Friday Five: Films on a plane

1. Emily: Still not my favourite Bronte, although Emma Mackey is brilliant and the moors look pretty.
2. EO: What with Banshees of Inisherin, this may be the Year of the Donkey.
3. The Fablemans: The making of an auteur. It's clearly very autobiographical and gives away a few secrets (putting pinholes in the film; allowing light through to simulate flashes from gun-shots). The personal and insular focus, with specific parental relationships, is the same kind of film-making therapy as demonstrated in Honeyboy.  Lock-downs clearly led to lot of navel gazing and subsequent oversharing. This is great if you want to know all about your directors/ actors/ film practitioners, but a bit self-indulgent if you don't.
4. Marcel the Shell with Shoes on: A cute and quirky animation in which a shell tries to find his family. As well as exploring the sense of identity and belonging to a community, the film also addresses the issue of on-line fandom and virtue-signalling activism. It's far more affecting than it has any right to be. 
5. M3GAN: Science-fiction horror, which is also funny and cine-literate with self-aware references to previous works in the AI-companion-goes-feral genre.

Middle-Aged Fantasy: The Winter Sea

The Winter Sea by Di Morrissey

Pan Macmillan

Pp. 416

This novel is pure escapism and wish fulfilment. Cassie decides to leave her high-paid but unsatisfying legal job and husband in Sydney for a holiday on the coast. On a whim she buys a dilapidated restaurant and turns it into a roaring success with the help of the local fishing community. The spanner in the works (of course there has to be one) is in the form of a historic family incident with far-reaching repercussions. Because it's a typical holiday read there is a caring community for affirmation, an abandoned dog for company, and a handsome vet for romance. It contains a lot of stereotypes which are completely undemanding.

One of these stereotypes is the notion of Italy and the history of emigration. There are several flashbacks, which direct the reader to the old country where “Italian families are always there for each other” in a sort of Sicilian Godfather-like way. Italians love fishing and women, and they have romantic notions of both.

Characters describe things to each other in a manner that is clearly meant as exposition for the reader, and historical nuggets are dropped into the narrative with resounding clangs. The transition to being Australian is not easy; as someone worries that their English might not be good enough to pass the test they are told, “It could be in any language. If they don’t want you, they will make it impossible for you to pass.” We are reminded that Italians were put into internment camps during the war. “People are in here just because they’re Italian. Doesn’t matter what their political convictions are – Fascists, Communists, neutral. It almost makes you cry when you think of the poor buggers who left Italy to escape Fascism only to end up here.”

Cassie is a modern woman who decides to make a break, in parallel with these characters from the past. We are meant to see her as an independent woman, who is better-off without her overbearing husband, Hal and patriarchal career. This burgeoning feminism is not extended to other female characters, however – more Italian stereotypes. Moving home and setting up a new business is remarkably easy to do as Cassie buys a place in Whitby Point, by the sea (Ulladulla, NSW coast), with a more relaxed pace of life than in her previous Sydney home, which suits her interests. She extends this minimalism to her restaurant, which she decides to run with no real business plan. It is busy but idyllic and the dream of many a middle-aged idealist.

By trying to force a modern character into a tried and tested romance formula, Morrissey’s character’s credibility strains at the seams, but she has enough fans who will love it anyway and there’s no point in ruining a perfectly good fantasy with realism and detail.

Ulladulla Harbour and Foreshore