This is a question which played by chance after watching writer/director Julia Loktev’s latest feature film, visually stunning The Loneliest Planet.

Adapted from a short story by journalist and travel writer, Tom Bissell, Loktev draws out the tale almost in real-time of Nica and Alex, a young couple passionately in love with each other and on the brink of marriage.  Too soon, but not soon enough for the audience, they find themselves on the brink of betrayal, wrought by a single shocking event, which shatters everything they think they know about each other, and about themselves.

Nica, played by Hani Furstenberg a talented Israeli-American actor who could give Jessica Chastain a run for her money – partly ’cause she’s a ranga – and Alex, played by Gabriel Garcia Bernal, (The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) and Babel (2006)) are fit, seasoned backpackers, seeking experiences off the beaten track in rural Georgia, Russia.  I say seasoned, unlike their clothes, which never seem to get dirty or torn, no matter how many rocks they clamber over or grassy mountains they roll down.  But hey, John Wayne’s shining new trousers and red shirt at the start of The Searchers (1956) never truly belied the adventures of a U.S. Confederate soldier who has ridden rough for three years before arriving home to his family out in the Texas desert.

Alex and Nica’s Georgian local mountaineering guide, played by Bidzina Gujabidze, is at first a subtly shy though friendly older character, in counterpoint to the garrulous Nica, but as Nica discovers, behind the scarred exterior Dato is a thoughtful man hiding a tenderly complex story of loneliness which proves an elixir in the resolution.  Gujabidize, an accomplished mountaineer, rather than actor, offers an authentic, nuanced performance in his feature film début.

We are easily drawn into the minutiae of life on a trek in a foreign country:  a tourist’s eye-view of magnificent, rugged countryside, which both invigorates and blisters the traveller’s spirit and feet, from shattering rock-strewn hillside, to washing in flat waterways, and laughing over cheeky language games.  There are some unsettling moments for Nica and Alex: perhaps this land is not so friendly, but Dato ushers them through with care.  These hints of danger tease the viewer into thinking that they are watching a thriller.  The rising tedium  – I wanted to yank a chunk out of the story – leading to the crisis moment in Alex and Nica’s journey, contrasts with the slow-moving but rising tension in the climax scene, during which an inevitable careless betrayal elicits the aforementioned elixir.   Delaying the drama is an intriguing choice, but as a measure of character development, it works well.

After watching this film, I find the loneliest planet is not the isolated wilds of remote Georgia‘s Caucasus Mountains, but the human heart.

No bull:   If you love backpacking, or storytelling that gives you time to smell the roses, then it is worth a look. 

Newly released in Australian cinemas, The Loneliest Planet is clever, simple character-based storytelling.   Slow in parts, it is ultimately evocative, and provocative.

To watch The Loneliest Planet preview:

c. Kylie Lawrence 2013.

Determined to get the story behind a crazy time-traveller-companion-wanted advertisement, the misfit trio of sleazy Gen X magazine journalist, Jeff (Jake Johnson of A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)) and young interns, the depressed Darius (comedian Aubrey Plaza of Parks and Recreation (TV) fame) and geeky innocent Arnaud (Karan Soni, Are You There, Chelsea? (2012), set out on an increasingly bizarre  trip into the perilous world of time traveller Kenneth.

Character-driven comedy with a twist I won’t spoil, the stand-out performance for me is Mark Duplass’s child-man Kenneth, a man for whom moving on is just too hard, and revisiting the past seems the only way to make sense of the present:  a theme that true romantics will appreciate.  Time travel is dangerous stuff, as Kenneth’s self-made action hero explains to Darius, but it can change your life.

A touch of over-plotting in the latter part of the second act slows the pace slightly, but overall I cannot fault writer Derek Connolly and director Colin Trevorrow’s hilarious, heart-warming comedy for engaging storytelling.

No Bull:  Get your backside on a cinema seat now.

The only person laughing more than me was a mysterious stranger in the front row.

SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED preview (I refuse to say trailer):

c.  A Room of Heroine 2012

I really want a red header, for that mysteeeerious redhead vibe, and the ordinary mysterious vibe, but am impressed with the white background which makes my posts devamastaingly[sic] clear to read.  However, will have to learn how to rejig the header for a more captivating picture or colour block.

In red.

Yellow is so last night!

c.  A Room of Heroine 2012.

So after I have yet another squizz at the WordPress themes on offer, these – interestingly enough, black and red – martial arts shoes are going to take me out into the sunshine down the hill.

Who knows what brighter, yet mysterious layout awaits the eye?

c.  A Room of Heroine 2012.

