THE WICKER MAN @ 50

Sergeant Howie of the West Highland Police travels to Summerisle in pursuit of a girl reported missing. The locals are cagey about whether they recognise her photograph and many deny knowing of her at all. A sawdust and porridge protestant, Howie is increasingly disturbed by signs of runaway paganism on the island with kids dancing around maypoles singing songs about turning into trees after death and kids in class reciting lessons about phallic symbols and circles of girls jumping over fires in the local stone henge. Local patriarch himself, Lord Summerisle, is not only fine with all of this, he's a willing leader of it. The local church is a ruin, overgrown with weeds. When Howie finds the grave of the girl he's seeking, it has a shrub growing from it with her umbilical cord dangling from the twig. He emerges from a night of grinding temptation still pure and ready to take his administrative disgust back to the city from which he will see to it that the whole island is wracked by nukes of Christian law. Do you like his chances?

Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man has travelled through cinema history in an exulted state, being anointed as one of the Unholy Trilogy of folk horror (along with The Blood on Satan's Claw and Witchfinder General) and the kind of movie that horror fans can show to those who are not with confidence that it will be enjoyed. One of the reasons for this is that, outside of expected protagonist/antagonist empathy, you really don't have to take sides or, if you do, you can choose pretty freely which one you're on, the pagans in cardigans or the law of the land in its stiff uniform, and the big ending will still pack a punch. A Britain rendered effectively secular by generating a great deal of the swinging sixties would have found this situation already terrifying by the bones pointed at both approaches to religion on show here. It allows, nay, encourages, a critical response as the plot tightens into reckoning and we are left with devastation before us and another suggested one to come.

Until they see the ending, many people who see this film for the first time wonder at why it's deemed a horror tale, perhaps expecting something witchy to leap out of the shadows. But this tale of the clash of beliefs that masks the futility of all of them carries a horror beyond the finale of the story: what if all of the things we hold sacred are just hobbies we paste over inevitable doom? Whether it's the big stodgy hymns on Sunday for the Sergeant or the live-in musical of the rustic hedonists the final images which could be interpreted (regardless of how it was intended) as cosmic heat death awaits everything that ever lived or will live on this planet.

I just mentioned the songs in the film and they're worth a thought in their own right. The performances range from the music being played on site (in the pub or outside) to some that lean closer to more conventional musicals where the singing is supported by off screen players. The seduction scene appears to be the landlord's daughter singing to the accompaniment of the musicians below in the bar but this could not be so in real life.  But this is key to the world building on Summerisle. The music is part of daily life whether it's around a maypole or at the pub and the film delivers it with a whimsy on the warm side of charming. Part of the magic of that holiday or where you grew up was how everybody was so involved in the life that they would strike up a bawdy ditty here or offer a sensitive love ballad there. The songs put the viewer into a strange position that bypasses the usual shock of any musical where someone starts singing the first song. These ones come from people who appear to have absorbed the passed life of one of their own as part of the overall continuum of living and part of that is to sing about it. It strengthens the claim that the islanders live like this rather than ever feeling shoehorned in.

(Quick aside: in the late '90s I'd stop by a record shop on the walk home from work, barely expecting to hear anything stimulating being aired when one day I liked the music so much I stayed around for the whole album, pretending to look at CDs. I asked the guy at the counter about it and he told me the band name and that I was hearing the last copy in stock. I bought it, Becoming X by The Sneaker Pimps. It's a great tight album from the rock end of trip hop but the track that got me was the last one, a stunning rendition of the seduction song from this movie, How Do. I still listen to it. They include some sounds form the film and last night I heard the word "Sergeant" uttered which they'd sampled for the song. It was a small but real thrill. Here it is.)

The casting here is superb. Edward Woodward as Sgt. Howie casts off his world weary Londoner spy in the tv show Callan and assumes the mantle of a permanently uptight Scottish cop. He must carry both the tabloid style outrage from his civilised city as well as his own disturbed bewilderment  and still invite us along with him. The empathy we afford him comes from his stance against what might as well be the whole world where he finds himself and that his fight might well be one for his life.

