Praise

The basic story of Praise, from first-time director John Curran, is fairly simple: a laid-back, chain-smoking asthmatic named Gordon (Peter Fenton) becomes involved with Cynthia (Sacha Horler), a nymphomaniac afflicted with severe eczema. From the start, their co-dependent relationship is not healthy, but, as the gulf between their sexual needs widens, they begin to grate on one another. It is clear from the beginning that the better developed and more interesting of the two protagonists is Cynthia. So, when the concluding scenes focus not on her, but on the considerably less engaging Gordon, the resulting anticlimax causes the otherwise-searing movie to end on a discordant note. Despite the off-key finale, Praise is still a powerful and occasionally disturbing experience. Most movies, especially mainstream ones, like to tap-dance around sexual themes for fear of offending a puritanical audience. Praise attacks these issues head-on by illustrating the kinds of sexual trade-offs that have to be endured for a relationship to work. In this case, it's the woman who has the sexually voracious appetite and the man who is passive, but the patterns would be similar if the circumstances were reversed. Praise is as honest emotionally at it is when dealing with sexual issues - it doesn't lather on the melodrama to make its point. It is compelling precisely because it stays focused on the characters and their dysfunctional, psychologically complex relationship.

The term "loser" to an Australian ear has a nasty harsh American stridency to it which seems to absolve the person uttering it from any sympathy for the "loser" in question. Now Gordon and Cynthia are definitely "losers" but at the end of this film we see beauty in an otherwise fairly pathetic pair. Gordon, in his mid-twenties, a country boy who's drifted to the city, works in a bottle store and lives in a once grand but now squalid rooming house occupied by various broken-down old men. He meets Cynthia, a barmaid, at work and for no particular reason they both quit. She moves in with him when her military parents are transferred. Gordon's chief recreation is drinking, and hers is sex, and after a while Gordon is dreading going to bed. Yet something happens between them and affection grows, even though we can see it's hopeless. There is beauty even in a doomed relationship between two misfits.

Quite why their lives have become so aimless is not really explored; both seem to have untraumatic backgrounds and neither is really cut off from their families. Gordon's lost love Rachel appears towards the end but he's lost interest in her, too. Gordon is at home amongst the deros, prematurely old, out of steam, life over before it really got started.

It sounds depressing and it is, but the relationship is tender and warm - a less melodramatic version of "Leaving Las Vegas." The story is set in Brisbane, though apparently not filmed there, and the humid stifling summer atmosphere is well evoked. It doesn't really explain the lack of motivation though.

Great, thrilling, scarily intimate. In its first half hour, this astonishing Australian feature gets so close to its characters you feel the director is touching your skin. Gordon (Peter Fenton) is a type well known to people in that age between Bill Clinton and the Backstreet Boys: smart, alert, passive, asexual, easily emotionally manipulated. Cynthia (Sacha Horler) is a big girl with a big appetite for beer and the male organ; she needs sex desperately, helplessly, in the way a love-starved puppy races in circles in need of a touch. The movie records the birth pangs, first steps, clunky adolescence, and quick death of a relationship. Like Wong Kar-wai's HAPPY TOGETHER, most of it takes place in a crappy flophouse apartment. That's it--that's the movie. And every detail in it, from the stigmata-like blood flow of Cynthia's eczemous skin, to the fellatio in a milky bathtub, to the reaction of a horny couple to a violent row, is flawless.

The director, John S. Cullen, is all about getting it right, and so he does--to the point where you can find yourself mouthing aloud the dialogue seconds before it happens. This isn't because the movie is cliched; quite the opposite. It's because the movie gets things about falling in and out of love that no one--nobody, not even those who have made the Big Famous Movies About Sex--has hit. PRAISE seems to have had no luck in the theatres; perhaps it will live on in its IFC afterlife. All praise to Strand Releasing, the best distributors of foreign and independent movies in America. If you want to see a non-studio movie on a subject other than a cute boy and his grandpa, or a wily chef who woos all the ladies, you have Strand to thank for your satisfaction.

Loved the book, I've read it many times, but the movie did leave out much of the plot. The book was more sexually charged, less depressing with greater depth. Had some great dark comedic moments though probably greatly exaggerated from McGahan's own experiences.

I lived in Brisbane during the early 90's with my girlfriend at a boarding house in inner city Windsor. A few old alcoholics lived in the rooms above. We were poor uni students so the book takes me back to that time. I can relate to those wasted days of drugs, alcohol, sex and strange nights out in The Valley.

I'd say a lot of Andrew McGahan's novel would be autobiographical as he went to The University of Queensland though dropped out before finishing his Arts Degree. He probably worked at one of the local bottle shops like the RE, Regatta or the Cri, had a sex crazy girlfriend and drank a lot of alcohol and experimented with drugs as you do.

This is a coming of age story that I believe many could relate to from their youth. You must read the novel, it's great.

Like the previous reviewer I read about "Praise's" appearance in our local art theatre (may have been the same showing) and came down to check it out. Like great writing, great film-making successfully journals the trials of everyday human conditions, rather than stringing together cinematic cliches. "Praise" accomplishes this as we immediately believe there are no actors, only we the audience feeling rather voyueristic and nodding with every move Gordon & Cynthia make as if we would have done the same. Unlike many directors, John Curran leaves much to his audience's judgement. I knew I'd watched the great telling of a great story, but also had a sincere appreciation for Curran's respect of our integrity as viewers. I'm left wondering why it took two years for "Praise" to reach Hollywood. Did someone in Australia put it in a bottle and throw it in the ocean toward the United States, drifting toward North America while we were plagued with "Gone in 60 Seconds" and "Mission Impossible 2"? Thank you!