Cet obscur objet du désir

I should know it. Christmas time rarely makes for good cinema.
Do you remember Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie? The main character, Marnie, was a thief but, above all, she was frigid. To make his point, Hitchcock gave her Sean Connery as husband and showed her throwing herself into a swimming pool after he imposed conjugal duty. She'd rather drown than touch Sean Connery or be touched by him. That woman obviously had a huge problem!

Well, Australia is a sort of libido test for heterosexual women too. If you're capable of watching that almost 3 hour film until the end, chuckling instead of sighing over it, your libido is just fine...

I wish I could say something kind about the film, but as films go it sucks. It's nothing like Gone With The Wind and Kidman's character is nothing like Scarlett O'Hara. I don't have any problem with genre and entertainment per se, I have a problem with bad writing and bad cinematography. In that regard, Australia does everything that should be forbidden in a cinema class. All the movie cliches are there. All of them! The postcard-like shots, the ridiculous slow-motions, the slushy music to emphasize emotional moments, the stereotyped situations, the laughable camera angles, the overused lines. Some movies do that on purpose, selling themselves as parodies–like that western starring Sharon Stone and Russel Crowe that was a tribute to Spaghetti westerns, or even like Van Helsing, two movies that were a lot of fun– but Australia isn't supposed to be a parody. It's a wannabe-saga-epic-romance film. As such, it failed completely.

Wanna see a good Australian movie on the issue of stolen mixed-blood children? Watch The Rabbit Proof Fence ! Now that's epic, inspired, moving, heartbreaking yet uplifting and beautiful. I know that Baz Luhrmann's idea wasn't to show reality but to portray a mythologised Australia: fine! but mythology doesn't necessarily mean artificial cinema, kitsch and clichés. The boy was cute but I wasn't moved by his story, and the romance did nothing to me.

However, I watched Australia until the final credits, because while one half of my brain–the thinking one, was processing the commonplaces and mocking the bad stuff, the other half–the basic one that is obviously ruled by urges, kept telling the former"Oh shut up and enjoy the pretty! Look at these arms, look at his arse, look at this hairy torso! Wow...Oh dimples!".

Hugh Jackman is the embodiment of the handsome manly man here. His character doesn't even need a name for he isn't really a character but an archetype. He's the Drover; the drool-inducing drover. I already found him very attractive, we all already knew he had an incredible body– his good looks had been used on screen before – but this film goes beyond the usual stuff. Anything Jackman does here, either he sits or stands up or walks or rides a horse or lies down, or just stands against a tree, he does it in a sexy way that makes you wish to become that seat, that pair of trousers, that ground, that horse or that tree. Actually he keeps posing and showing off his perfect body during the whole movie; whether he's filmed from the front or from the back or from the side, or from below, he exudes confident manliness, oozes sex-appeal; whether he's dressed or shirtless, bearded or shaved clean, wet or dry, he's handsome and just hot; actually anything Jackman-related is testosterony, sensual, pure rowrrrrrrrrrr, shot to make us swoon and fan ourselves. He is the eternal man, the Man of the Dreaming–note that this is my only attempt to connect the silly writing to actual Aboriginal culture.

I know movies whose main goal was to flatter an actress whom the filmmaker was usually in love with, but it's probably the first time I see a film that is a nearly 3 hour advert for a sort of manly perfection, a male sex object. And the villain is played by David Wenham, the wonderful Faramir from The Lord of The Ring, who isn't hard on the eyes either...

So yes, I'm guilty of putting aside my cinema expectations and switching onto lust-mode. Sometimes, because it's Christmas, you just want to forget the poor stuff, focus on the pleasant things, lie back half-satisfied, and purr.