences, achievements, dreams, inspirations, deepest fears and highest hopes of life. Melanie, though a representative of stereotyped femininity – soft and wispy hair, delicate make-up and body clinging low-cut dress – utilizes her grown up wiles and strong determination to try free herself and escape from the dangerous situations faced throughout the film.

Gaylene has stereotypical used a pretty damsel in distress, Melanie, as the helpless victim of male predators. This is what formed the story of this thriller genre film.

The opening of the film started with a black screen with sound effects of swishing, sighing and metallic thudding. This invites the viewers to imagine and project their own image of what the first scene is going to be made of. The sudden image of an onion being chopped brings the first external image into view and creates a sudden scare. It creates a mysterious mood bled together with the sound effects. The repeated scene of the chopping of onions, this time by Melanie, proposes the analytical interpretation of her unsettlement, pain and anger. Throughout the entire film, similar method was employed for the viewers to not only simply watch the film, but view it from a more analytical angle.

The director has full control of leading viewers according to their ideas and perception for the storyline instead of easily allowing them to predict beforehand what is going to happen next. This film has greatly attracted strong projections from the unconscious mind. Stereotypically, viewers would expect a sex scene as Melanie followed the stranger into his boat. There was a progression of intimacy over dinner and dance, but the scene eventually ended with Melanie passing out drunk instead. The storyline differs from the typical that one might expect.

An intrigue was created in the scene when the stranger chops the chicken while Melanie is having a bath. The combination of fast editing from the chopping to Melanie in the bath tub and the use of thrilling sound effects and lighting impart a mystic and shocking ambience, encouraging viewers to ponder the connection between the two scenes, if there is any in the first place.
A stereotypical setting of an eerie predator is the using of perfect red rose placed alongside two glasses of champagne. The sinking boat into the deep blue sea proposes a further stereotype of the same setting mentioned earlier. This could be interpreted as a release of deep emotions – of grief, of falling in love, of being gripped in fear. She eventually ends up putting the dead man's body in the large freezer where the meats are kept in. She has replaced the dead poultries with a dead man's body.

The film, from the instance the man dies, changes into a different direction as Melanie sinks into mental unconsciousness as she went dazed and mental instability. She starts to hallucinate of him when night falls. She was able to survive physically without his presence, but emotionally, her dependence on 'seeing' and 'being with' him grew stronger by the day. She finally felt true love for him and falls into deep madness with the dead man. She begins putting on his garments and clothes that he liked to see her in. She repeats activities and events that took place when he was alive, such as the ritual candlelit bath accompanied by music from the tragic opera song, Madame Butterfly.

The filmy black and white evening dress he wears recalls the negative of a black and white film. She is either a pure white angel or black devil, not a whole woman. This symbolized the province of primitive thinking rituals where a person is perceived as either all good or bad.
CRITICAL UPDATE
This film encompasses a number of genres, engaging in countless twists and turns throughout the entire film. I view it as a combination of genres, namely, drama, chilling romance and comedy, definitely not forgetting the psychological component. The bits and pieces of the twisted stories in the film later came together as some sort of fable, fantasy and then finally, realism.

The film contains a strong sense of dark or black humour. The use of the large freezer to keep the poultries is especially amusing. This also led viewers to conclude that he has it planned all along to kidnap someone, if not Melanie, and stay on that deserted island, preparing the frozen food for survival.
One key question to ponder is why is his character only known as The Man? The story is told from Melanie's point of view, and she never knows his name from the start to end of the film. This is a peculiar progression as I think there is bound to be a time when you introduce yourself – probably within the first half hour of meeting someone. If it doesn't happen in that time then it gets uncomfortable and highly suspicious and dangerous especially when he knows her name even before she introduces herself. Although he is the man she has desired to meet, he also happens to be her worst nightmare too.

The story got confusing though, when the man gets hurt and a weird series of events took place. It was understandable for Melanie to feel guilty for stabbing him and tried to stop his bleeding wound and tried her best to save him when he got washed away into the waters. However, her hysterical desperation to help him was somewhat amusing and confusing, given that she was trying the best she could to escape from him earlier. Unusual elements in the following scenes took place, especially when she wheeled the dead man with the wheelbarrow, something you would not find lying around on the shore. Comparing the plot of Perfect Strangers and Dead Calm, another thriller also starring Sam Neil, it was easier to digest the later as there was a more straightforward progression of the spectacle, the fantasy and the escape. However, in the case of Perfect Strangers, viewers need to use their minds more to create their own perceived meanings.