Top Tips for a Proper Bridesmaid

1.  Don’t tell the bride something looks foul until you’ve tried it on. Chances are it’ll look a lot better on you than it will on the shop shelf or hanger.  Whether it’s foul or fair, you’re probably going to pay for it, so give it a go before writing it off as the tacky pair of shoes from hell.  Something that starts off looking trashy may well prove the coute de rootistance at the reception.*  If, for example, the sales assistant volunteers that she walked in the same style of shoes from The Rocks to Darling Harbour without breaking out into a blister at her work Xmas party, rest assured that the comfortable fit you enjoy in the shop will last an entire wedding day no problems.
2.  When the bride asks you seven months before the wedding what colour her roses should be, don’t tell her to wait and see what’s in season.  In fact, this should be rule number one.  Brides need to know hues and shades and tinges months in advance.  They say this is because they need to co-ordinate bridesmaid outfits, and handbags and other crap like that, but really, it’s so they have time to surreptitiously plant design seeds into the groom’s side of the business into picking the right colour ties and cummerbunds.  Where the Kyoto Protocol is only concerned with saving planet Earth from global warming between here and eternity, brides have one mission: to save Their Special Day (T.S.D.).  As you embark upon your pre-wedding journey, you will realise that The Bride (T.B.) is the boss of everything.
3.  When The Bride asks for your opinion upon the colour of chair sash colours at the reception venue, and what you think will complement the dining room nautical-themed carpet, don’t throw a hissy fit and expostulate, “For god’s sake who the hell’s gunna notice – they’re chair sash covers for goodness sake!” Remember the invisible rule that renders all other rules insignificant – only the bride is allowed to throw a hissy fit, and if it’s prompted by a materialistic, superficial reason that she too would otherwise, in more rational times, ie, Pre-Bridal (P.B.), not give a shit about, this is perfectly normal, and par for the course of Briding.
4.  Bridesmaids should not attempt to co-produce short films long distance whilst attending to their Maiden of Honour duties on the weekend of the wedding.   Your stomach may be churning at a frightening rate of knots as your paltry film budget suffers for your art, but if your focus is anywhere but decorating the tables at the reception centre with the bride and her family the day before the big day, you will fall short of being A Proper Bridesmaid.  She won’t even need to say it.  The artistic nerves in your inside will spontaneously [sic] into waves of guilt that you have not been A Proper Bridesmaid.
5.  Bridesmaids should refrain from playing hopscotch up the church aisle during wedding rehearsals, even if the vicar does laugh.  This stresses brides out, particularly brides whose sole M. of H. and E. (Maiden of Honour and Everything) has also been so wrapped up in filmmaking that she has neglected to turn up to the reception venue to decorate tables and cannot remember the running order of the ceremony.
6.  A Proper Bridesmaid will refrain from being politically correct and telling her bride-to-be off for being sacrilegious and shallow.   This is for special cases, where an atheist bride takes her lapsed ex-schoolboy Roman Catholic father into the church, to point out how the stained glass windows, featuring saints, in the vestibule co-ordinate with her traditional wedding theme, and the father decides to start reciting long forgotten catechisms and reminding everyone of how he was once a good little altar boy.  Art and beauty which have everything to do with celebrating love.
7.  If the bridesmaid has a different spiritual calling to the bride and groom, she will likely as not find that her spiritual beliefs are small bickies in comparison with the love she has for true love.  The old maxim, when in Rome do as the Romans do, for a half hour wedding service helps.  Besides, there is a rock solid chance that the marriage celebrant will prattle on about all sorts of positive vibes about marital commitment and love that transcend the tenets of any organised religion, even if several centuries ago, you would have been burned at the stake by the marriage celebrant’s predecessor.
8.  If the photographer offers you cheap champagne out of the esky in the boot of his car while s/he does the formal portraits out in the hot sun, just drink it.  The bride, despite more than likely knowing nothing about photography or set design, will be too busy telling the photographer how to stage her/his photographs and run her/his camera, in order to catch the eyeball-scorching sunlight in a halo against the back of her dress, to drink.  This also has the run-on effect of warming her thirst engines so that she will be ready to harass you for a drink at the reception.
9.  Don’t think your duties at the reception begin and end with holding the bride’s handbag while she and the groom welcome the guests inside.  She may never have been married or even a bridesmaid before, but if you don’t know that you should know to fetch her drink from the bar, there is the distinct likelihood that she will become tetchy, as well as thirsty, and tell you off… discreetly or otherwise.  Your bride will depend on you to know your bridesmaid business, even if she thinks she doesn’t.
10.  Bridesmaids should always size up the available groomsmen.  Even if you don’t get lucky with one of them after the wedding, there is a pretty good chance you could get lucky with their dessert.  Which, after the exhausting day you’ve just had, absolutely justifies eating a second one.  Suggest to the bride that she order a fussy, girly sweet that no self-respecting Groom’s Bloke (G.B.) could have the sweet tooth to handle, such as Pavlova, chocolate puddings and tarts.  A Proper Bridesmaid knows it is vitally important to line her stomach before she hits the dance floor with all the other tarts… well, the ones in satin.
11.  Always accompany the bride to the toilet, even if it’s just to gossip about the hot waiter.  Whether she needs you to hold seventy metres of tulle up while she plants one on the dunny, or pin her back fat back into the corset she’s never fitted into, it is an unspoken rule that the bride always goes to the dunny in a posse of satin, silk, and perfume.
12.  When it’s time to dance with your Allotted Groomsman (A.G.) during the bridal waltz,  realise that it will never be as bad as social dancing for P.E. in Year Ten, and the groomsman may well be just as nervous as you.  It is only one dance out of the rest of your life, and with a bit of luck, he will be so concerned about his Groomly Duties (G.D.s), that he will kindly offer to fetch you a drink from the bar.
13.  When your bride sister or friend says she could not have made it through her special day and months of preparation without you, say thank you.  You never know – one day you could be in need of an experienced Matron of Honour, one who understands your bridal needs perfectly.