The trio of exotic women central to his investigations are variously putting on accents or dubbed which adds a layer of alienation. It would be a mistake to blame the saucy '70s of Benny Hill for their appearance as sexy functionaries when there is so much nuance on display. Even Britt Ekland who only mouths her  Scottish accented lines is given space to develop depth in a role that might have stopped at her being buxom and smiling salaciously. Ingrid Pitt adds a kind of felinity to her otherwise stiffened character as the island record keeper. Diane Cilento dusts off the peasant girl smirk she gave in Tom Jones and stretches it into the articulation of a teacher defending the education that so offends the intruder policeman. Surrounded by Carry On movies and the blurred lines of UK movies and TV of the time, the women of Summerisle, for all their salacity, hold down jobs and live day to day.

At the social apex of the island is Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle. He is physically imposing, credibly aristocratic, urbane and charming and looks untellably relieved at not having to grimace with the fangs of the role that brought him most fame. His lines about the origins of the island lifestyle are delivered with such smooth confidence you want to book your tickets before he finishes. His single moment of vulnerability is almost shocking as it is the notion that gives the audience real pause as well, As much of a fan of Hammer movies as I am, Lee was allowed nothing as profound as that moment.

There are three versions of this film available on home video. The one most people saw before the '90s was the cinematic cut. That was the one you saw on tv as I did when it came on one night in the early '80s and got all of us talking about it the next day at uni. It was already an old film by then but its power held us. Extra footage was discovered decades later and incorporated into the film as was the fashion at the time as the Director's Cut. Like Apocalypse Now Redux or The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen, this director's cut added scenes that only dragged the pace and served to obscure the central narrative. The one I saw last night was the one I hadn't yet seen which is called the Final Cut. This incorporates the more striking of the found material and doesn't hurt the flow too much. All three are available on a blu-ray available locally that also features a CD of the songs from the film. My recommendation is to watch the Theatrical Cut first which has the tightest telling of the story. Then try the Final Cut which does one thing right in that it plays the seduction as an event from Howie's second night on the island and gives the attempt on his virtue and the results much more weight. All of the cuts have the same ending.

The Wicker Man feels timely in this current climate of religious minorities blowing themselves into undeserved proportion simply by being louder than the society around which is claimed to be soullessly apathetic by comparison but is really a culture outgrowing its bronze age tenets. This extends into the public redistribution of garbage thinking which the plague and its social conditions have inadvertently given voice. The Wicker Man reminds us that the living of life in the present for the future exceeds in value against the obfuscations of the current crop of prominent bullshitters who think they can keep propping up the status quo regardless of how well our crops do or our self image feels comfortable. The Wicker Man is more of our time than its own. Let's hope it can just be an entertaining ride of a movie in the not too distant future.

1983 @ 40: MAN OF FLOWERS

Ageing Charles Bremer spends his days using beauty to heal the persistent pains from his childhood. His house in one of Melbourne's leafy suburbs is palatial and filled with seasonal flowers. Flowers are so important to him that he confuses them with the artist's model whom he pays to strip for him as a duet by Donizetti pours into the golden light. Charles's life has given him a cushion in his inherited wealth. His soft and well spoken narration is formed of excerpts from letters he is writing to his long dead mother. This should creep us out. It doesn't.

Charles is given to us as a naif, a tap for the best and worst of the world around him. Depending on their capacities for self reflection those agents of the world variously learn about themselves or harden further into narcissism. Lisa the model almost feels guilty taking his money for her stripping performances, struck by his line drawing at the act. She knows there is more there to understand. His psychiatrist, venal and oafish, is drawn to Charles's stillness and opens up to him more than the professional reverse, but still fleeces him with extra sessions at heightened rates. And David, Lisa's boyfriend, the Neanderthal junkie action painter can only see Charles as an exploitable old square but even then lowers himself to paint what Charles prefers. The minister at the church across the road where Charles goes to play improvised twelve tone fantasias on the organ, sees Charles as a good man. The postman, bursting with facts and his interpretations of them to prove that the world is as "fucked" as he believes it is, agrees with the minister. Increasingly throughout this effortlessly areligious movie we are given Charles as a holy fool. 

