Australian feature films often provide a convincing slant toward the unexpected, oft including a bit of surrealism as an added attraction. This is not the case with this wispy story of adultery and parenting, notable in the main for its predictable narrative and trite dialogue. Snobbish academician Stuart Gunn (John Waters) and his spouse Barbara (Jacki Weaver) are not only faced with the rearing of three highly rambunctious young sons, but marital problems as well, Barbara speaking out concerning her yen to develop a career of her own, an unsatisfying prospect to vain Stuart. She matriculates at a local college, studying to obtain a degree in psychology, and a rift develops between the pair, increased in unsurprising fashion when Barbara hires a good-looking male babysitter, Erik, as overseer of her children while she attends classes. As might be expected, freedom-coveting Barbara and Erik, an itinerant Dane, promptly fall in love, leading to the ostensible death of the Gunn marriage, and to a state of bewilderment for the three youngsters. After the illicit liaison is revealed to her husband, the Gunns separate, forcing Stuart to find motivation for tending his sons, essentially due to misbehaving Barbara's eschewal of household responsibility. During some of the screenplay's least spirited sequences, Stuart attends a parenting class in hopes of learning to be a more efficient father. After Barbara's affair with the dashing Dane is ended in disappointment, the chance for reviving her marriage with Stuart may be one that she will wish to take as this melodramatic work moves to its easily divinable climax. With the directing and acting being alike laborious, there is little here to sponsor a storyline designed to create viewer interest. Along with a mixed review for the cast must come dissatisfaction over a script that lacks both wit and pace. Students of Australian cinema are cognizant of its oft-found and inventive quirkiness, but this flaccid production's unwieldy scenario and hackneyed tone prevail.
Review of The Perfectionist
