Two is a Family

Samuel (Omar Sy) is suddenly a single father. A former 'one night stand', Kristin (Clemence Poesy) dumps a baby daughter he didn't know he had fathered with him and disappears. Samuel tries to locate Kristin without success and raises the child himself. Eight years later Kristin re-enters their lives.

'Two Is A Family' is a bit of a mess. Apart from the dubious morality of the plot line, the film is not particularly interesting. The daughter is the only remotely endearing character.

✮½

Hamer’s Hall

Hamer Hall is Melbourne’s impressive concert venue. Spread over multiple levels, four of them below street level, it can be a bit of a trap for the novice or the unwary. I was both these on my recent, first attendance there.

Arriving there early for a concert I ventured down various levels by escalator in search of a food outlet I assumed to be there from the evidence of others munching away in the foyer levels.

Four levels of escalators down I discovered a small sandwich selection on one of the bars. Having purchased some food I looked around in vain for an empty chair but all were taken. Go back up I thought but the question was how. I realised all the escalators were set to travel down. No escalator was travelling up.

There were stairs and so I trudged up one level at a time until I could find seat on the first level I started from. Not good for an almost septuagenarian! It was only when I got my breath back that I noticed the elevator in a corner.

By the way, at concert's end all the escalators were reset to travel up.

The power couple

The 2,000 seat auditorium is filling fast. Two minutes or so to go before the start of the concert. All the seats in our row are occupied except for the two to my left which adjoin the side wall so their occupants, if any, will need to squeeze past the full row to reach them.

Late arrivals are streaming down the aisles then doing the sideways crab crawl to their seats.

Then they appear. The power couple.

He is in his mid-twenties, growing a thin moustache which is barely hairier than his 8pm shadow. He is wearing a skinny suit, slightly crimped behind the knee joints from tightness and day long wear. He has slip on shoes and is either stocking-less or wearing skin toned socks. He looks like lamb posing as debonair mutton.

On this winter’s night she is dressed for a balmy summer’s evening on a verandah wearing a loose short sleeve pastel coloured blouse, light skinny jeans and towering stilettos.

Both carry auditorium friendly tiny plastic cups containing red wine. As each of us in the row stands in turn the couple slides by careful not to spill a drop of wine. They are not so much protective of our clothing but of the minuscule amount which surely won’t last till interval.

They take their seats at the row’s end and, entrance made, they share a whisper.

Fifteen seconds pass by, 105 seconds now to performance time. Nothing has happened yet, so she decides it is time to make her way out minus the plastic cup and wine. I decide on a semi raise rather than a full raise and she exercises additional caution to avoid my protruding knees. The others in the row take my cue and follow with semi raises of their own. She ambles off casually into the flow of other latecomers, smaller numbers now, who are almost racing down the aisles to reach their seats.

Another fifteen seconds passes. Although no-one in my hearing has said a word, it seems he feels the need to make an announcement. Apparently speaking to no-one in particular but everyone in general he says ‘I saw Ramin in back to back concerts in New York last year and he...is...ah...may...zing.’

‘Oh really?’ is the response from the row behind.

‘Ah...may...zing’, he reiterates.

‘And I saw Anna on her opening night at the Regent’, he adds.

No response from anyone. Maybe nobody is interested in Anna?

Sixty seconds to performance time.

She has reappeared and the audience member on the aisle decides not to rise; not even a semi rise. Each of us in turn, as though by unspoken concensus, follows suit. This slows her progress but undaunted she continues with ostentatious care to ensure her summery skinny jeans make no contact with the roughage of our wintery apparel.

Thus reunited, the power couple is ready. The auditorium lights are extinguished. The concert can commence.

No bliss

I had tickets to see 'Bliss' at Belvoir Street but felt anything but blissful as I drove to the theatre. My nose was running, my throat felt like sand paper and I was coughing regularly.

I sat in my car thinking that somehow I would be able to get through the performance but that was wishful, not blissful, thinking. Apart from spreading my cold across the audience I would be a complete nuisance for those sitting around me.

I didn't get out of my car. I drove home where I should have remained all along.

No bliss for me.

‘Aurore’

'Aurore' (retitled 'I Got Life!') is a woman in midlife who is separated from her husband and whose daughter is pregnant. She is about to become a grandmother. Having lost her job after a row with a snooty cafe owner, Aurore runs into an old schoolmate with whom she had a school romance.