If we see Charles's candle light toned sanctum as a utopia we understand that it is ripe for invasion and sacking. How this happens and how it is met are matters for spoilers which I won't give here, regardless of how difficult this film is to find. What I will say is that the astute writing that pits antagonists against each other along with all they represent is done with great craft and singled this film and all the earlier titles of its director Paul Cox against an Australian film industry that was largely directionless and low on substance.

Two elements make this so: characters so well written that even those of fewer dimensions come across as parented, and the canny dialogue written by Bob Ellis which is almost constantly funny. There are flaws, here and there. The hilarious self exposing radio preacher's hypocrisy is subverted by the clumsy choral jingle. The naming of the object which consolidates the conclusion is needlessly silly. But then there is the world of Charles's memory, presented as saturated silent cinema, glorious to see but constantly unsettling. His mother's hot/cold relationship with him and his father's often creepy attentiveness to the high tea realm of Charles's childhood as a boy rejected in an environment of material comfort. Poor little rich boy? Well, the blaring Donizetti singing links everything to do with his childhood, mother, assaulted self-esteem and his current daily attempts to address his departed parent becomes a kind of cosy straightjacket. If Charles's development was arrested at childish naivete it might just be that he had reason to fear pursuit of any knowledge. Will these turns of events be enough to break the torpor that prevents him from greater intimacy with the beauty he craves than just looking? 

Paul Cox was notable among his community of Australian film makers through his insistence on strong characters, plots with real working parts and rich dialogue. He came early to the attention of influencers like Phillip Adams and collaborators like John Clarke and Bob Ellis but if he didn't already have the discipline to fashion such complete films that would have meant little. I was drawn to Man of Flowers before its release by its immediate predecessor, the wonderful autumnal rom com Lonely Hearts (also starring Norman Kaye) and the tone that felt new in an Australian cinema context for being non-American and vaguely European (Cox is Dutch born). The settings and lines were all Australian but their finish had a more strident cinema craft to it.

I remember thinking it strange that one of my most respected tutors at Griffith Uni, Sylvia Lawson, grimaced when I mentioned that I was eager to see this film. On paper, it might look like an old man's tug fantasy including women stripping, lesbianism and an idealised kind of masculinity swathed in luxury and ready to take on younger alphas. I graduated that year and didn't see it until the following year when it continued to burn through the arthouses and campus cinemas, so I never did get to ask if she did finally see it. 

Would she have erased her resistance? Who knows? It did occur to me, though, that I might have been marvelling at it initially for the strength of its characters players and writing that set it so far apart from the rest of the local fare. Was I just celebrating something for doing the job it was meant to do rather than fall short through expectation? No, I think I would still have loved it, regardless. I know I saw it more than once, getting myself and small gangs out to the Schonell at UQ for more. Spotting the cameos was a fun foyeur conversation. Would any of us turn out differently if we'd had Werner Herzog as a dad? Are we sure that Patrick Cook doesn't do that with bronze? How much of the postie's rants were actually written by the playwright Barry Dickins who played him? And wasn't Bob Ellis --

Wait a minute. Bob Ellis' portrayal of the psychiatrist as a money grubbing Jew is a real sticking point, here. He's more east European than Viennese (i.e. he's not going for a Freud cliche) but his nasal toned callousness borders on panto. His dialogue would have been funny in any accent and the one he adopts is a clearly deliberate choice. Do we let the era forgive this? Was Ellis basing the voice on a doctor he had been treated by? You still shouldn't need the accent for that. Am I being too sensitive? Maybe I'm exposing my own guilt at finding it funny at the time. Maybe it really is just an imagined Euromash accent to make the lines funnier. It troubles me if I see it now and I think that would be the same with any comedy that tried something like it from the time. So, unresolved but needed mentioning.

