Separation City

Rating:

* * *

Verdict:

Charming at moments but uneven in tone and peopled by caricatures.

Some things can be true and also improbable: a New Zealand-born, Australian-based film director can be called Middleditch, for example.

Screenwriter and co-producer Tom Scott says two incidents in this romantic comedy - one involving a handkerchief, a condom and a boardroom table; the other about a woman unenthusiastic about conjugal relations - are drawn from real life (not his). Both are so unlikely that you know immediately they really happened. But in a screenplay, they seem contrived.

Scott, who virtually invented humorous and iconoclastic political commentary in this country, does a good one-liner and there are plenty in this film. But the problem is that they get in the way. It's plainly meant to be a wistful rumination on midlife malaise and infidelity (a key line, and it's a cracker, is that unrequited love lasts forever, but requited love comes with a use-by date) but Scott the scattergun jokester keeps popping up.

The soap-opera story focuses on overworked Beehive press secretary Simon (Edgerton) whose sex life with wife Pam (Cormack) is missing in action. Then his world is suddenly lit up by Katrien (Mitra), a pretty English cellist who has been betrayed by her cynical German artist husband Klaus (Kretschmann).

Around these four flit a variety of subsidiary figures: pathetically PC Keith (Brown) who deals with his wife's decision to turn lesbian by starting a men's group; the cast jester Harry (Hill), Simon's best mate, whose endless cracks are amusing and irritating in equal measure; a bibulous and stupid cabinet minister. All seem much closer to caricature than character - an emotionally musclebound fireman in the heavy-handed parody of a men's group is the worst - and none ever comes more than fitfully to life.

The film was initially entitled

The Truth About Men

and it certainly brushes up quite often against some emotional truths: Scott has a keen ear for the curdling of relationships that other, better writers called the seven-year itch. Middleditch and cinematographer Steve Arnold meanwhile conspire to make Wellington look like the Riviera: the sun shines in cloudless skies and everyone seems to live on the waterfront and it's one of the handsomest, brightest

local films in a long time. But the narrative weaves such a tangled web that it has to resort to bedroom farce to get out and the closing 10 minutes is a sustained exercise in tying up loose ends that feels deeply compromised.

The performances, despite an alarming profusion of Australian accents, are solid and there are more than a few amusing moments. But an unevenness of tone stops a quite serviceable film from being a good one.

Peter Calder

Cast:

Rhona Mitra, Joel Edgerton, Thomas Kretschmann, Danielle Cormack, Michelle Langstone, Les Hill, Phil Brown

Director:

Paul Middleditch

Running time:

106 mins

Rating:

M (sex scenes, offensive language)