La revue de presse

(R16) Emma Barclay, Matthew McFadyen, Miranda Otto, Jodie Rimmer. Directed by Brad McGann. Opens October 7.

At long bloody last, it looks like New Zealand film is moving away from the vile barrage of self-conscious, kitschy stories that don't celebrate who we are, but rather poke fun at and turn us into caricatures.

I've often tried to figure out what the problem is with Kiwi filmmakers who make films that fall flat. Is it because there are too many who fancy themselves as writer/directors and who are good at the technical side, but have no idea how to tell a yarn?

Is it because they're too afraid to tell stories that actually mean something to them, so they just opt for wacky, meaningless, feel- good comedies that miss the opportunity to celebrate what it means to belong to this special little country? Savage Honeymoon and Kombi Nation, anyone?

Films like Smash Palace, Vigil, Sleeping Dogs, The Piano, Heavenly Creatures, Rain (if you can get past the fact it looks like a Xenical ad), and now Brad McGann's feature film debut In my Father's Den eschew the banal "Oh look at us, we're just silly Kiwis" aesthetic in favour of something much more interesting and powerful.

It was the first New Zealand film in 50 years to open the Sydney Film Festival and the centrepiece at this year's International Film Festival, where Helen Clark made a doozy of a blunder by referring to the author of the book on which the film is based as . . . ahem, Maurice Shadbolt, as opposed to Mr Gee.

After 17 years away from New Zealand, photojournalist Paul Prior (an intense and very watchable Matthew MacFadyen in a role that mirrors infamous photographer Kevin Carter) returns to the central Otago town where he grew up, to settle his deceased father's estate.

He cuts a romantic, lone-wolf figure, and upon his return everyone- -from his twitchy, god-fearing brother Andrew (whose acting comes across as more wooden than the furniture) to his ex-girlfriend (Jodie Rimmer)--is still bitter about him leaving.

The den in question is where Paul's dad used to hang out and drink wine, read literature and erm . . . entertain ladies. When Paul finds 16-year-old local girl Celia (Emma Barclay, who looks alarmingly "street" for a small-town girl) has been using the room as a getaway, he also discovers they're both outsiders, cut from the same cloth.

Despite the age difference the duo form a bond, which in turn sparks small-town whispers. And the plot thickens, morphing into a terse murder mystery showcasing filthy family laundry, voyeurism, mental illness, relationships and guilt. Sure it sounds like a web- of-deceit-TV-movie-of-the-week but the whole affair is so stylish, restrained and atmospheric that it manages not to be.

The rugged, vast wilderness of the south is the perfect backdrop for the story; in fact it's all a bit Twin Peaks--I've always wondered why nobody ever tapped into New Zealand's potential as the perfect place to play at being David Lynch.

While it begins with appalling, claustrophobic camera work-- weird, expressionist angles and depth-of-field and an ugly glare--it does get better. But it's the intricate story and the fine performances that shine. Sure, much has been made of Barclay's portrayal of the surly, inquisitive and precocious teen but it's Brit McFadyen who steals the show. With a compelling screen presence and a great way of bringing little idiosyncrasies to his character that make him all the more believable, he commands your attention.

As a whole, the film works wonderfully. Even the use of music is considered and appropriate. Though never a Patti Smith enthusiast, the use of her music here swayed me, and the evocative, dreamy strains of Mazzy Star are quite beautiful and only heighten the sharp sense of atmosphere.

McGann's done a good job here. He's proved he can interpret an existing tale successfully and he obviously can bring a strong vision to fruition.

It'll be interesting to see if he chooses to go down the writer- director path, and what he'll come up with when creating his own stories. Obviously, Gee's original novel was a damn fine starting point, giving McGann a head start, but he is certainly one to watch.

In the excellent documentary Cinema of Unease, Sam Neill observed that all New Zealand films are either about running away from your stifling home or staying put and going quietly mad. Brad McGann's In My Father's Den neatly fits both categories, bravely adapting Maurice Gee's over-ripe source novel into an eerie fairytale fable which sparkles atmospherically before getting mired down in melodramatic hogwash.

