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Official Blurb:
Separation City is a bittersweet comedy, drama about falling out of love for the very first time. A painful lesson about how unrequited love lasts forever and while requited love comes with a use-by date. A story about courtship, mateship and jumping ship. A film for anyone who has ever been in a relationship and woken up beside someone they once adored beyond measure and thought even fleetingly, is this it?
Starring:
Joel Edgerton (Simon)
"THE SQUARE"
Rhona Mitra (Katrien)
"Boston Legal"
Thomas Kretschmann (Klaus)
"KING KONG", "VALKYRIE", "THE YOUNG VICTORIA"
Les Hill (Harry)
"Underbelly"
Danielle Cormack (Pam)
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Paul Middleditch's "SEPARATION CITY" (2008) is a Mills and Boone depiction of married life amongst first timers with the bonus of a dynamic, political junket set in Berlin. We romp past the shallow sexuality of Klaus (Thomas Kretschmann) and end up gazing at the face of Simon (Joel Edgerton) as his marriage suffers a painful redepmtion.
This film has many winning moments but it's also peppered with dead spots. The mens' group is saved by the intelligent and rye journalist, Harry (Les Hill) who defecates wit over the procedings. We also sit in moments of great beauty such as Rhona Mitra's perfomance with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by a bewigged Kenneth Young on their home stage, the Michael Fowler Centre.
But that is what this tragic romantic comedy is like. Pearls of verbose, worldly wisdom is placed on the lips of children and every now and again we're treated to a line of hard-won poetry. The children were only ever candid and the poetry of insight was always in the same voice no matter who spoke it.
But mostly this take on relationships is a dull chiche, embellished by a not funny, bursque lesbian and a dull wife. Because let's face it, Simon married a dull woman. He made a dull choice so he was going to be bored. And perhaps he made this choice beacuse Simon himself is dull. Sensitive and inhibited and nice but dull.
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A bombastic politician with a heart of gold, who even checks out the tits of a septogenarian, is someone we should be used to laughing at. And the lethario, a politician surprised by consequences gives us the name of the film in the Bunnings/MY Store equivalent where men buy their own set of kitchen untensils for their hotel rooms, fresh out on their own.
The film is further complicated by a confusing narrative told by two people who look back in hind-site, though by this stage they never see each other again, "in person."
There were nice get away scenes as Aussies/New Zealanders, "meet," in Berlin and fate takes an interesting hand that I welcomed as a divertion with gratitude, as winter howls through a broken window in a hotel suit. And there was intense screen presence as we are commanded to pay atention while Simon breaks down. The whole film builds to this moment, forgiveness.
If this is a brilliant study of urban professionals, approaching middle-age, started 20 years ago by political cartoonist and writer Tom Scott, then we're just not that interesting. It's not as bad as the lives lived in aeroports by Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) and Alex (Vera Farmiga) in Jason Reitman's "UP IN THE AIR" (2009) who do nothing but decide on where to drink when they're not working. This film is dull and dull is the ultimate offense. 3/10
Copyrighted, Jayne Waterford, 05 February 2010.
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