"Sirens"
                             A film review by
                           Linda Lopez McAlister
                           on "The Women's Show"
                         WMNF-FM (88.5), Tampa, FL
                                May 6, 1995


   I knew I wasn't going to be able to get to a movie theater this week, so I
did something I haven't done for a while--cruise my local video store to find
films I would have liked to review when they were in the theaters but didn't
get to for one reason or another. I found several, so I'll probably be doing
some video reviews this summer when the pickings in the theaters get slim.

   This week's video is called "Sirens," a film by Australian writer/director
John Duigan, who definitely has a way with light romantic comedies, as seen in
his earlier boarding school film "Flirting" and now in this later, more adult,
sex comedy. I guess I avoided this one when it first came out because all the
reviews I read made it seem like a rather exploitative skin-flick about nude
artist's models. When some of my "Women's Show" colleagues said they had liked
it, I tucked it away in my memory bank for future reference.

   Set in the '30s, the film is about an Australian artist (Sam Neill) whose
explicitly erotic paintings on religious themes are being exhibited
at a museum in Sydney prior to an international touring exhibition. The Bishop
of Sydney is shocked by, among other things, a painting of a crucifixion not
of Christ but of a voluptuous naked woman. Anthony Campion, new priest just
arrived from England (Hugh Grant) and his wife Estella (Tara Fitzgerald) are
sent to visit the artist, Norman Lindsey, to try to talk him into substituting
some other paintings for those in the exhibition. Upon arrival at the Lindsey
compound they find a unique kind of living arrangement where Lindsey, his wife
and children, the three young women who are the principal life models for his
paintings, and a blind good-looking former boxer handy man all live together
in a kind of uninhibited Eden (complete with many shots of mischevious
serpents and people munching apples at every opportunity--all with no visible
ill effects). While Lindsey and Father Tony engage in heated theological
arguments the three models take a particular interest in Estella and the film
really turns into a story about her rather than one about her husband as it
seemed in the beginning to be. The uninhibited sensuality of the place and
people first shocks and then intrigues her and the movement of the film is
around her gradual transformation from a repressed and up-tight wife of a
repressed and up-tight clergyman into a committed sensualist.

   Although hubby Tony does gradually exchange his clerical collar for more 
relaxed attire, he's much more committed to retaining his priestly propriety 
and resists temptation far more than his wife does and gets angry at her 
when he realizes the extent to which she has taken up not only the manner 
of dress but also the activities of the "sirens" of the title.

   This is an entertaining and amusing film, with something of the magical
feel about it of Woody Allen's "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy," but it's much
more sensual than that. While there's much nudity, male and female, it does
not strike me as of a voyeuristic, explotative kind (though obviously this has
a lot to do with who's doing the looking). It's far more an appreciation of
embodiment as a positive aspect of human life, something to be celebrated and
enjoyed rather than denied and stifled. Rose Lindsey, Norman's earthy wife who
was the model for the crucified woman is an outspoken feminist whom Tony tries
feebly to put down by likening her to Mrs. Pankhurst.

   Anyway, by the end of the film Estella Campion is quite a different person
than she was at the beginning, and she seems determined to try to bring her
husband the priest along in the same direction in the final sequences.
"Sirens" would be a good video to rent some evening when you want to kick back
and enjoy.

   For the WMNF Women's Show this has been Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and
Film.
   Copyright 1995 by Linda Lopez McAlister. All rights reserved. Please do not
reprint this review without the permission of the author.