This French language romantic drama is is quite delightful with Agnes Jaoui sparkling in the title role.

✮✮✮½

‘The Marriage’

I would be pretty sure that 'The Marriage' is the first film I have ever seen made or even set in Albania.

It opens with a long, somewhat obscure, scene. A man and a woman are waiting with a number of others for some arrivals. Eventually a line of vehicles arrive and as do numerous people wearing white hazard protective clothing. It seems that the people have been waiting to identify and recover the remains of relatives; victims of war.

The man and the woman are engaged to be married and a friend of the groom arrives from France where he has been living for four years. Initially the three of them socialise but strains emerge as the true nature of the groom's friendship with this new arrival begin to surface.

A rather slow film which I imagine is more daring in its native country than it comes across in Australia. Provides an interesting glimpse into Albanian culture and life.

✮✮✮

Tea with the Dames

'Tea with the Dames' (made for television under the title 'Nothing Like a Dame') has four British actors, all of them honoured with Damehoods, sitting around a table discussing their lives and careers.

The situation comes across as a little artificial but it is variously a humorous, revealing and sad reflection of four artists in the twilights of their careers. I don't think there are first time revelations but a bonus in the film comes with flashbacks to their youthful days; a reminder of how they appeared  at the height of their freshness and beauty.

✮✮✮

Water feature

The water feature facade at Melbourne's National Gallery of Victoria is a constant fascination for adults and children alike.

Winter sun

Melbourne's winter sunshine over the Arts Centre

Oklahoma!

(The Production Company)

Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'Oklahoma!' premiered on Broadway in 1943 and to this day is widely regarded as the landmark introduction of the 'musical play' in which the songs are relevant to and progress the play's plot.

Set at the dawn of the twentieth Century as the Territory of Oklahoma approaches statehood, the musical depicts twin tales of men vying for the affections of their love interests.

A quaint plot but the tuneful songs and rollicking dance numbers carry the day.

✮✮✮✮

Up, up and away

They look like five tiny dots in my photo; just off centre to the right in the upper half. But if you can make the photo larger you can can see balloons poking through the cloud just north of Melbourne (Christmas Hills?). The baskets, possibly containing passengers, are not visible. I guess any passengers were still below the fog line.

Hail

A sudden hailstorm today

Woof, woof...

Some friends just strain the relationship. Today is A's birthday. A couple of days back I asked what her plans were for the day and in the absence of any I suggested we meet for brunch bringing C along with me. A said she would bring B with her.

Selecting a venue was another matter. I invited her to make the selection - it is her birthday after all - but she resisted throwing the choice back to me. Knowing that she would usually be dog walking beforehand I suggested the cafe at Centennial Park...but would she still have the dog with her, I asked, given that outdoor seating which allows for accompanying dogs would be limited. No, A assured me the dog would be safely back home.

So when we arrived at the cafe I was slightly surprised to see A with dog in tow after all.

But not too surprised. So like A to do the opposite of what was arranged. The cafe was packed with no outdoor tables available at all and only one table for four unoccupied inside.

We'd agreed beforehand that whoever arrived first would get a table for the four of us. Naturally, in the interim A had invited two others to join us but said nothing to me. Luckily we were able to squeeze ourselves around that table.

The dog, however, had to be returned home whilst the rest of us waited patiently for the guest of honour to rejoin us.

Poo, poo to that....

C talks a lot of shit. Or rather he talks a lot about shit. His own shit actually. C studies his own poo closely from which he develops theories about his state of health. I suppose there is nothing wrong with that except that I don't understand his need to share his findings so often. Or indeed, at all.

When I was in New York in March I saw a novelty booklet entitled 'What your poo means' (or words to that effect). I couldn't resist and I bought a copy back as a present for C. I wasn't sure how C would react to this present but he seemed to take in good spirit. I noticed he spent a long time reading it afterwards.

Later I wondered if I had been too sensitive to this practice of C's. But I believe I have been vindicated. C recently returned from a long weekend away with his niece. He told me that half way through the weekend she turned to him and said 'Uncle C I don't mind you checking out your poo but please don't tell me about it all the time'.

Shit happens.

The Bookshop

A widow (Emily Mortimer) decides to turn her home in a small seaside British town into a Bookshop. Resistance to this development comes from the town's society matron (Patricia Clarkson).

