duetforfour

The

Wendy Hughes

Homepage

DUET FOR FOUR

[No opening production credit.1] DUET FOR FOUR. Alternative titles: 'Toy Man' and 'Partners' (working titles). Š1981 Burstall Nominees Pty Ltd. Made in association with the Victorian Film Corporation and the Australian Film Commission. Locations: Melbourne, Queenscliff. Australian distributor: GUO. Opened: March 1982. Video: Syme Home Video. Rating: M (September 1981; 2621.47m).2 35mm. Panavision. 97 mins.

Producers: Tom Burstall, Tim Burstall.
Scripwriter: David Williamson.
Director of photography: Dan Burstall.
Production designer: Herbert Pinter.
Costume designer: Jane Hyland.
Editor: Edward McQueen-Mason.
Composer: Peter Sullivan.
Sound recordist: Phil Stirling.
Sound editors: Edward McQueen-Mason, Louise Johnson.
Mixer: Peter Fenton.

Cast

Mike Preston (Ray Martin), Wendy Hughes (Barbara Dunstan), Michael Pate (AI Geisman), Diane Cilento (Margot Martin), Gary Day (Terry Byrne), Vanessa Leigh (Dianne Sanders), Warwick Comber (Cliff Ingersoll), Sigrid Thornton (Caroline Martin), Clare Binney (Jacki Nesbitt), Peter Aanensen (Senior Detective), Arthur Dignam (Doug Quincey), Peter Statford3 (Bernie Crittendon), Rod Mullinar (Ken Overland)4; John Proper (Foreman), David Morley (Dougal Dunstan), Justin Morley (Erik Dunstan), Leah Steventon (Mary Dunstan), Doug Bowley (Toby Carroll), Joseph Donghia (Unemployed Young Man), Jenta Sobbott (UnempIoyed Young Woman), Roy Edmonds (Advertising Man).

Duet for Four is clearly Tim Burstall's attempt to make a 1980s version of Petersen (1974). It shares many of the earlier film's themes - the 'mid-life crisis' of earthy, working-class Ray Martin (Mike Preston) struggling with the middle-class milieu (corporatism, the art world, bourgeois sexual manners) into which he has reluctantly but inevitably ascended. David Williamson's script was in fact written in the mid- 1970's, and the film betrays a 1970's (even a 1960's) sensibility, particularly in the representation of the foppish young artist, Cliff Ingersoll (Warwick Comber), lover of Ray's wife, Margot (Diane Cilento), and the student bohemia in which his daughter,
Caroline (Sigrid Thornton), lives.
    Petersen's romantic celebration of its earthy, ocker hero was politically contentious, but at least the film vividly dramatised the various sides of its argument. Duet for Four, by contrast, is a dull film, and Burstall's familiar view of class conflict seems no longer provocative or even accurate. Partly this is because the 'male pathos' here is far softer. Ray's central drives are towards harmony and reconciliation in his family relations, and a return to his former glory days when he worked on the preservation of fine old trains - a dramatically leaden symbol of old-style masculine individualism - rather than squandering his life away as a 'toy man' (Williamson's original title) selling mere commodities.
    The film attempts to build a two-tier dramatic metaphor, paralleling the moves in a corporate take-over with the vicissitudes of personal-sexual relations. Just as the expatriate Aussie-turned-American AI Geisman (Michael Pate) is criticised by the film for his aggressive, 'invasive' business tactics, he also embodies predatory sexuality. (In an Australian vs American joke typical of many films of the period, Geisman extols a porno video - 'the screwing's great' - while the locals regard it with wry, unaroused bemusement). All the film's representative bourgeoisie are also faulted (Margot, Cliff, Caroline's bohemian companions) for being selfishly possessive or cold in relationships. The 'haven' the film creates for its hero in this heartless world is his relationship with Caroline - as strangely charged as it is unexplored, particularly in the absurd scene where Ray, in a rage, breaks into Caroline's house to seize her childhood doll and bring it to her hospital bed.
    Duet for Four lacks Burstall's customary directorial flair. Its disconcertingly television-like, perfunctory stylisation earns Brian McFarlane's derogatory comparison with 'American soap opera'5; Peter Sullivan's blandly tuneful musical score is especially irritating. It must be mentioned, however, that this same 'flatness' - the reduction of mise-en-scene and plot to minimal permutations of characters and motives, as in Mark Rappaport's avant-garde films - inspired perhaps the only favourable account of the film, Sam Rhodie's review in Cinema Papers. Unlikely as it may seem in hindsight, Burstall's method (here and in other films) fleetingly encountered its true echo in the academic practice of structuralist-semiotic film analysis. I don't think Petersen (Jack Thompson) would approve.

ADRIAN MARTIN

1    An end title reads 'Made in association with Victorian Film Corporation, Australian Film Commission, Temjad, Greater Union Organisation, L. Ian Roach, Tim Burstall and Associates.'
2    Made and rated under the title 'Partners'. The AFC brochure on the film cites the length as 2661 m.
3    The front credits have surname as 'Stratford', which is correct.
4    The end credits are given in order of appearance; up to this point, credits are in the order on the front credits.
5    Brian McFarlane, Australian Cinema 1970-1985, William Heinemann Australia, Melbourne, 1987, p. 130.

References
'Duet for Four', a review by Sam Rhodic, Cinema Papers, no. 37, April 1982, pp. 169-70.
'Duet for Four', a review by Peter Kemp, Filmnews, March 1982, p. 13.