When I was a boy one of my favourite books was the Australian children's classic "The Magic Pudding", so when I first saw "Sirens" in the cinema in 1994 I was surprised to find out a few things about the life of its author Norman Lindsay. He wrote books for both children and adults but was better known as a painter than as a writer. He appears as one of the main characters in this film, and although the story is a fictitious one, the portrait drawn of him as a hedonistic Bohemian, a promiscuous libertine and an opponent of organised religion appears to have been accurate. (He also held racist and far-right opinions, but the film tactfully omits any mention of this side of his character). One reviewer describes him as an atheist, but this does not seem correct if by "atheist" is meant a thoroughgoing rationalist. His religious views appear to have been a personal take on Graeco-Roman paganism. He believes that in a previous life he lived on the lost continent of Atlantis, and a thoroughgoing rationalist would doubtless deride belief both in Atlantis and in reincarnation.
The action is set in the 1920s. The Anglican Archbishop film of Sydney, taking exception to an allegedly blasphemous painting which Lindsay intends to exhibit, asks a young clergyman named Tony Campion to visit the artist and persuade him to withdraw the offending artwork from the exhibition. (Why the good Archbishop imagines that the notoriously anti-religious Lindsay will take any notice of anything that a priest has to say is never explained). Tony and his young wife Estella arrive at Lindsay's home in the Blue Mountains, and find that the artist is living in what might be called a menage a cinq with his wife, Rose, two models, Pru and Sheila, and the maid, Giddy. All four women both sleep with Lindsay and pose for his pictures, and are frequently seen in the nude. Lindsay makes Tony and Estella welcome, but Tony is disturbed by the atmosphere of sexual libertinism. He is also disturbed to discover that Estella seems much less disturbed than he is.
The basic idea behind the film, the clash between libertinism and religious asceticism, is a potentially interesting one, but the film doesn't make the most of it. I have never really been able to see Hugh Grant as the representative of religious asceticism; despite his dog-collar, Tony seems more like the sort of romantic comedy heroes which Grant specialised in playing during this part of his career in films like "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "The Englishman Who Went up a Hill but Came down a Mountain". (In this latter Grant also co-starred with Tara Fitzgerald, who here plays Estella). Fitzgerald has something of a thankless task. One of the main themes of the film is supposed to be Estella's sexual awakening, but the script never gives us much idea of what sort of person she was to begin with. Fitzgerald also has the disadvantage that for most of the time she is required to keep her clothes on, meaning that she tends to be overshadowed by several statuesque young women, including supermodel Elle MacPherson, wandering about naked.
Sam Neill makes Lindsay a likeable old rogue, but never does enough to overcome the argument that a lifestyle like his (not particularly uncommon in Bohemian circles, even in the 1920s) has less to do with principled opposition to Christian moral values than it does with the selfish desire to take sexual advantage of as many young women as possible. When he talks about the victims of the Inquisition, what he really means is getting his leg over. One writer talks about Lindsay "living a Hugh Hefner lifestyle"; given what we now know about Hefner those words seem truer, and less complimentary, today than they did when first written in 2004.
The film has some virtues, including some attractive photography of there spectacular Australian landscapes, but overall "Sirens" struck me as a rather trite, trivial film, much less significant or meaningful than writer/director John Duigan seemed to have imagined. A pudding of a movie, but with little magic about it. 5/10.
The action is set in the 1920s. The Anglican Archbishop film of Sydney, taking exception to an allegedly blasphemous painting which Lindsay intends to exhibit, asks a young clergyman named Tony Campion to visit the artist and persuade him to withdraw the offending artwork from the exhibition. (Why the good Archbishop imagines that the notoriously anti-religious Lindsay will take any notice of anything that a priest has to say is never explained). Tony and his young wife Estella arrive at Lindsay's home in the Blue Mountains, and find that the artist is living in what might be called a menage a cinq with his wife, Rose, two models, Pru and Sheila, and the maid, Giddy. All four women both sleep with Lindsay and pose for his pictures, and are frequently seen in the nude. Lindsay makes Tony and Estella welcome, but Tony is disturbed by the atmosphere of sexual libertinism. He is also disturbed to discover that Estella seems much less disturbed than he is.
The basic idea behind the film, the clash between libertinism and religious asceticism, is a potentially interesting one, but the film doesn't make the most of it. I have never really been able to see Hugh Grant as the representative of religious asceticism; despite his dog-collar, Tony seems more like the sort of romantic comedy heroes which Grant specialised in playing during this part of his career in films like "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "The Englishman Who Went up a Hill but Came down a Mountain". (In this latter Grant also co-starred with Tara Fitzgerald, who here plays Estella). Fitzgerald has something of a thankless task. One of the main themes of the film is supposed to be Estella's sexual awakening, but the script never gives us much idea of what sort of person she was to begin with. Fitzgerald also has the disadvantage that for most of the time she is required to keep her clothes on, meaning that she tends to be overshadowed by several statuesque young women, including supermodel Elle MacPherson, wandering about naked.
Sam Neill makes Lindsay a likeable old rogue, but never does enough to overcome the argument that a lifestyle like his (not particularly uncommon in Bohemian circles, even in the 1920s) has less to do with principled opposition to Christian moral values than it does with the selfish desire to take sexual advantage of as many young women as possible. When he talks about the victims of the Inquisition, what he really means is getting his leg over. One writer talks about Lindsay "living a Hugh Hefner lifestyle"; given what we now know about Hefner those words seem truer, and less complimentary, today than they did when first written in 2004.
The film has some virtues, including some attractive photography of there spectacular Australian landscapes, but overall "Sirens" struck me as a rather trite, trivial film, much less significant or meaningful than writer/director John Duigan seemed to have imagined. A pudding of a movie, but with little magic about it. 5/10.