'The Bookshop' is nicely acted in that restrained British stiff upper lip way but it is slow and I found the ending to be unsatisfying.

Tully

Marlo (Charlize Theron) is a struggling mother of three. Between them, Marlo's hyper middle child, who is struggling at school, and her young baby are draining her of all energy. Marlo's husband Drew (Ron Livingston) is loving but useless in sharing the load with her.

Extraordinary help comes in the form of 'Tully'; a nanny seemingly organised by her brother and sister in law.

To record how the plot develops would be to give away the climactic twist which had C and I reliving the film in our minds to explain what we had seen.

✮✮✮

Do you Henry Charles Albert David take Rachel Meghan?

Vanity Fair

There are many who probably wished that Henry Charles Albert David took Rachel Meghan as far away as possible from our televisions, radios, newspapers and social media sites. Their nuptials certainly took over the media waves to a degree rarely matched except by the most distressing of universal disasters or malevolent activity.

I joined my close friends for a curry night - that menu item was to prove strangely prophetic before the night was over - to watch the preliminaries, the ceremonies and the pageantry. After all, my Republican leanings notwithstanding, the British stage these Royal events so impressively.

Predictably just about everything was achieved with the reliability of Swiss clockwork. The one standout exception and the most impressive element were both contributed by the lost colony of those pesky United States.

The exception was the Most Reverend Michael B Curry, Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church. In front of six hundred mostly British guests, by definition therefore staid impassive and unemotional, Bishop Curry departed from his prepared remarks and became...well...flamboyant. And he spent a long time doing it.

In our private, in front of the television, party this proved too much for both I and C who began to hurl insults at the screen. Unsurprisingly these insults had no impact upon the faraway Bishop; no doubt as uncaring as he was unknowing of his impact in Sydney suburban Seaforth.

Bishop Curry continued to wave his arms, modulate his excitable delivery and generally chew up precious celebrity spotting time which proved too much for I and C who both fled from the television room refusing to return until confirmation that his sermon was at ended. During that self imposed banishment C consoled himself with a second, and if I may say so greedy, helping of curry (of the chicken variety). Too much of (Bishop) Curry meant too much curry for C.

And the most impressive element? Without question or equal that award goes to Doria Ragland, the mother of the bride. Dignified and stylish, Ms Ragland stole the show without uttering a word; flamboyant or otherwise.

Good Housekeeping

The Book of Mormon

Just over one year since seeing 'The Book of Mormon' in Melbourne I have seen it again in its new Sydney season.

A couple of recently graduated Mormon missionaries are posted to Uganda in the seemingly futile project to acquire religious converts.

As slick and seamless a production as it was down south and still as offensive and hilarious as before.

✮✮✮✮½

How's your day been?

6pm, weeknight and my mobile phone rings. No caller ID. I don't like answering calls from 'No caller ID' but several close friends conceal their numbers so I answer the ring.

'Is that Victor?' the caller asks.

Me: 'Yes'.

Him: 'My name is Ben and I'm calling for Opera Australia'.

(I now wish I hadn't answered the call.)

Ben: 'How's your day been?'

Me: 'Is that what you called to ask me?'

Ben: (Laughs) 'That's how we begin our calls.'

(What makes Cold Callers ringing to extract your money think that idle chit chat with total strangers is a winning start?)

Ben: 'We want to thank you for your patronage and your generous donations for young singers....'

Me: (Interrupting to push forward to the inevitable real reason for the call.) 'Are you ringing to sell me tickets?'

Ben: 'No. We have a number of funding initiatives and it is nearing the end of the financial year...'

Me: (Interrupting again.) 'Whoa, whoa (speaking over the top of him) I don't respond to telephone calls for donations. Please take me off your call list.'

Ben: Yes, will do... (Don't hear the rest as I hang up.)

Until the call, my day had been good.

Deadpool 2

The wisecracking Wade Wilson aka Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is back for another wink and nudge comic hero movie spoof adventure. This involves a seemingly endless chase and attack sequence with an horrendous body count.

The dialogue is made up of countless one liners. The intent seems to be that miss one or fail to find it amusing then the next one might be more to your liking.

Perhaps the best aspect of 'Deadpool 2' is its soundtrack made up of past and recent hits. The original film was novel but with this sequel the novelty is quickly wearing thin.

✮✮