Aside from that the cast offer characters that are both rich and real. Tony Llewellyn Jones's minister who can't look anyone in the eye suggests that has a history in his two brief appearances. Chris Heywood's boomy oaf screams internal insecurities that only a lot of cocaine can conceal. Alyson Best's Lisa uses her restrained performance to show us someone finding it hard to break from co-dependency and pursue something more like self-determined happiness. Without a word, Hillary Kelly gives us a woman who both comforted and alienated her son, giving too much regard to her husband's unimaginative authority. And finally it is Norman Kaye's movie; his Charles meets us as vulnerable as one of the petals on his beloved blooms meting out complications and hues that bring him to great depth while never raising his voice from its quiet, crisp, observational tone. He shows us Charles's damage through his gentleness which also proves his strength.

I fell off the Paul Cox wagon in the later '80s and really need to do something about that. He kept working up to his death in the mid 2010s, producing a new film or tv production annually, working with the likes of Isabelle Huppert and Irene Papas as well as his rep theatre cast of actors and writers. I haven't examined why I fell away from his audience but I think it was around the same time as I stopped anticipating new Peter Carey books or Hal Hartley movies and probably for the same reason that others had turned up on the block with different things to offer. But not everyone blands out the way Scorsese has. David Lynch just got more individualistic in vision. Back in the mists of poetry history, so did John Milton. For all I know, Paul Cox's strongest work was ahead of him after Man of Flowers. Maybe it's that. Maybe I just didn't want to risk finding out the opposite. Well, seeing this again and being reminded of its strengths and delights, I think I've just given myself some long delayed homework.

Review: EVIL DEAD RISE

After a horror prologue which gets right down to it we change scenes for a real opening scene under the title One Day Before. Beth is in the loo backstage at a massive sounding rock gig doing a pregnancy test. She's a guitar tech. Cut to L.A. where her sister Jessica is handling her young family (two girls, one boy) after the departure of her partner. When Beth knocks on the door, wanting help and advice, Jessica sends the kids out for pizza. When they come back the whole block is shaken by an earthquake. The kids in the basement carpark find a basement that has been exposed by the damage. The boy goes down to investigate and retrieves some dodgy looking old records and an even dodgier looking book. This is an Evil Dead movie. If you don't know what is about to happen, just go and watch the peerless first one from 1981.

If you have seen the original and its immediate sequel you might enjoy the subversion of the speeding low shot here which is cleverly subverted or the callback to the card reading scene or even smile at the spectacular title sequence. There will be plenty of things to enjoy along these lines which I won't be going through. There are even a couple of quotes from Kubrick's The Shining. Spoiler: no one says, "groovy". I'm getting this out of the way now as any fan of Evil Dead movies will be wondering how much they will be expected to smile or groan at in advance without spoilers. The answer is that the references are many but you can let them happen without getting too distracted by them. A moment with an elevator features a cute detail which made me wince. If you don't find yourself recognising these references, there's still plenty of movie to enjoy.

If I have a problem with this respectful and efficient late entry it is that it takes far too long to establish its theme of motherhood (that's a borderline spoiler considering how late it comes in). Before that, between the generic establishment of characters and the eventual gaining of gravity there are a lot of very good effects. There are so many and they follow so rapidly that you wonder if that's all there is going to be. It feels like a direct connection between the writers room and the screen with a massive list of "oh let's try this one" moments before a dialogue exchange clarifies stakes that were so incidental and localised that it was getting very hard to care about any of them.

But that theme is established and served with lean writing and big loud action. From that point the newer ideas enter, the drive to resolution speeds and the tightening and falling motion of the climax happens the way it should if it is to do what it said on the tin and it does. Then we get a coda which provides a circular closure.

While that makes it a satisfying horror film (when it gets going) how does it stack as a film with an ancestry? This is where the snags in the current start appearing. The Evil Dead from 1981 is acknowledged as a horror classic. It has a raft of fans that recall it for its comedic elements. Those are unambiguously part of it but that is too often used to mask how much genuinely eerie scenes there are, all the gore and thick atmosphere. This is complicated by the sequel which is essentially the same as the first with the comedy more pronounced. The third, Army of Darkness, takes it way out of the cabin in the woods and plays more as a macabre action movie. It's the 2013 remake that Evil Dead Rise most closely resembles and it does this while offering repeated DNA samples from the complete family tree.