*Coute de rootistance.  For those of you not from the Land Down Under, this means the pinnacle of ones shagging opportunities.

c. A Room of Heroine 2012.

c. Aroomofheroine 2012.

I am officially going to pull my finger out and start sharing some no bull film reviews with you, especially as I’ve seen some great films lately, take generally inconsequential interest in film reviews. 

This will include films I truly like, and others I want to pick a bone with.  If they help you decide whether or not you would like to watch the films at the pictures, or on DVD, just remember that I will probably not be as rude online about the ones I’m annoyed with as I would be if we were chatting face to face, and utterly effusive about the ones I really like:  either of which may be of generally inconsequential interest to you as a film audience member.

But deep down, I enjoy going to the pictures, and hope that you do too.

x

Just jokes.

Fingers got away with me. I meant to write ….a broomof heroine.

See how we censor ourselves?  Edit.   I could also have written ….abroomofheron.  I see herons above a damn.  I mean, a dam.  Truly, I did.  And they were beautiful.  As was the heat of the day.

Freedom of expression is sometimes the first step toward censorship.

Without freedom of expression, censorship would have no legs,no feet, no fools to parlay.

In parlour games?

Parle vous sincere?

Even in this post, this small piece of writing,  I find that with every fling of the fingers (or fling of fingers)on the keyboard, I delete some letter, some word, exchange it for another.  I burst,upon occasion, with inspiration.  No, not burst.  But burgeon (please excuse my breaking my rule of despising nouns abused as verbs) with thoughts, slings and frings of words, ideas, pictures, visions, and they SHOULD come out on paper, but I don’t always put them to account on paper.

Sometimes, it is the vision of the words, not only (initial idea: ‘nor only’) the meaning coming after, the object of the vision, the impression, the fancy, that …. see, I’ve just ditched a few words in a few seconds – compel me to put them down.

Let’s not get started (first idea: ‘me started’  oh no so egotistical exclamation mark had I a key that was not broken)  – now that I have censored those fleeting words, I have forgotten what the original idea of this sentence was.

Conclusion:

Censorship: is often the destructive twin of expression.  Censorship is like an octopus that wraps itself around the utterance, an utterance, and swallows it and shits it out in some makeshift parody of creativity, of free-flowing ideas.

Censorship is: vision stuffed in a box and booted into a black abyss toward a billabong across a paddock which I remember and you do not, but if I were not inclined to go and put the kettle on, I might take the time to tell you about.

Censorship: wastes time.

Censorship:  You decide.

I am inspired.

And question where to begin.

Putting it on paper.

You decide what I mean by the iteration of those last two sentences.

c. A Room of Heroine 2011.

The only time I haven’t enjoyed the cinematic experience is the time a few years ago I convinced a couple of friends to see this Italian family draaaaaama where the characters did nothing but bitch, and fuck, and argue for the film’s duration. 

It was exhausting to listen to, exhausting to watch, and no amount of cute Italian hand gestures could make up for the fact that this film was exhausting to listen to and exhausting to watch.

For the first time in my personal cinema-going history, there was no choc top from heaven that could have stopped me from walking out.  And I never walk out of a film.  So I sat there, and hoped my friends wouldn’t say anything awful to me afterward.  Of course, when we walked out into the sunshine of Oxford St, I apologised for inviting them to see it.  This is something which I would never dream of doing.  Other people whinge and whine about films, but I love going to the pictures.

As for building the drama, the story up on screen couldn’t flatline any further in terms of dramatic dynamics.  In fact, if it had flatlined, I would not have noticed it.  It was a constant parade of four seasons in one emotional day.  And so much anger (the characters’, not mine).

One of the things screenwriter Billy Marshall Stoneking has to say about drama (and he has plenty to say) is that drama has to build and go somewhere.  It has to do something. I hope he doesn’t mind my quoting his writing on Dramatic Grammar:

A story’s power is proportional to its effectiveness in building and releasing energy in ways that are fresh, unexpected and thoroughly credible. 

When a story stops building energy, or is unable to effectively release it, the energy dissipates, which is another way of saying the story becomes undramatic.

You can join Billy on his hunt for truly dramatic storytelling at http://www.wheresthedrama.com.

Highly recommended if I do speak from experience.

Should I tell you the name of this film that altered my perception of cinema-going for all eternity?  No.  I have forgotten the name, and to be honest, I feel a bit mean slagging off the work of other artists.

But it was a growing experience.  I did learn something of storytelling value that afternoon.  It was naive of me to expect that a European film might, by sheer virtue of its being a European film, automatically provide a glowing cinematic experience.   It doesn’t mean diddly squat.

That’s the same as assuming that Australian films are broadly quirky, undramatic, or filled with horror.

Anyway, enjoy your choc tops, possums.

c. A Room of Heroine 2011.