Film & TV ★★★★
Sharp Objects
On Foxtel’s Showcase from 9 Jul
Reviewed by Guy Davis
A
t first glance, Sharp Objects seems like an algorithmic dream. If you liked Big Little Lies, here’s the same director, Jean-Marc Vallee. If you liked Gone Girl, here’s the same author, Gillian Flynn. If you liked Amy Adams in anything, here’s Amy Adams. One could be forgiven for perceiving this eight-episode pay-TV adaptation of Flynn’s first novel as a round of prestige-TV bingo, and, well, it is that. It’s also confronting, compelling, challenging and very, very good. Flynn displayed a real aptitude for blending compulsive, deliciously pulpy storytelling (replete with vivid characterisations) and incisive depictions of gender politics in Gone Girl, and that’s evident in this adaptation of her first novel, which also uses a crime story as the framework for its true mystery — a woman’s history and identity. That woman is Adams’ Camille, an emotionally fragile journalist dispatched by her editor to her tiny hometown of Wind Gap to report on the murder of one girl and the
disappearance of another. Upon her return, Camille is remembered fondly by many as the town’s prodigal daughter — a great beauty destined for great things. But Camille’s past is littered with pain and trauma — it’s a past she drinks heavily to avoid facing — and her being back in Wind Gap, a town with its own deep reserves of pain and trauma, constantly threatens to bring everything back to the surface. Using its murder mystery as the hook, Sharp Objects quickly and deftly draws one in, Vallee, Flynn and showrunner Marti Noxon all adept at setting an intriguing scene and introducing fascinating players. What gradually emerges, however, is a story of long-buried secrets and long-repressed feelings that has one both dreading and eagerly awaiting the next revelation. It’d be worth watching Sharp Objects for Adams alone; fortunately, there’s plenty here to keep one well and truly enthralled.
★★★½
The Breaker Upperers
In cinemas 26 Jul
Reviewed by Anthony Carew
T
he Breaker Upperers verily begins with the kind of makin’-it montage usually left to the second act: Jen (Jackie van Beek) and Mel (Madeleine Sami), Kiwi BFF’s running the titular business, playing out all kinds of wacky schemes — dressed as pregnant other-women or missing-persons police — to accelerate the demise of couples. The rollicking montage summons Wes Anderson’s Rushmore and the whole film — with its deadpan air and symmetrical framing — carries stylistic echoes of both Anderson and its own executive producer, Taika Waititi. Sami and van Beek are co-directors as well as co-stars; the film, suitably, is less about the relationships that they help break up and more about the relationship between them. At times reminiscent of Daniel Warth’s darker, more existential Dim The Fluorescents (another film exploring female friendship through the prism of an absurdist business), The Breaker Upperers is, beyond its breezy comic air, essentially about what it means to make a living from falsehoods. In its most
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gripping moment, the film goes full-Costanza, taking a lie to its limits, Jen and Mel heading to the local police station that they don’t work at, acting as if they do, with anything and everything suddenly on the table. Where the opening montage serves up deceivingly good times, it’s situated at the beginning so that the drama can move away from their sitcom-ish small business’s viability and into poking at this harmonious partnership. And so our central relationship is tested, but never really threatened. There’s all the familiar story beats as we head towards the end: a crisis of conscience, a falling out and a grand public declaration of love as the rousing feel-good finale. Along the way, there’s backstory depicted by hallucinatory karaoke videos, a Tinder-hook-up cameo from Jemaine Clement, an exuberant/puppydog-ish turn from James Rolleston and a dance sequence on close. The Breaker Upperers is brisk, non-threatening and crowd-pleasing; getting by on the incredible comic rapport of its stars/directors.