So, we get a lot of references, wry or reverent, to the history of Evil Dead but when the movie plays as a horror piece it really only emulates the desaturated severity of the most recent one. While I would tend to argue against the shoehorning of comedy into horror cinema, there is a warmth missing here which echoes the lack of it in the 2013 version. Why? There's no Ash. Bruce Campbell and his iconic creation makes it into a seconds-long post credits cute bit in the remake but the first three, however far they journeyed away from their origin, were centred on Campbell's natural stardom which swung between hapless victim to absurdist action hero rapidly. This is the warmth of the original sequence and its absence from any revisit beyond it is felt acutely. As sturdy an action hero as this film's Lily Sullivan is (and she is rock solid) she is given nothing of Ash's opportunities to charm. It means she can't win for her audience as while you might be able to describe this story as an Evil Dead film it will only ever really be one in name only. And then its clear merits (see also the remake) will be lost.

1983 @ 40: THE DEAD ZONE

Johnny Smith crashes his car and wakes up in hospital. All well, except that it's five years later and he's been in a coma all the time. His fiance is married with a kid. His job as a teacher is long gone. He has an uphill battle with his own body to rehabilitate and whenever he holds onto anyone he has visions of terrible things happening to them or their loved ones. He goes back home with his dad, after his mum collapses and departs the world. Word of his power gets around and he solves a serial murder case. After that, he flees from the attention that gives him, holing up in a house out of county while the mail from everyone who wants him for lost dogs or cancer cures piles up. Meanwhile, a troublingly populist politician is running for the senate and his presence is getting uncomfortable. So, as he asks his compassionate doctor who has helped him through all of this, if you could go back in time, knowing what you do now, would you kill Hitler?

This sombre but highly engaging near-supernatural thriller is an adaptation of a Stephen King novel. It's from the era when putting that name first on the poster sold tickets and ushered masses of audiences into cinemas that blazed with mediocrity. You can't blame the audiences; the exceptions were already impressive with Brian De Palma's Carrie and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining as counter weights the odds of finding a good King film adaptation were promising, if eroding with each passing year of the eighties.

The early signs were promising with the veteran craftsman Stanley Donen on board to direct Jeffery Boam's screenplay keeping close to King's novel. Then it all fell apart. Donen bailed. The production company dropped it. When Dino De Laurentis picked it up he dropped Boam, tried King himself to rewrite the script, fired King and rehired Boam who tightened it up. Hi and bye to directors John Badham and the epic waster of time and talent Michael Cimino later, the then sub-radar Canadian David Cronenberg was given the gig. He beat the screenplay into shape and delivered the movie.

I seldom go into any production detail on the movies I celebrate on their anniversaries but this one is interesting as its gestation marks a few vital points in the cinema of the time. It's not just the King adaptations which would go into the decade to come and well beyond, it was the shift in what thrillers looked like. The early '80s saw a slicking up of the harder edged political/social speculative fiction like Parallax View, Capricorn One or Network into highly polished fare like The Star Chamber or Thief. The sense of lessons learned and quality raised was strong. Dead Zone is a perfect fit.

It's also a David Cronenberg film, an early one, from the time when he already had a string of horrors so individual that a sub genre had to be named to accommodate them: body horror. With each next film from the creaky but compelling Shivers through to the apex of paranoia science fiction Videodrome from earlier in the same year, Cronenberg had lifted his production game as well as skill with actors and discipline with ideas. Now, with some guaranteed big bucks to play with, this should have been a mega Cronenberg film of alienating visual power and heavily disturbing notions. Well, no.

