"The Last Days of Chez Nous" A film review by Linda Lopez McAlister "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM, Tampa, Florida July 31, 1993 My topic is, as always, women and film. Last night I saw a film written, produced, and directed by three Australian women in which three of the four main characters are women. There was no doubt what film I would review today: Jan Chapman's production of Helen Garner's original screenplay, directed by Gillian Armstrong--a story of close, loving relationships coming apart (and starting over) entitled "The Last Days of Chez Nous." Director Armstrong, as you may recall, is best known for her feature film debut "My Brilliant Career" in 1979. A second Australian feature "Starstruck" is not well-known here but in its wacky way is well worth seeing should you run across the video. Then Hollywood called Armstrong to direct the (I think underrated) "Mrs. Soffel", then back to Australia for "High Tide" and back to Hollywood to direct "Fires Within" with Jimmy Smits and Greta Schiacci last year. Characteristic of Gillian Armstrong's work is her extraordinary skill at working with actors to create very textured, nuanced, and realistic character studies of people undergoing intense personal conflict. And that certainly describes what's going on in "Chez Nous," the French name for the house in a suburb of Sydney that is the center of this study of shifting emotions and relationships. Chez Nous is home to Beth (played by Lisa Harrow) and J.P. (for Jean Paul--played by Bruno Ganz) an Australian woman and her French husband; Beth's teenage daughter Annie (played by Miranda Otto); Beth's younger sister Vicki just back from the over- seas trip that is seemingly mandatory for young Australians (Kerry Fox, who was Janet Frame in "Angel At My Table"); and Tim (Kiri Paramore), a sweet young man who rents a room from them and is Annie's constant companion. Beth is the pivotal character here and, like all the others in this film, she is so complex it's hard to describe her in a few words. She is the mother to this _menage a cinq_. In her forties she is a working and published writer, a warm and loving person though she has a tendency to pur herself down and to negate her own needs. As J.P. tells her after reading her latest work, she has an overly positive and rosy view of human nature. Beth would, I think, consider her marriage to J.P. a stable and happy one--if somewhat stale and troubled by J.P.'s desire to have a child of his own-- she and Annie seem to have a fine relationship, and she adores her "baby sister" Vicki. She seems to see it as her role to take care of all these people, cooking, cleaning, providing emotional support, as, for example, she does for Vicki who is pregnant and gets an abortion. Yet, while the others hardly realize how much Beth does for them, they are often resentful of her sometimes controlling maternal attentions or, in J.P's view, resentful of how little atten- tion she has left over for him. Not content to be the glue that holds her own household together, Beth also wants to have one last try at fixing what's wrong with her relationship with her cantankerous and emotionally cold father (played by Bill Hunter), so she agrees to go off with him on a car trip deep into the Australian out back. When the centripetal force that holds the disparate elements of Chez Nous in place is gone, the relationships shift. A brilliant stroke that shows Beth in a motel room in the outback, her father in another, and Vicki at home all watching and reacting in their own ways to the same t.v. documentary of a child being born tells us more than reams of dialogue would about what these people are like. When J.P. finds Vicki in hysterics after seeing that t.v. program and learns that she has aborted her child when he wants one so badly he attempts to comfort her and he finds his own comfort in her needy arms. What happens at the end of the film after Beth returns to discover her husband's and her sister's betrayal of her love and trust is handled with such emotional truth you'll just have to see it and marvel at the maturity and grace of the writing, directing, and acting. None of these people are villians, and the love they have for each other doesn't stop because they have all inflicted pain on one another. Then they move on--in Beth's case, at least, perhaps to a better place where she can be less of a caregiver and follow her own desires more fully. A telling wordless image of Vicki sitting listlessly on a window ledge in the place she and J.P. are moving into while a brand new sponge mop oozes water onto the floor, tells us that their next phase of life together is going to be a lot different from life back at Chez Nous. This is a film you'll want to see. For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film. Copyright 1993 by Linda Lopez McAlister. No portion of this review may be reproduced or reprinted without the permission of the author.