Matthew MacFadyen excels as emotionally shellshocked photojournalist Paul who returns to South Island to bury his father, but remains unable to focus on the battlefield of his old home life. With Patti Smith's iconic Horses blaring away on the soundtrack, and an evocatively poetic short story unspooling through an Electra-fied Emily Barclay, this promises tough and tender treats, many of which it duly delivers. Shame, then, that as the interminably time-shifting plot moves towards the tragic denouement, it all collapses into Freudian hyperbole and astringent drama dissolves into mere soap.
Still, it's a promising debut for director McGann, from whom we may expect more in future.

Matthew MacFadyen qui est un acteur brillant ....

Ce festival a pour vocation de révéler de nouveaux talents britanniques ; il a couronné, par exemple, Danny Boyle (Hitchcock d’or en 1994 pour Shallow Grave) et Paul Greengrass (vainqueur en 2002 pour Bloody Sunday) qui sont devenus maintenant des réalisateurs majeurs. Il permet aussi de découvrir de petits bijoux cinématographiques, comme le In my father’s den de Brad MacGan en 2005, qui malheureusement ne sortent pas toujours sur le grand écran français.

5. IN MY FATHER’S DEN, directed by Brad McGann.
McGann didn’t just adapt and update Maurice Gee’s novel, he overhauled it, adding a whole new interpretational level (based on Patti Smith’s Horses). Dark, involving and emotionally devas-tating, it featured great performances from newcomer Emily Barclay and, especially, the very subtle Matthew Macfadyen.

our continuing countdown of the 100 best movies ever made.

28. In My Father's Den (Brad McGann, 2004) - In the recent lists celebrating the finest films of the past decade, one movie has been completely - and bafflingly - ignored. But then its initial release was met with muted response as well: three-star reviews and an accompanying shrug. It treads well-worn ground, the critics said, then lapses into melodrama. Well I'm on a one-man mission to see In My Father's Den inducted into the pantheon of the greats. Matthew Macfadyen plays a photojournalist who returns from a warzone to his childhood home in New Zealand after his father's death and finds he can't escape the past. Though the more obvious, unfortunate staples of this sub-genre are present (child abuse revelations, a climax involving a big gun), those elements are extremely well-handled, while much of the film's focus alights on Macfadyen's burgeoning relationship with the 16-year-old girl (Emily Barclay) who might be his daughter. He also feuds with his brother, rages at his former girlfriend's live-in lover and broods about at least one dark secret. The film is similar in many ways to Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count on Me, which had Mark Ruffalo in the "returning anti-hero" role. This film's superiority, drawn from its unconventionality and unwillingness to deliver any kind of happy ending, is epitomised by how it handles one key exchange. In You Can Count on Me, Ruffalo comes up against his child's odious stepfather and pummels his face to the point of oblivion. Here Macfadyen tries the same thing but gets kicked down some steps, his face bleeding. Cue a pair of well-chosen obscenities from his assailant. The story is fascinating, its "whodunnit" elements aided by writer-director Brad McGann's non-linear telling, with characters who feel utterly real. And the acting is just extraordinary. Macfadyen's performance is my favourite of the past 10 years, while Barclay is excellent in support. This is a film that makes you feel absolutely terrible, but that's OK - I can't think of many movies that have had such a big effect on me.

Favourite bit: Tears in the tub: Macfadyen loses it whilst taking a bath.

See also: The Hanging Garden, which deals with similar themes and has the same contrary sensibility.

September 19, 2004
San Sebastian Dispatch. 2.
Journalist and editor Juan Manuel Freire picks more favorites from the San Sebastian Film Festival.

Two unique gems were on offer on the restless second day of screenings in San Sebastian. The competition section presented an unlikely pretender in the form of the one-of-a-kind pop-porn film Nine Songs from the maverick British director Michael Winterbottom. It's been widely regarded as a shocking film in which a couple has sex, goes to some gig, then has sex, goes to some gig and so on. Such a plot summary, though not entirely unattractive, doesn't do justice to a true cinematic challenge, a pure and perceptive depiction of these two people's lives. We are permitted see everything - the little, dumb words, the ridiculous dances, the dialogue of the eyes, and also, yes, the sex, in all its spiritual and carnal strength, all its life. We're permitted to see everything invisible and visible. Everything. And when the end comes, the pain is almost unbearable.