What we get is a lean Stephen King story told with great economy and elegance. The still young auteurist film maker, given the opportunity to outgun himself with bigger money and distribution than the arthouse and drive-in outlets he'd had so far, stepped back from himself and told the story. The result is that any retrospective viewing done after Cronenberg's style had become more familiar to audiences in general (his next feature was the mega hit The Fly) usually involves a comment that it doesn't feel much like a Cronenberg film. That's true enough but it holds an interesting portent for the director's career from the end of the decade onwards which veered from his reputed visceral horror into far more subtle territory. By the time he got to Dead Ringers the physical disgust element was almost entirely offscreen. Naked Lunch might seem to stick out here but the skilful use of altering mind states to discover the path through that unfilmable book demonstrates restraint as well as acumen. Then there's M. Butterfly and most of his career after. When he returned to his signature m.o. it was remarkable and always compared to his earliest features. Dead Zone showed that he could do him even when he wasn't.

My conviction is that Cronenberg movies always contain a Cronenberg scene, no matter how conventional or mainstream they get. Kiera Knightley's facial contortions in A Dangerous Method or the sauna fight in Eastern Promises qualify. Even the largely forgotten Fast Company from his earliest phase with its fetishised engine oil threesome and animal-like screaming race cars might surprise. In Dead Zone it is the suicide of a character that stops time briefly by confronting us with its bizarre violence (again, mostly off screen but clearly suggested).

But the centre of this effect of slightly flavoured conventionality is the performance by Christopher Walken as Johnny. Herbert Lom, Tom Skerritt and the gang of faces familiar from the director's works to that time provide faultless support but it's Walken's gamut from understated gravity to sudden rage to pain so apparently held in that it's hard to tell if it's emotional or physical. The still young actor's strange, bug eyed alienness never served him better than here. His foil is Martin Sheen whose intensity in the then recent Apocalypse Now is all but erased by his explosive would be demagogue. This proto Trump roaring and gladhanding monster lines up perfectly in counterpoint. His surprising fate is a departure from the novel that King highly appreciated. 

Cronenbrerg's films had been settling into a more polished look for the past few outings but even his strongest to date, Videodrome, was obliged to plunge into heavy physical freakouts. The Dead Zone could not afford this if it was to effectively engage with the story of the magic powers and the political weight it needed to maintain. While Videodrome's continually disturbing suggestions and freakiness demanded a bloodier pallet the smooth winter whites and sable browns had to build the world that could make brain damage look like a miracle. David Cronenberg interrupted the world building of his own paranoia feasts to test himself. It worked. He made a Stephen King film, a good one.

GODS AND MONSTERS @ 25

Retired veteran Hollywood director James Whale lives alone with his bossy housekeeper, seducing the occasional young reporter and dealing with a difficult neurology. The statuesque beauty of the new yard man stops him in his tracks and he is wracked. But the younger man has pushback and this will take negotiation. That is the story of this film and it plays out as a kind of difficult truth game, taking both characters into dark territories of their own.

Whatever the intended themes that drove the narrative in 1998, the decades since have forced one in particular forward. With the downfall of a number of film industry tall poppies from cases of sexual malfeasance against them and the rise of the Me Too community the question of art vs artist claims this film released when the issue was less publicly visible. when the gushing young journalist grins at Whale and says, "you're a dirty old man," Whale acknowledges it almost as a compliment. It's easy enough to stop there and call this piece an antique but it does make that difficult through the application of depth.

The potential for othering is quashed early with a comparison in dialogue early on which has resonance in a later scene. Younger Clay's initial resistance to Whale's attempted seduction remains but it gives him pause for questions he has about himself and his own history. Whale's grim and poignant war service constantly haunts him and reminds him of how it ravaged his compassion. This is not offered as an excuse for Whale's predation but does serve as deep context that flows into his career in film. Significantly, Whale's approach to seduction does not include any career reward: his status is exhausted in his industry and has long been considered a pariah by his former colleagues. 

What we are left with is a figure whose youthful decadence plays like a hits and memories station as he grasps at winter cover versions. The story on a more metaphorical level pits this against a Frankenstein creature like figure in Clay the yard man and how Whale's masterpiece might provide deliverance for both. Whale's ultimate plea, made during the stormy climax, brings all of the themes into a knot which is cut rather than unravelled with patience to give us an ending. 

