Starring: Genevieve Lemon, Gabrielle Chan, Lena Cruz, Arka Das, Jing Xuan Chan, Christine Milo, Christian Ravello, Jaime Ureta, Khoi Trinh, Leah Vandenberg
Distributor: Mind Blowing World
Runtime: 106 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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Set in Sydney’s western suburbs (though it could be Melbourne), the film is anthology of connected stories over one day, dramatising the lives of ethnic families.
The west of the title is the western suburbs of Sydney. But, the stories and characters could equally appear in a film about the western suburbs of Melbourne. Or in so many of the different areas of Australia’s capital cities.
We have a mixture of characters and stories, especially from different ethnic backgrounds, from the Middle East and from Asia, the subcontinent, south-east Asia, whose stories interconnect, centred on a major hospital in the western suburbs.
Each character and story are indicated with a heading. The first is quite striking – Genevieve Lemon as a grandmother visiting her daughter who has just given birth in the hospital and, with a grandmotherly impulse, snatches the baby, accompanied by a little Lebanese girl whom she is minding, and drives away. We see them at various stages as we follow other stories.
One of the strongest stories focuses on a group of Bengalis and an African friend. There are disputes among themselves and when one of them is injured and goes to hospital, coming under the care of a sympathetic Filipino nurse who is also crucial to the baby kidnapping story. There are clashes with a severe white nurse, sometimes intolerant and hurtful. The young man is also drawn into the story of an elderly man dying in hospital, and his daughter not understanding him as he reverts to his first language, Bengali. The young man serves as a translator – and there is some pathos as the daughter, who had been a singer working overseas, is able to sing a local Indian song as her father dies.
So, already we have a feel for this diverse community, enhanced by all kinds of views of the suburbs, from the overlapping freeways to the ordinary streets.
Towards the end of the film, we are introduced to a young ambitious Vietnamese man – calling himself Tom instead of Tuan – who is challenged by his family and his rather rebellious younger brother to face his origins. There is a strong focus on the Chinese community, represented by a dominant mother who is proud of her restaurant which is about to close, and the dilemma of the daughter and her boyfriend who are torn between moving interstate and the family and cultural loyalties that demand they stay close.
This composite film was written and directed by five directors, all of them women, the more prominent being Ana Kokkinos who has been a successful director of film and television for 30 years, and Leah Purcell (actor and director of The Drover’s Wife).
At just over 100 minutes, this is an interesting and entertaining introduction to life in the western suburbs, featuring a range of characters, ethnic backgrounds and languages, and each of them finding their place in multicultural Australia.
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