"Proof"
                Reviewed by Linda Lopez McAlister
                  On "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM
                          July 18, 1992

    I think it's quite remarkable how many gifted young women
filmmakers we see coming out of Australia and New Zealand on to
the international film scene these days.  Of course Gillian
Armstrong did it a decade ago with her wonderful film "My
Brilliant Career."  But in the last two years we've seen
spectacular work from Jane Campion with her features "Sweetie"
and "An Angel at My Table."  Next in line is Jocelyn Moorehouse
who--not even ten years out of film school--has both written and
directed a really fascinating film called "Proof."
   "Proof" is one of those films whose genre is hard to
classifiy.  The ad people call it a comedy, but only because
comedy sells and it isn't a tragedy.  I see it more as a kind of
psychological thriller (without the action you usually associate
with thrillers), that explores both perversities of human
psychology and perennial epistemological puzzles about truth in a
very compelling manner.  This is a film about a blind photographer.
    Writer Moorehouse gives us an insight into her inspiration
for this film in the following statement.  She writes:

     In 1986 someone told me that they had met a blind
     photographer.  At the time I didn't think to ask why a
     blind person would take photographs, but I soon found the
     unknown answer haunted me. I'm fascinated by blindness and
     how blind people cope with not having visual knowledge--the
     everyday confirmations of "what is" that I take for granted.
     Blind people have to place their faith in others.  I wanted
     to tell the story of a man who couldn't.

And so she created the character of Martin, a bitter, arrogant
and mean-spirited blind man who is demanding and seems to take
pleasure in tormenting others.  For example, is perfectly capable
of pouring himself a glass of wine without spilling a drop, but
when the service at a restaurant is too slow for his liking he
does his poor-helpless-blind-man act and pours red wine all over
the table cloth, getting the desired attention.
    That's minor compared with the way he treats Celia, the
woman--probably in her late 30s--who cooks and cleans for him.
She is obsessed with Martin and tries everything she can think of
to seduce him; his pleasure comes in sadistically refusing to
give in to her efforts at seduction and enjoying her suffering.
For her part, Celia torments Martin by moving furniture so he'll
run into it and silently following Martin to the park where he is
taking photographs and luring his seeing-eye dog away.  They have
been doing this macabre dance for three and a half years.
    Why is Martin taking pictures?  He gets people to describe
the contents of the photos and attaches these descriptions to the
backs of the photos in Braille.  This is to confirmation of his
own unsighted experience of the place and moment but it only does
so if the sighted person is telling him the truth. It often also
proves to Martin that he knows more about the scene through his
highly developed senses of smell and hearing than his sighted
companions do.  But Martin is obsessed by the thought that people
lie to him and try to fool him about what's in the photos, just
as he believes his mother lied to him when he was a little boy to
punish him for being blind.  Repeated flashbacks to Martin's
troubled relations with his mother are meant to give insight into
his difficulties as an adult in relating to women.
   Into this bizarre relationship comes Andy, a sweet, open,
friendly kitchen worker in Martin's neighborhood Italian
restaurant.  Andy and Martin become friends, and Andy replaces
Celia as the person he trusts to describes the contents of
photographs to Martin, but he is warned never to lie.  Celia is
enormously threatened by Martin's new friend, and gets her
revenge by seducing Andy, who is then finds himself in a position
of lying to Martin about the contents of a photograph that would
reveal their liaison to Martin.  I won't tell you how this
dramatic conflict resolves; I will say that in its quiet way this
is an absolutely compelling film.  It won the Best Picture of
1991 from the Australian Film Institute, where both Hugh Weaving
and Russell Crowe as Martin and Andy won Best Actor awards and I
think Genevieve Picot's enigmatic Celia is in the same class.
The film has been raking in awards from the Cannes, Toronto and
Tokyo international film festivals, as well.  All this is proof
enough, I submit, to convince you to go see "Proof" playing this
week at the Tampa Theater.

    For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on
Women and Film.