Brilliant Lies

This tale of workplace sexual harassment is an interesting study on how people lie, cajole, and manipulate in order to get what they want. Unfortunately, the script glosses over too many potential areas of deeper insight, leaving the audience somewhat unsatisfied. Perhaps this is because it is based on a play - indeed, the dialogue and staging often resembles theatre more than usual film structure - and therefore the audience is expected to provide more of their own interpretation to fill in gaps left by the writer. The family dynamic and examination of parental sexual abuse is particularly poorly done; it felt tacked on and shallow.

I found the opening music to be entirely wrong for setting the ambiance of the film; the music is silly and light, whereas the film is not.

LaPaglia and the Carides sisters are fabulous in this movie. Gia Carides is good as a party girl who is desperate to convince an arbitrator and tribunal that she really was victimized by her boss, playing out the old "whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no" chant. Zoe Carides does a wonderful job portraying the feminist sister caught between being supportive and wondering just how much of the story really is true.

LaPaglia is the nasty boss, and so thoroughly wonderful in the role that I got chills. I'm a LaPaglia fan and generally prefer it when he plays nice but flawed guys, so in this case his loathsome character really got to me. It's a testament to his mastery of his craft that I found it hard to look at him by the end of the movie - and this is a guy I have as my desktop wallpaper! In particular, a line towards the end of the film was delivered with such malice that remembering it is making me uncomfortable even this many hours later. It's not an easy performance to watch, but I do recommend it nonetheless.

The greatest comfort to combat the on-screen unpleasantness is that LaPaglia and Gia Carides are a seemingly happy married couple!

I would say that this film is recommended for LaPaglia and Gia Carides fans, but not the best sample of either of their work. The two were also together in Paperback Romance, which is a completely different genre but much more entertaining.

As you might expect from a movie based on a stage play, this one is relentlessly talky, and the heavy Australian accents create an extra problem, at least if you're not from Down Under. But it's very well-acted (hard to believe LaPaglia and Carides are a real-life couple when you see how convincingly they hate each other here!) and, in its best moments, utterly engrossing; depending mostly on your sex, you may find yourself rooting for either of the two main characters while still having your doubts about him/her. The ending, however, is not very satisfying. (**1/2)

"Brilliant Lies", which seems to be trying to make a statement about the sexual assault of females, begins as a tale of workplace sex harassment and stumbles around somewhere between "All In the Family" and a soap opera by film's end. A journeyman Aussie flick farught with stereotypical superficial characters, "BL" is a mediocre watch at best with more to fault than favor. D+

Very cliched, flat drama shows all its stagy origins while making you wonder how it ever hung together as a theatrical piece - nothing is subtle or implied; it all sits out in the open, almost instantly superficial and unnuanced (despite the ambiguity surrounding the ultimate truth of the case), and shot in a flat way that does nothing to elevate it. Carides' performance is hard to read, which in part is deliberate but in this context ultimately leaves you out in limbo; LaPaglia's role is largely reactive; Barrett is just awful (although awful in a way so common in Australian movies that it may - shudder the thought - be quite realistic) as the father, and the movie's echoes of Oleanna (in the issue of who's telling the truth, the overall staginess, and in the feeling that she may be crazy or unreasonable) are unhelpful in that they expose the unelevated language and general clunkiness of this version, to its considerable detriment. The film certainly doesn't contribute anything to the cinema of sexual politics (unless it be the modest benefit of an "Australian perspective").

There are three facts which I believe will help those who have not yet seen the film make up their minds whether or not they will enjoy it. First, the film was shot in Melbourne, Australia which in itself makes the film a "must see" for anyone who lives there or who has lived there. Second, the film was shot on a small budget and a tight time frame (30 days, I believe) which means that the film is not 'about' special effects or complex action scenes. Third, the film is based closely on a stage play so the viewer's interest has to be in the characters and the storyline.

I felt that the film was unusual in that it presented the different (and often opposed) viewpoints of as many as four characters in a way that led you to sympathise, or at least empathise, with all of them. The film is not judgmental and does not present a black and white conclusion. The characters are compromised, not heroic, and I would describe them as realistic rather than merely stereotypical.