San Sebastian's Zabaltegi section is reserved for discoveries from other festivals, and one of the highlights is a co-production from New Zealand and Great Britain, In My Father's Den. Writer-director Brad McGann's film was recently hailed at Toronto and it's easy to see why. It's sweeping, liquid cinema, navigating back and forth in time with the fluidity of Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, showing a great care for framing and creating a trance-like sense of hypnosis. And the story is not just an excuse for aesthetic exploration, but a dense, hot-blooded account of a group lives held as prisoners to the past - and eventually victims of it. Imagine Mystic River set in Twin Peaks and you're almost there. I didn't want the movie to come to an end. Emotional bliss.

Posted by dwhudson at 11:24 AM

‘Brad McGann’s gripping psychological mystery is a tragedy reverberant with New Zealand life. The film tells the story of Paul, an internationally successful war photographer who’s seen – and photographed – too much of the world. He returns, after the death of his father, to the small Central Otago town he fled as a youth. With his dry, cutting delivery of Paul’s every pithy line, charismatic British actor Matthew Macfadyen brings cosmopolitan edge to a New Zealand archetype, the man alone. Paul’s contemporaries who stayed behind, notably his older brother, and his first girlfriend Jackie, greet the prodigal with mixed feelings. Staying longer than intended, he picks up a temporary job at the district school. His young nephew and Jackie’s precocious 16-year-old daughter, Celia, are less guarded, tantalised by the cryptic figure from their parents’ past. Paul senses a kindred spirit in the pushy Celia. Her ambitions to explore the world breathe some life into the embers of his own enthusiasms. When she goes AWOL, local insinuations about Paul’s interest in her become outright accusations. As fears for Celia grow, so does the appalling atmosphere of recrimination, stoked by Paul’s contempt for his accusers and his refusal to betray his young friend. Incredibly suspenseful, the film takes us with him to the brink of nervous collapse as he struggles to extricate the truth from a densely compacted legacy of resentment, greed, deceit and shame.’ New Zealand International Film Festival

Brad McGann’s brilliant, involving and ultimately devastating version of In My Father’s Den is that rare type of adaptation: one that doesn’t just successfully translate a great book (although that’s rare enough), but just as successfully updates it and refreshes it, finding new ways into its difficult emotions, amplifying and renewing its themes. The key to Maurice Gee’s novel – and this film – is that great New Zealand urge: the need to get away, to get out. The corollary of that is an equally typical New Zealand feeling: the fear or disappointment faced when coming back.

In the subtle, exceptionally capable British actor Matthew Macfadyen, McGann finds a soulful and charismatic Paul to set against a stiff and dangerously repressed Andrew (Colin Moy) ...

...His main actor he found in the English actor MM, the terrific Mr. Darcy from P&P, who could demonstrate the full spectrum/bandwidth of his stagecraft by playing the caracter of Paul..."

As Paul, however, Matthew Macfadyen gets inside the character and gives one of the defining performances of the new millennium. He stutters, he blinks, all these things that are totally against acting tradition, and he uses them to hint at the hurt Paul feels inside. Never for a moment does it feel forced. If he can recover from the mis-step that was being cast as Mr. Darcy, he could go on to an illustrious career – but it’s hard to see him ever doing better work than what he does here.

"I am sitting in a room in Spain...I am writing": the Theme of Creativity in Brad McGann's Film In My Father's Den (with Comparisons to Maurice Gee's Novel)

Best Cinematography: Stuart Dryburgh – In My Father's Den (New Zealand)

You spend a great deal of the film feeling vaguely discomfited, and that heightened sense of tension and uncertainty is owed largely to the judicious framing of each scene for maximum effect. It’s really just extraordinarily well done. Add to that a tremendous cast helmed by the ever-talented Matthew Macfadyen, and you’ve got a real gem of a film.

He also gets the best out of a hugely talented cast. While all of the supporting members do an excellent job, the honours go to the two leads. Matthew Macfadyen (familiar from TV's Spooks) shows just why he is tipped to be the next big thing and delivers a complex, psychological performance of the type that we seem to see less and less of on the big screen these days.

Macfadyen has a perfect foil in the shape of Emily Barclay, who plays the smitten student and gives - to use well-worn cliché - a performance way beyond her years

Curiosa producción neocelandesa de sorprendente calidad y recomendable para todo el mundo. No sólo porque narra una historia que se puede considerar lineal con un clímax más que interesante y elaborado, sino porque goza de cierta profundidad e introspección de los personajes que nos resultan familiares, por compartir con ellos parcelas de nuestra personalidad.

VERDICT A dark and brooding drama set on the edge of the world, In My Father's Den makes for involving viewing.