Something to watch tonight: Thursday 27 November

Separation City (Middleditch, 2009)

Joel Edgerton is get­ting major plaudits for his superb work in Train Dreams. There’s talk of awards con­ten­tion that might only be hampered by not enough people see­ing the film.

If you like him in Train Dreams, you could do worse than seek out his sup­port­ing turns in The Underground Railroad or Animal Kingdom.

I first noticed him as an unsat­is­fied Wellington pub­lic ser­vant in Tom Scott’s loc­ally made Separation City and, while there was little or no evid­ence of the intens­ity he has shown in vari­ous roles since, he makes a decent lead­ing man. Scott was a polit­ic­al colum­nist and car­toon­ist in Wellington for many years (and also had some suc­cess on the stage) and this is a world he knows well.

It’s not that great a film, truth be told, but they can’t all be bangers and if you are an Edgerton com­plet­ist you should seek it out.

Because priv­ileged white males haven’t had a fair suck of the sav in recent times when it comes to arts fund­ing it seems only fair that the Film Commission should try and redress that injustice with the new Tom Scott-scripted com­edy Separation City.

Aussie Joel Edgerton plays Simon, a nor­mal kiwi bloke who has a gor­geous intel­li­gent wife, a beau­ti­ful house on the beach in Eastbourne, a job steer­ing affairs of state for a cab­in­et min­is­ter and a mid-life crisis caused by noth­ing more dra­mat­ic than a lack of action in the bed­room. He falls for beau­ti­ful cel­list Katrien who may or may not be Dutch or German but has the cut glass English accent of London-born Rhona Mitra (last seen in skin-tight leath­er as a vam­pire in Underworld 3).

She has recently split from her woman­ising artist hus­band (German Thomas Kretschmann) and, des­pite the bet­ter judge­ment of both, they con­spire to get it on at a cli­mate change con­fer­ence in Berlin. Meanwhile good friend Pip (Stephanie Paul) had decided she’s a les­bi­an, her hus­band Keith (Phil Brown) has star­ted a men’s group so he can deal with his emas­cu­la­tion and the Minister’s sec­ret­ary Julie (Michelle Langstone) wants to get it on with either Simon or rat­bag Tem (Grant Roa) but doesn’t want to be seen as a sex object.

Aussie Les Hill plays the Tom Scott part – the cyn­ic­al, dead­pan Press Gallery hack with the heart of gold – and he gets the best of the dia­logue: Scott’s clev­er one-liners are plen­ti­ful and delivered with aplomb but neither he nor dir­ect­or Paul Middleditch have man­aged to loc­ate a beat­ing heart under the flip­pant sur­face. It’s like watch­ing one of those Circa plays where the cast rush through the emo­tion­al and intel­lec­tu­al con­tent because they don’t trust their audi­ence and then deliv­er the gag lines very delib­er­ately to make sure the audi­ence is still there… You could call this Circa-vision.

Most frus­trat­ingly, if two scenes at the end are any­thing to go by, the real mes­sage of the film reveals the cre­at­ors to be about as old school phal­lo­centric as any­thing pro­duced in the bad old 1970s – con­ser­vat­ive and reac­tion­ary, it will go down a treat with a cer­tain kind of crowd.

Incidentally, this was the only review that I’ve ever had to apo­lo­gise for. That wise­crack about Circa Theatre came back to bite me almost instant­an­eously as I was work­ing at the time for their Wellington pro­fes­sion­al theatre com­pet­it­or, the late and very much lamen­ted Downstage. My boss received a let­ter from the Circa Council — their board — sug­gest­ing that while I had the free­dom to write whatever I wanted in a review, doing so while work­ing in our small com­munity was “uncol­legi­al” to say the least.

It was strongly sug­ges­ted that I write back to them regret­ting that I’d put the excel­lent rela­tion­ship between the two theatres at risk which I did.

I still stand by the opin­ion, however …

Also reviewed in that fate­ful Capital Times column: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (“I think I actu­ally intel­lec­tu­ally regressed dur­ing the film and I am now 118 minutes stu­pider. And I don’t mind.”), Audrey Tautou in Coco Avant Chanel, Daniel Craig in the indie Flashbacks of a Fool and a ter­rif­ic loc­al con­ser­va­tion doc­u­ment­ary, Earth Whisperers/Papatuanuku.

Where to watch Separation City

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from NZ Film On Demand

Rest of the world: Not cur­rently avail­able online¹

1. There is a Blu-ray avail­able from Amazon in Germany. ↩︎