FILM REVIEW: BRIDE FLIGHT

Frank (Waldemar Torenstra) and Esther (Anna Drjver) in Bride Flight.

Thresh beholdened

By Ed Rampell

Ben Sombogaart’s Bride Flight is a highly recommended adult movie. By this, I don’t mean that it’s porn – although it does have some eroticism and a glorious nude scene. Rather, I simply mean that this foreign film has mature subject matter and is for grownups who think. Bride Flight also has a fairly complex form that requires a sustained attention span, so it’s definitely not for mall rats intent on mindless action and escapism on multiplex screens. 

As its name implies, Bride Flight is indeed about wives-to-be who fly on the so-called “Last Great Air Race” from Europe to New Zealand back in 1953, when these globe straddling jaunts were very big adventures. The passengers aboard the KLM carrier that participated in and won this real life aerial contest included 40 Dutch immigrants, mostly women seeking to escape post-WWII Holland’s hardships by starting new lives at Christchurch, where their Dutch fiancés awaited them. A pretty offbeat premise, as far as plots are concerned.

The film focuses on three women and a man on this flight that, back in the 1950s, took days to make. Frank touches the lives of the trio, and although the émigrés’ existences become intertwined in their adapted country, they go on to lead very separate lives, yet remain intimately bound. In terms of Bride Flight’s complexity, it effortlessly shifts cinematically from past to present, so the romantic saga goes back and forth from the young to the aged immigrants. The technique requires viewers to focus on the unfolding saga, the way that Alain Resnais’ circa 1960 classics Last Year at Marienbad and Hiroshima, Mon Amour likewise bent time and continuity. 

Bride Flight therefore has two actors playing each major character -- 20-somethings for the new arrivals, seniors for the present day Dutch transplants. American audiences will be most familiar with the rugged Dutch action hero Rutger Hauer (1982’s Blade Runner, 2005’s Batman Begins, this year’s Hobo With a Shotgun) who portrays Frank. Waldemar Torenstra plays young Frank. Ada has married a religious zealot and is portrayed by nubile Karina Smulders, whose smoldering sex scene with Frank lights up the screen. Pleuni Touw depicts the older Ada.

As young Marjorie, Elise Schaap’s character makes the best marriage of the trio, although life tosses her a curveball, causing her to become obsessive and possessive. Petra Laseur plays petulant Marjorie as an older and perhaps wiser lady. Probably the most interesting character is Esther (Anna Drjver), a Jew who, unlike her family members, survived the Holocaust, although its lingering, PTSD-like effects continue, understandably, to haunt Esther. 

Esther retains a strong individualistic streak and along with the jealous Marjorie, shares a “deep dark secret.” Esther is a fashion designer. (Interestingly, Drjver is actually a runway model, so talk about tailor-made casting.) While movies and TV shows heavily favor certain professions -- crime fighters, doctors, journalists, attorneys and the like -- Frank’s career path is fairly unusual for motion picture protagonists, and another sign as to what an outstandingly unusual film Bride Flight is. 

Bride Flight's location shooting in New Zealand enhances the overall production, which is handsome to behold and drink in. Like most movies set and/or shot in the South Seas, the indigenous Islanders and their Islands serve mainly as backdrop for the really important doings of the Caucasoid stars. However, in Bride Flight it’s not even New Zealand’s dominant majority culture of white people or “Pakehas” of English origin who are featured; it’s a Dutch minority.

Nevertheless, this 130-minute, partially subtitled film is an excellent, well-crafted feature for auds who prefer their movies mature. Bride Flight is a realistic slice of life, albeit in an unusual milieu. Director Sombogaart’s Twin Sisters was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2004, and gazing into my crystal ball, I predict the same for Bride Flight, which has also earned some richly deserved prizes on the film festival circuit. Bride Flight, like fine wines, shows that films taste better when aged.

 

  

 

FILM REVIEW: TOPP TWINS

Jools and Lynda Topp of Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls.

Double whammy

By Don Simpson

I was sorry to have missed the 2010 Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival screening of The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls but it is damn nice to know that someone (Argot Pictures) has the proverbial balls to release Leanne Pooley's documentary about the infamous (at least in their homeland of New Zealand) lesbian identical twins who mix character comedy sketches with folk/country songs. According to Lynda Topp, "We're not comedians; we are singers who are funny." 

Who would have ever dreamed that the politically-charged performances by Jools and Lynda Topp would become so darn successful? For nearly three decades, this "anarchist variety act" has been defying accepted logic about mainstream entertainment. The Topp sisters boast an audience that spans social and economic classes: rural farmers and city folk, queers and straights, seniors and anarchistic youth. Taking on political topics such as nuclear power, the environment, apartheid, women’s' issues, and queer rights, the Topps' performances never come across as mean spirited or patronizing. The Topps are not on stage to ruffle feathers or make enemies, their philosophy is simple: "Getting people to laugh is the most political thing you can do." 

What is most surprising is their inherent talent as songwriters -- they were inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame in September 2008. The Topps juggle their knack for humor and comedic timing with poignant and subversive lyrics, and the entire package is wrapped nicely in the flawless harmonies of what sounds like a stereo voice. Jools and Lynda work together as a pair -- they also live together with their respective partners under one roof -- and their knack for reading each other's minds is readily apparent (both while performing and during interviews). In many ways, their uncanny ability to determine what the other twin is going to do or say is what really gives them an edge over other musicians. 

It is the twins themselves who dominate the screen time of Pooley's documentary (and rightly so). Pooley reveals an ample array of archival footage of the Topps at various stages in their lives -- from their childhood days on their family's dairy farm in rural New Zealand to early busking performances to various concert performances. We witness the many comedic personas adopted by the Topps -- Belle and Belle, Ken and Ken, Camp Mother and Camp Leader, Raylene and Brenda, Prue and Dilly -- both on stage and in interview segments (during the interviews, Pooley cleverly morphs the characters back into Jools and Lynda). Pooley also interviews the Topps' contemporaries, friends, fans, and their parents (who have supported their two daughters' homosexuality). 

The Topp twins are an incredibly unique part of New Zealand's popular culture, and Pooley's documentary does an excellent job of conveying why. Hopefully as The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls tours the world, Jools and Lynda will wrangle up an even more diverse audience. Their messages clearly need to be heard around the world, and hopefully the power of this documentary will help spread their gospel.