Well, it's not that simple. There are a lot of threads here and they are served well by the interception of Kate and Stephen as they bring information and power from their initially opposite sides of the conflict. There's a high profile crime figure who runs the Cross with adult clubs who wants some of the respectability pie and a stripper of his employ who learns of a particularly personal connection that gives her a potentially deadly motivation. There are the increasingly dodgy deals that change Stephen's architectural vision from an urban paradise (it's called Eden) to a compromised edifice that looks increasingly like an overcrowded prison. And at the centre is the chief organiser of the tenants/squatters who poses a swelling threat to the suits to the extent that she vanishes.
And, something that I remembered clearly from my only other viewing back in 1982 (at, I think, the New Farm Valhalla), Cameron Allan's ethereal and moody score or synthesised drones and a phased guitar playing a series of unresolved minor thirds to 9ths. One of the reasons I noted that at the time is that it was totally unlike most Australian movies' music, its shining spookiness hovering over the mystery like a raincloud. No joy on finding it anywhere now but I'd buy it if I could.
Noyce continues his filmmaking prowess here by giving us a Sydney of contrasts between ostentatiously wealthy and condensed milk poverty, a pallett that doesn't just change for social stratification but from the oppressive humidity working in the title to torrents of rain. This movie really feels like Sydney. And moving through it his large cast mixes old and new with John Mellion as an veteran newshound, the coplike Graham Rouse and Paul Chubb as cops, Chris Heywood as the kind of blustering populist tycoon who's all spin and bounty until you scratch him (and then only slightly), and new kids on the block Richard Moir and Judy Davis.
I recall thinking Moir was a liability to the film as his flat delivery and facial expression made him come across as a clothes horse feeding Stephen's lines to the rest of the cast. He lacked presence beyond his looks in In Search of Anna but had distinguished himself in a tv mini series Players to the Gallery. While he brings none of the passion of his character in that to Heatwave I found myself far more forgiving this time as what disappointed me as woodenness struck me now as restraint. This is not to say that he doesn't underplay the detriment of his role here and there but scenes in which he must stop himself from speaking destructively are clearer now.
As for presence, though, it's Judy Davis who sends beams of burning magnetism out through the screen. Already celebrated by this time for her breakthrough in My Brilliant Career (and, for those who saw it, Winter of Our Dreams) Her Kate is from the developer's side of the tracks and, whether slumming it among the worthy poor or not, transforms from a young firebrand who's found a cause to someone with genuine empathy for it. Noyce clearly recognised this power that allowed Moir to boil off most of his performance but her turn never comes across as overcooked. If you are a fan of the actor this is worth the fairly difficult tracking job you'll have to do to find it.
And then there is the undeclared star that is Australia at this time. Chris Heywood's Houseman is exactly the kind of figure we would not only be seeing more of in the ensuing decade but celebrating. Whatever healthy disrespect for position and wealth was supposed as part of the Australian character was crushed beneath the glossy pages of gossip rags and soft news. The bastard boss had become the idol in the age of the yuppie. The Bonds, the Elliots and any other corporate raider who could string a coherent sentence was afforded celebrity more typically given to rock stars. Heywood plays this perfectly as a dangerously wound double thinker: he is aware of the garbage that comes out of his mouth when he's pitching his vainglory (e.g. singing a corporate jingle in his limo to a recorded backing) but can keep that up as long as it works at seducing the eager and repelling the hostile. I don't remember much of the culture of magnate worship in 1982 but by mid decade Heywood's turn at it felt completely void of irony and worked as straight reportage.
We can't leave until we acknowledge the inspiration for Heatwave lies in the case of Juanita Nielsen whose activism against organised crime in Sydney in the mid-'70s is thought to have led to her disappearance. Nielsen had a varied career but the circumstances of her vanishing are most closely linked to her high profile advocacy against the development of heritage listed Sydney housing and by extension the kind of figures playing parts in Heatwave. As a figure she was closer to Judy Davis' well-born and glamorous character than Carole Skinner's more homely Mary Ford but that is all to the betterment of the fiction. This is not the Juanita Nielsen case, it just treads the same path to the same ends.
I loved seeing this in a cinema at the time. It seemed part of a push by local cinema to stop congratulating itself over period dramas and hit the streets of our cities. Monkey Grip, Starstruck, Winter of Our Dreams, Mouth to Mouth and Puberty Blues etc. gave us a look at where we were and what that meant without the aid of crinolines. The push, if it had ever been that, didn't sustain and the output grew frayed and infrequent. Not dead nor even sleeping, just less cohesive. Until then we had moments like this and the minties to meet them.
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