UNDERTOW
***
Director: Miranda Nation
Screenwriter: Miranda Nation
Principal cast:
Laura Gordon
Olivia DeJonge
Rob Collins
Josh Helman
Martin Blum
Darci McDonald
Country: Australia
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 96 mins.
Australian release date: 5 March 2020.
Award-winning short film director/writer Miranda Nation makes her feature-length debut with Undertow, working from a script of her devising that centres on the testosterone-filled world of the Geelong Football Club but focuses on two women involved with a couple of the men working for it. It mashes up tropes from the psycho-sexual thriller genre with a genuine attempt to examine how women cope with pregnancy and loss. The director has said that, “I am fascinated by the inherent tension between our animal and civilised selves. Often, we try to suppress the primal parts of our natures, only for them to rise to the surface with redoubled force and terrible consequences. Undertow explores the female body as a landscape on which the scars of this age-old struggle are violently inscribed.”
The film begins by juxtaposing scenes of a woman alone at home going through a miscarriage with footage of a very young girl at a wild party with a bunch of footy players. It turns out that one of the men at the party is Dan (Rob Collins), the husband of Claire (Laura Gordon), the woman who has miscarried. Cut to several months later and photojournalist Claire is still grieving the loss of her baby but trying to cope by concentrating on her work. One day, she spies Dan going into a motel room with the girl from the party, Angie (Olivia DeJonge), and she stops to photograph them from across the road. Confronted by her, Dan says he’s just helping out his best mate at the club, Brett (Josh Helman), but he is repeatedly observed at the motel. As Claire grows more suspicious, she contrives to inveigle herself into Angie’s life by saying she wants to take her photo. When Angie confides in her that she is pregnant but refuses to reveal who the father is, Claire’s life starts to spiral out of control as she conflates the girl’s pregnancy with her own stillborn child, and her behaviour towards Angie becomes more and more obsessive and controlling.
Nation’s film raises some of the same issues surrounding post-natal psychosis that were canvassed in the Diablo Cody-scripted Tully a couple of years ago. Like that film, Undertow is also a portrait of a woman suffering a breakdown as the forces in her life grow too big for her to deal with rationally. The story is framed by terrific Cinemascope images of the beautiful coastline around Geelong (Claire’s world) and the seedier, industrial landscape of the suburbs (Angie’s domain), all brilliantly captured through Bonnie Elliott’s lens (incidentally, Elliott is also responsible for filming the excellent Stateless, currently showing on ABC-TV). Gordon, who has something of the look of Yvonne Strahovski about her, and DeJonge are well-cast for their roles and carry them off successfully, and Collins and Helman provide competent support as their confused, flawed male counterparts.
Where Undertow comes undone is in Nation’s screenplay, although one suspects that this is not entirely her fault. You can’t help but think that there has been a bit of a tussle backstage, as it were, between her and the movie’s producers. As the director very candidly told The Sydney Morning Herald recently, “… we had a lot of pressure to push it into the genre space because drama is a dirty word. Everyone wants genre. So it did kind of veer towards genre but that’s not my natural space, so I’m grappling with what it actually is in the finished product.” And there’s the rub - in the end, it’s neither a fully functioning genre flick nor a totally successful psycho-drama and the result is disappointing because of it.
Screenwriter: Miranda Nation
Principal cast:
Laura Gordon
Olivia DeJonge
Rob Collins
Josh Helman
Martin Blum
Darci McDonald
Country: Australia
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 96 mins.
Australian release date: 5 March 2020.
Award-winning short film director/writer Miranda Nation makes her feature-length debut with Undertow, working from a script of her devising that centres on the testosterone-filled world of the Geelong Football Club but focuses on two women involved with a couple of the men working for it. It mashes up tropes from the psycho-sexual thriller genre with a genuine attempt to examine how women cope with pregnancy and loss. The director has said that, “I am fascinated by the inherent tension between our animal and civilised selves. Often, we try to suppress the primal parts of our natures, only for them to rise to the surface with redoubled force and terrible consequences. Undertow explores the female body as a landscape on which the scars of this age-old struggle are violently inscribed.”
The film begins by juxtaposing scenes of a woman alone at home going through a miscarriage with footage of a very young girl at a wild party with a bunch of footy players. It turns out that one of the men at the party is Dan (Rob Collins), the husband of Claire (Laura Gordon), the woman who has miscarried. Cut to several months later and photojournalist Claire is still grieving the loss of her baby but trying to cope by concentrating on her work. One day, she spies Dan going into a motel room with the girl from the party, Angie (Olivia DeJonge), and she stops to photograph them from across the road. Confronted by her, Dan says he’s just helping out his best mate at the club, Brett (Josh Helman), but he is repeatedly observed at the motel. As Claire grows more suspicious, she contrives to inveigle herself into Angie’s life by saying she wants to take her photo. When Angie confides in her that she is pregnant but refuses to reveal who the father is, Claire’s life starts to spiral out of control as she conflates the girl’s pregnancy with her own stillborn child, and her behaviour towards Angie becomes more and more obsessive and controlling.
Nation’s film raises some of the same issues surrounding post-natal psychosis that were canvassed in the Diablo Cody-scripted Tully a couple of years ago. Like that film, Undertow is also a portrait of a woman suffering a breakdown as the forces in her life grow too big for her to deal with rationally. The story is framed by terrific Cinemascope images of the beautiful coastline around Geelong (Claire’s world) and the seedier, industrial landscape of the suburbs (Angie’s domain), all brilliantly captured through Bonnie Elliott’s lens (incidentally, Elliott is also responsible for filming the excellent Stateless, currently showing on ABC-TV). Gordon, who has something of the look of Yvonne Strahovski about her, and DeJonge are well-cast for their roles and carry them off successfully, and Collins and Helman provide competent support as their confused, flawed male counterparts.
Where Undertow comes undone is in Nation’s screenplay, although one suspects that this is not entirely her fault. You can’t help but think that there has been a bit of a tussle backstage, as it were, between her and the movie’s producers. As the director very candidly told The Sydney Morning Herald recently, “… we had a lot of pressure to push it into the genre space because drama is a dirty word. Everyone wants genre. So it did kind of veer towards genre but that’s not my natural space, so I’m grappling with what it actually is in the finished product.” And there’s the rub - in the end, it’s neither a fully functioning genre flick nor a totally successful psycho-drama and the result is disappointing because of it.