Gods and Monsters is mostly a two hander and depends on the strength of Ian McKellen as Whale and the younger Brendan Fraser as Clay. Each handles their past-ridden characters with a muscular skill and when the dialogue turns physical it feels well earned. Props to Lynn Redgrave for her well drawn and thankless Hanna.

The poignancy of this story takes an extra dimension in light of Brendan Fraser's own career which involved a sexual assault claim he made against a senior industry figure. This contributed to his vanishing from the fame radar for years. While he has appeared to have made his way back from this recently and has spoken openly about the case, I am unaware of any comment he has made on his role in this film. I have no more to say on that except that I would be interested to hear it.

Gods and Monsters is intended and offered as fiction and not biography and should be evaluated as such. I recall a friend complaining about Tim Burton's Ed Wood for its excluding mention of Wood's later life on a cinematic skid row of pornography, as though Burton's celebration of his individuality had not been the obvious focus. Gods and Monsters, uses a slice of a life story to ask questions and open conversations through a solidly entertaining tale. It is saddening that anyone not well informed of the great humanity and worldliness in Whale's work that ventured far beyond a few horror movies (thought they are among the best) and we are given a cackling old perv, at least initially. But this isn't a biography, it's more of a fable and its ending with the act of passing the fable on is, if tinged with sadness, warming.

Review: OF AN AGE

Kol is practicing for the high school final dance competition when his dance partner Ebony who has woken on the beach after a wild night calls him to come and get her. He finally sources a lift from her brother Adam who breaks it to Kol that they will not make it in time for the competition. But journeys are about getting there not arriving. Adam, whose young adult beauty is finished with an effortless charm, lightly teases Kol out of his anxiety and the conversation takes an easier turn that gives a glossy coat to some exploration happening at the same time. When Kol discovers that Adam is gay, he retreats into a broey aloofness while dealing with his panic. They retrieve Ebony from her chaos point and the three have an interesting ride home. Finally back home, Kol dives into his privacy and deals with big things. It's not just the first time in his life that he has knowingly been desired and how electric it is but it is nowhere near what he thought it would be. He's only just eighteen with fresh memories of high school and the hetero normative machismo at the command post of the culture. He's clearly thought about where he stood in relation to that but he has also failed to find answers. Now that they're banging down the door he's torn.

This love story is delivered in two parts, the adrenal sprint from childhood and adolescence to a leap of personal freedom, and a second look a decade on when both more mature men have gone their ways and find each other again. While the dialogue and demonstrated circumstances relay a lot of story around these characters the film concentrates on Kol and Adam's love and how it changed both of them and then what time and distance does to that. The performances of Thom Green and Elias Anton are so organic and nuanced you will not crave any plotty narrative, you'll be too busy watching and listening to them, following the changes like a time lapse film of a blooming rose. Props to make up and wardrobe for turning the eighteen year old handsome through his spots Kol into the chiselled and assured grown up he is a decade on. 

Goran Stolevski wowed festival audiences last year with his Balkan folk horror You Won't Be Alone because he insisted on removing all but the most egregious of tropes to strike a balance between the eerie and the earthy. It is pleasing to report that his humane eye is just as capacious in this more contemporary take on what love does to us (you could easily argue that that is the earlier film's theme, too). His craft with actors is happily augmented by a sharp ear for dialogue. When it is awkward (particularly from Kol's swallowed panic moments) it's meant to be. Adam's teasing of his sister's reading of Hamlet as a teen blazer school alpha chick is laugh out loud funny and the negotiation around realistic. As this is a film of understanding and between-line messages we also get to feel a lot with a little.

If you investigate any cinema made before widescreen ratios were normal (early 1950s and before) you will have noticed that this near square frame is apt for expressing heights but here it shows us intimacy. Whether that's the edgy unpredictability of the mood in a car, a sudden and liberating kiss, or the sloppy crowding of a party, the screen always feels full. Don't take this as an indication of the film working as well or better on a tv screen; go to the cinema for it, be in the car and ride with it.