lonelyhearts

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Wendy Hughes

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LONELY HEARTS

[No opening production credit.1] LONELY HEARTS. © 1981 Adams Packer Film Productions. Budget: $648,000. Location: Melbourne. Australian distributor: Filmways. Video: Filmways. Rating: M (February 1982; 2621.47m). 35mm. 95 mm.

Producer: John B. Murray.
Executive producer: Phillip Adams.
Associate producer: Erwin Rado.
Scriptwriters: Paul Cox, John Clarke.
Director of photography: Yuri Sokol.
Camera operator: Barry Malseed.
Produciion designer: Neil Angwin.
Wardrobe: Frankie Hogan.
Editor: Tim Lewis.
Music arranged and performed by: Norman Kaye.
Sound recordist: Ken Hammond.
Sound editor: Peter Burgess.
Mixer: Peter Fenton.

Cast

Wendy Hughes (Patricia), Norman Kaye (Peter), Ian Finlayson (George), Julia Blake (Pamela), Jonathan Hardy (Bruce); Irene Inescort and Vic Gordon (Patricia's Parents); Ted Grove-Rogers (Peter's Father), Ronald Falk (Wig Salesman), Chris Haywood (The Detective), Diana Greentree (Sally Gordon), Margaret Steven (The Psychiatrist), Kris McQuade (Rosemarie), Maurie Fields (The Taxi Driver); Laurie Dobson, Myrtle Roberts, Irene Hewitt, Jean Campbell, Ernest Wilson, Tony Llewellyn-Jones.

    Lonely Hearts is a story about the human heart and its need to find a home. It begins with the funeral of the mother of Peter (Norman Kaye), an affable, toupéed piano tuner and teacher. The death, one week away from his fiftieth birthday, liberates Peter and he starts living a little.
    Peter contacts a dating agency and is offered an introduction to Patricia (Wendy Hughes). She is a sexually repressed thirty-year-old bank clerk, who has just left her overbearing parents to tentatively begin an independent life in her own apartment. Lonely Hearts is their love story.
    The great appeal of the film is in its celebration of the 'ordinariness' of this love story, These characters are anti-heroes with an easily understood awkwardness. These are people we might know.
    Wendy Hughes, usually an image of poise and sophistication, is cast against type. Patricia's self-conscious, awkward demeanour, her unflattering haircut, glasses and dowdy clothes, her nervous child-like obedience in the face of her parents and her sexual panic are all agonisingly felt.
    Norman Kaye's Peter, on the other hand, is curiously likeable. Part of the reason is that
his nervousness, his occupation, his family and the odd situations he gets himself into are littered with numerous comic possibilities of which Cox makes good use.
    This may be tragi-comedy, but there is a lot to smile about as Peter is talked into buying a tacky new toupee from the supercilious Wig Salesman (Ronald Falk), or when Peter, ever the furtive schoolboy, is entertained by Rosemary (Kris McQuade), a prostitute from an agency called Call-A-Kitten. Then there is his friend, George (Ian Finlayson), the hysterical amateur theatre director of the production of Strindberg's The Father, which itself is a source of comedy. And there are also Peter's histrionic, overbearing sister, Pamela (Julia Blake), and his brother-in-law, Bruce (Jonathan Hardy), the henpecked husband and theatre aspirant.
    As well, there are a number of sight gags on the perimeter that remind us not to take even the most serious things too seriously. In the opening sequence, the mourners overtake the hearse, so the hearse has to chase them through traffic to again take the lead. And in a madly eccentric interlude, Peter poses as a blind piano tuner who startles his client by driving off in a car.
    Despite all these odd characters and situations falling into the path of these two lonely hearts, somewhere along the way they still manage to fall in love. Lonely Hearts has warmth, sadness, quirkiness and humour, but it does not leave you weeping. It is a film that touches you without tearing you apart. This is one of its greatest achievements.

ANNA DZENIS

1 The producer credit reads: 'Produced for Adams Packer Films by John B. Murray'.

References
'Wendy Hughes', an interview with the actor by Richard Brennan, Cinema Papers, no. 40, October 1982, pp. 428-32.
'Paul Cox', an interview with the director by Debi Enker, Cinema Papers, no. 46, July 1984, pp. 122-9.
'Dutch Threat', an interview with director Paul Cox by Carol Bennetto, Cinema Papers, no. 59, September 1986, pp. 18-22.
'Yuri Sokol', an article (with quotes) on the director of photography by Mary Colbert, Cinema Papers, no. 74, July 1989, pp. 26-30.
'Lonely Hearts', a short review by Kathe Boehringer, Filmnews, November-December 1982, p. 25.