Film

Rip It Up, Issue 68, 1 March 1983, Page 27

Film

William Dart

TOOTSIE Director: Sydney Pollack I experienced quite a frisson when the Golden Globes Best Actor and Actress awards were given to performers who had crossed genders in their particular films. One of course was Julie Andrews in Blake Edwards' dazzling Victor/Victoria and the other was Dustin Hoffman in Sydney Pollack's Tootsie. Hoffman's character, like Andrews', is an out-of-work performer who finds that he is able to gain employment by cross-

dressing. In Victor/Victoria, it was to work in a 1930 s Parisian cabaret, in Tootsie it means playing a tetchy hospital administrator in a television soap opera. Victor/Victoria made some thoughtful and agreeably liberal statements on sexual stereotyping but Tootsie goes deeper than this as Hoffman ends by admitting to Jessica Lange that his "Dorothy" character is in fact part of him. Directorially, the film certainly isn't great shakes and most of the humour comes from Hoffman's squeaky Dorothy persona and his/her struggles with costuming, ad libbing during his television roles and restraining his lust for Jessica Lange. The lampooning of television's Soapland, though fairly obvious, is amusing. Tootsie is a movie with its heart

in the right place and that s something to say these days. UTU Director: Geoff Murphy We have been waiting for Utu with a great deal of curiosity, both to see. what Geoff Murphy comes up with after the successful Goodbye Pork Pie and to see how the film approaches its subject material in our socially conscious 80s. After all, the days of Rewi's Land Stand are long gone. It tells of the short career of, a Maori rebel, Te Wheke, in the 1870 s. Te Wheke is a fictitious character, inflamed by the seemingly unmotivated slaughter of his people to conduct his own personal vengeance upon the European community.

As an adventure film, Utu puts across its point with pace and panache super stunts, all the trimmings of modish violence we expect in the 80s and Bruno Lawrence's manic experiments with home-made double and quadruple barrel rifles seem to suggest that the film could be a Mad Max 111 of a century ago. The film has its weaknesses. Although issues are never as simple as a straight Maori-Euro-pean conflict (after all Wiremu and Te Wheke are as different in their attitudes as are the main trio of Europeans) the character development is notably uneven. Anzac Wallace's final orations before his execution may be extraordinarily [effective but no Maori character j registers I as vividly as Wi Kuki Kaa's Wiremu, caught as he is between the two opposing cultures. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S { SEX 1 COMEDYflgpWßreHgg Director: Woody Alien It's a well known fact that inside every comic is a serious artist just waiting to burst out after,all,, it's often through humour that we are able to give vent to some of our strongest and most profound sentiments. Allen's 1978 film f lnteriors showed just how serious he could be, and indeed a little more light relief would have been welcome on that particular occasion. His latest, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, catches the

perfect balance between the comic and the serious as Allen gives us a comedy of manners set at a weekend country party in turn-of-the-century America. At one point in the film, a character quips that sex alleviates all tension whilst love only causes it, all of which seems ample motivation for the many varieties of cat-and-mouse games that the six characters play all over the host's estate. It's the superb casting (and scripting) of these characters that gives the film its inner strength. I particularly liked Jose Ferrer's ridiculously pompous academic and Mary Steenburgen's gentle strength as Allen's wife. Mia Farrow is an adroit combination of innocence and shrewdness. All in all, MNSC is a beautifully observed film, with enough Woody Allen wisecracks and moments of madness to keep fans happy. The fact that as a director he can incorporate these within such a gentle and reflective movie is a mark of his skill as a filmmaker.