Review: All About E

Mandalha Rose is the title Lebanese-Australian DJ and occasional clarinet player. Despite her Middle-Eastern background, sleazy, aggressive Scottish club owner Johnny (Simon Bolton) has E dress up in a Spaniard-gimmick, even though E wants to try something along the lines of an Arabian Nights theme. The plot kicks in when E and her bow-tie wearing gay best mate Matt (The Tassie-born actor Brett Rogers, affecting a solid Irish accent) find a large sum of money, and they make the decision to take the money and run. The money belongs to Johnny, who needs it really badly for some kind of shady deal going down. So while Johnny has a profane panic attack, E and Matt head off firstly to E’s traditional Lebanese Australian parents in Wollongong (her grumpy dad is played by the one and only Lex Marinos), who don’t know that E is a lesbian and wish she’d pick up the clarinet again. Eventually Johnny tracks E’s location and threatens her family, yet for some reason E and Matt decide to head off to see E’s ex-girlfriend Trish (Julia Billington) instead. Trish lives off the beaten path, and is not remotely happy to see E, and is extremely reluctant to give her and Matt refuge, not wanting to let her back into her life after she has just managed to start putting it back together again without her. Then they have sex (in the film’s best scene, unquestionably. Shut up, you’ll agree with me). Of course Johnny and his goons have worked out where they are and head off to get his money back.

 

2015 Aussie flick from debut feature-length writer-director Louise Wadley (who comes from a short and doco background) is mostly well-acted but lumpy, and in terms of plot, owes quite a bit to Desiree Akhavan’s “Appropriate Behaviour”, which I unfortunately had just seen, so it was very fresh in my mind. The lead character in both films, for instance is from an Ethnic minority and has yet to ‘come out’ to her parents. In the other film, she was bisexual, here a lesbian. In the other film she had a college degree going to waste, here she’s a clarinet player who DJs. In both films the main character is trying to get back together with her ex-girlfriend. There are definitely differences (the girlfriend is much more charismatic in this one), but the result is much the same: Meh, and I’m not going to excuse the mediocrity just because this one’s a low-budget Aussie flick. Budget or not, we can do better than the same arty farty indie flicks set in the city. I wish we made more genre films, to be honest, I mean we just won 6 Oscars for a genre flick for cryin’ out loud. Yes, George Miller probably had a big budget to work with, but he also did the same damn movie on smaller budgets for the first two “Mad Max” films.

 

Thankfully, the druggy, inner city, Techno-infused nonsense is left behind relatively early in this film. I’m from Sydney, but specifically the Western Suburbs, and practically a hermit, so nightclubs and drugs aren’t something I can really relate to (or want to). More importantly, it’s a worldview that bores me senseless and has been done to death in film and on TV here and overseas. So I was glad that the film didn’t stay there the whole time, despite an enjoyably rotten performance by Simon Bolton. Instead, though, it largely becomes a road movie, which isn’t all that much better, especially with Brett Rogers’ uninspired performance as the token gay best friend. Mandahla Rose is pretty charismatic in the lead and co-star Julia Billington has definitely got something, too. I have a feeling this won’t be the last I see of either of them, but this just isn’t a worthy enough film for their talents.

 

I liked that the film presented a multi-ethnic view of New South Wales (Sydney and Wollongong specifically), which is definitely true to life. We get Scots, Irish, Lebanese- it’s the real Australia, at least modern Australia. However, veteran TV personality Lex Marinos is far worthier than the stereotypical Conservative immigrant father character he plays here. The guy’s a talent, but he’s got no hope here in his one scene (I guess it’s kind of ironic given his most famous role on TV’s “Kingswood Country”). What really bothered me here was that after a while I kinda wished I was watching a love story between Rose and Billington, as the duo are really nice together. Instead we get a crime plot that spawns a road movie post-breakup, with Billington’s character not in the film nearly enough for my liking. When she’s on screen, the film has its moments, otherwise, it’s really only the scummy Bolton keeping me awake here, and his presence has its own drawbacks. On its own merits, the criminal elements seem especially incongruous (the first part of the film seems like a gay version of the sleazy 80s exploitation flick “Angel”), and it’s overall pretty corny.

 

The two lead actresses are good, and Simon Bolton is terrific. It’s not a particularly bad film, just a very minor one and not particularly insightful, and certainly far from original. Also, did Rose ever actually come out to her parents by the end of the film? It’s not made clear, and seems like a real cock-up to me. Sadly, this isn’t the classic lesbian movie you want it to be.

 

Rating: C