Review: Book of Revelations

Anna Torv asks her dancer boyfriend Tom Long to buy her a pack of cigarettes, and he doesn’t come back. For two weeks. When he finally comes back, he seems a shattered, broken and frighteningly quiet man. His dance mentor Greta Scacchi (dying of some form of cancer that has worsened since Long disappeared) had sent her cop ex-husband Colin Friels in search of Long, and when Long does return, the compassionate copper tries to get the clearly troubled fella to open up (he barely speaks to either Torv or Scacchi on his return) and hopefully eventually heal. But it is through flashback that the audience is made aware of the young man’s ordeal, captured, raped and tortured over several days by several masked women (one of whom is played distractingly by Torv, for no plot-related reason whatsoever), for reasons not clearly defined. Deborah Mailman is the sweet and bubbly girl Long leaves his girlfriend for, but the young man’s scars aren’t even close to being healed. Look for many familiar Aussie faces in small roles, including veteran TV actress Garner (“The Henderson Kids”, “Raw FM”, “Blue Water High”, “City Homicide”) as one of a slew of girls Long picks up on the prowl after the incident, as he searches for his captors.

Artistic trash is still trash nonetheless and this controversial Australian film (perhaps the nadir from this country, though I’ve seen a lot of other stinkers from my home land before seeing this film) from Ana Kokkinos (the equally controversial and confronting “Head-On”) is just about the biggest load of trash the Australian film industry has ever churned out. One could praise the braveness of Long’s performance, or indeed commend some of the supporting performances (Mailman in particular is a ray of sunshine during a gloomy thunderstorm of horrendously Apocalyptic proportions, and on reflection Friels’ calmness and sensitivity are just right). Maybe one could even find merit in the notion of raising awareness of male sexual abuse (particularly perpetrated by females, as is the case here). But y’know what? Fuck it. I won’t do that. If you do, you are just glorifying trash. This film is the most pretentiously dressed-up piece of exploitation I’ve ever seen- ooh, it’s a male being abused by women, how different! It must be art! Tom Long’s showing us just how ‘long’ he is! Look, a penis! Haven’t seen that in an Aussie film lately! (and we only see it because the film is ‘artistically-inclined’, otherwise it would’ve been...um...chopped by our censors). Look, a strap-on dildo! And hey, it’s set in the world of dance, it must be deep and meaningful and high art, then! Such nuance! Such elegance! Such crap! Pretentious, dishonest garbage.

This film features everything I hate about Australian cinema- except that here, it’s really only pretending to be high art. Say what you will about films like “Lantana” and “Picnic at Hanging Rock” (neither of which I much liked), at least they weren’t just trying to be artsy to hide ulterior motives, they really were non-mainstream fare. If this film’s gender roles were reversed, it would feature Charles Bronson and be called “Death Wish VI: All Praises to Misogyny” and would be routinely blasted by the same critics likely to be gushing over this turd. This film is sick, dishonest, uber-pretentious, and unpleasant from start to finish. Why anyone would want to subject themselves to this worthless waste of celluloid is beyond my comprehension.

And yet, it could’ve worked, if only it were more restrained (though I am no prude), or at least more honest about its exploitative intentions (say what you will about revenge films like “Coffy” or “Foxy Brown”, at least they were more honest about their intentions to entertain at the basest level of exploitation, and they worked wonderfully well on that level). Look at “Shine”, another film about a man who went through abuse, and set in a somewhat high-brow world too, though in that case it was a true story, and of a father-son nature, not of a sexual nature. But it did deal with abuse dished out on males, and unlike this film, it was not obsessed with the objectification of the naked male form and full of depraved sexual torture to the point where the message is rendered mute at best. And although “Shine” indeed was set in a high-brow world of classical music (and we did get a nude scene, come to think of it), it was crucial to the film’s story. As far as I’m concerned, this film (and presumably the book it was based on) merely tacked it on to try and put the film on a higher pedestal. But it’s just trash folks. It’s a rose-coloured, peppermint flavoured turd. Apparently the director thinks that anyone who criticises the film really needs to look to themselves, that their reaction reveals more about them than the film. No, Ana, it’s more complicated than that. My reaction reveals both my flaws and insecurities as a male, but also your fundafriggingmental limitations as a filmmaker.

This film offended me in the extreme, proving once again that the Aussie film industry clearly has its head up its own arse a lot of the time. Male victims of sexual abuse (or any abuse) deserve better than this crap. Probably the worst Australian film since “Turkey Shoot". Let the hate mail commence!

Rating: F