Perfect Strangers is an ambitious film, though some parts aren't entirely convincing. It's hilarious, where it is slightly disturbing as is the norm for New Zealand film. But after Sam Neill's death you can't simply put it all down to 'being meaningful and beautifully dark', it's about a crazy mad woman who stacks a dead guy in a freezer and brings him out to talk when night falls. This progresses yet into another twist where viewers would typically see the film as coming to an end, however, it continues into the obsessive desire from the man to the woman.

Perfect Strangers is basically a film that evolves around only two roles. There's no third person to cut away to. The structure of the story is set by the journey. You can't take most scenes and move them earlier or later because the psychological analysis and understanding of the complicated plot will be wrong. This film is in fact complex but looks simple. There is great un-clarity in this film, images remain vague and polyvalent. There is complication and vague segregation in determining which characters or roles are the victim, rescuer, and persecutor.

The role of Melanie transcends into a different stage when Bill, the man she rejects earlier in the pub, was invited into the victim game. Melanie's only knowledge is knowing when a man is a sleaze or a tease, but the dark compulsion to repeat earlier abuse is seductive and attracts her to men who keep playing it out with her.

Preston's drives the female lead, Melanie, through the progression of extreme emotions, not just a case of physical survival as compared with Dead Calm. Melanie's existential journey is what takes her to the brink of her madness. The ending of the Perfect Strangers presents one twist too many in Melanie's psychological evolution. Preston decides to have a typical love story like Cinderella living 'happily ever after' for the final challenge of a reverting thriller.

MY VIEW
I find that this is an abnormal story of an initial one night stand thought or romance between a man and woman. It is an extremely weird movie and is troubling to the mind. I see it as a sentimental thriller because it contains mystery, uncertainty, fear, doubt and suspense like any thriller. I think this film has rather balanced characteristics, providing elements to celebrate, to love and to hate.

The making of a conventional love story turns into a nightmare. Lust, fear, obsession, secrets, misunderstanding, transforms into a playful thriller. Perfect Strangers is built around emotions more than actions. I never dared to call it a love story at first because it is more perverted than what I expected.
Melanie is supposed to be the victim, but when the man died, her vulnerability changed into a great survivor. The man now turns into her pawn of affection, an element of her dangerous desires, where she in turns, throws her entire obsession and passion onto. Her lustrous imagination with the man can be considered as victimizing the dead man. Watching how the film progresses, I felt that Melanie is more of a psychotic person than the man. I never quite know what her real personality is, what she really is thinking. But then again, I realized that there is the balance of power between the two characters. The unusual encounter between two main characters are well played, who reveal themselves slowly, bit by bit, in a way that is both astonishing and intimate.

PRODUCTION DETAILS
The other 'character', the West Coast landscape (including the Punakaiki rocks, guesting in their first feature), is captured by DP Alun Bollinger in images both striking and bizarre (Melanie, the beach, a full wheelbarrow). And faithful to the project of telling stories of her 'own land', Gaylene accompanies her story with a great score of New Zealand music - Crowded House, Don McGlashan, Barry Saunders, Hammond Gamble, Dame Malvina Major and Plan 9, who were also the arrangers.

The film – produced by Preston's longtime collaborator Robin Laing – fits in with the idiosyncracies of the locals. 'The whole thing appeals to their innate paranoia. Psychologically, the idea of their place being set apart from the rest of the South Island seems to fit fine, and they laugh more than the average audience – it's a darker sense of humour there. Preston, 56, misses Greymouth, particularly the landscape. "I grew up in a small town participatory culture and because of geographic isolation, everyone gets good at a lot of things – makes for a very resourceful community. I hope they never lose that. The place is booming now, and they are celebrating their history and saving more old buildings than ever before.'
This savagely stunning landscape is of essential importance to the film. 'The place is not merely a backdrop but rather more like a fourth character. It moans, it gleams, and it imposes itself on every scene. That's because some of Melanie's conflict comes from being stuck in a threatening and alien environment from which she cannot escape. I was very lucky to have Alun Bollinger as cinematographer because he knows the place even better than I do. We were filming over the road from his home. It's a psychological and spiritual place. I believe film captures the spirit of things along with the more obvious things like light and dark.'
The darkness of the landscape, lit by the occasional smile of light reflects the intense and changing moods of the stranger and the desperateness of the situation. The island could also be seen as the site of a woman's animus complex where she is confronted by aspects of her inner masculine. Patriarchal images of masculinity can be killers of personal growth – oppressive, critical and disempowering of women.

Film in Relation to Australian Cinema
This film encompasses a number of genres, engaging in countless twists and turns throughout the entire film. I view it as a combination of genres, namely, drama, chilling romance and comedy, definitely not forgetting the psychological component. Perfect Strangers is categorize as thriller, but after watching the movie, I realized that the movie consist of mixture of genres. It is hard to pin down to one genre.