Praise (1998)

User Rating:

7.0/10   

Director:

John Curran

Writers:

Andrew McGahan (novel)
Andrew McGahan (screenplay)

Release Date:

22 April 1999 (Australia)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

Sex and drugs in BrisVegas!

Plot:

An unfocused twentysomething (Peter Fenton) moves in with a former co-worker (Sacha Holder), who is...

Plot Keywords:

Sex | Eczema | Male Nudity | Fat Girl | Female Nudity

Awards:

8 wins & 14 nominations

Cast

Peter Fenton	...	Gordon
Sacha Horler	...	Cynthia
Marta Dusseldorp	...	Rachel
Ray Bull	...	Vass
Joel Edgerton	...	Leo
Yvette Duncan	...	Molly
Gregory Perkins	...	Raymond
Loene Carmen	...	Cathy
Skye Wansey	...	Helen
Richard Green	...	Dave
Lynette Curran	...	Sexual Health Worker
Susan Prior	...	Sophie
Paul Lum	...	Darren
Fiona Mahl	...	Darren's Girlfriend
Damon Herriman	...	Skinhead

Runtime:

Canada:98 min

Country:

Australia

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

UK:18 | Australia:R | Hong Kong:III | New Zealand:R18

Company:

Emcee Films

Tender is the grungey night

The term "loser" to an Australian ear has a nasty harsh American stridency to it which seems to absolve the person uttering it from any sympathy for the "loser" in question. Now Gordon and Cynthia are definitely "losers" but at the end of this film we see beauty in an otherwise fairly pathetic pair. Gordon, in his mid-twenties, a country boy who's drifted to the city, works in a bottle store and lives in a once grand but now squalid rooming house occupied by various broken-down old men. He meets Cynthia, a barmaid, at work and for no particular reason they both quit. She moves in with him when her military parents are transferred. Gordon's chief recreation is drinking, and hers is sex, and after a while Gordon is dreading going to bed. Yet something happens between them and affection grows, even though we can see it's hopeless. There is beauty even in a doomed relationship between two misfits.

Quite why their lives have become so aimless is not really explored; both seem to have untraumatic backgrounds and neither is really cut off from their families. Gordon's lost love Rachel appears towards the end but he's lost interest in her, too. Gordon is at home amongst the deros, prematurely old, out of steam, life over before it really got started.

It sounds depressing and it is, but the relationship is tender and warm - a less melodramatic version of "Leaving Las Vegas." The story is set in Brisbane, though apparently not filmed there, and the humid stifling summer atmosphere is well evoked. It doesn't really explain the lack of motivation though.