warmnights

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Wendy Hughes

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WARM NIGHTS ON A SLOW MOVING TRAIN

Western Pacific Films presents A Ross Dimsey Production. WARM NIGHTS [/] on a slow moving train. © 1987 Western Pacific Films Ltd. Made with the participation of Film Victoria. Location: Melbourne. Australian distributor: Filmpac. Video: Filmpac. Rating: M (September 1987; 2468m). 91 mins.

Producers: Ross Dimsey, Patric Juillet.
Executive producers: Ross Dimsey, Wffiiam T.    Marshall, Peter Sherman, Robert Ward.
Scriptwriters: Bob Ellis, Denny Lawrence.
Director of photography: Yuri Sokol.
Camera Operator: Nino Martinetti.
Production designer: Tracy Watt.
Costume designer: Alexandra Tynan.
Editor: Tim Lewis.
Composer: Peter Sullivan.
Sound recordist: Gary Wilkins.
Sound editors: Glen Newman, Ross Porter.
Mixer: James Currie.

Cast

Wendy Hughes (Girl), Colin Friels (Man), Norman Kaye (Salesman), John Clayton (Football Coach), Lewis Fitz-Gerald (Brian), Rod Zuanic (Young Soldier), Steve J. Spears (Singer), Grant Tilly (Politician), Peter Whitford (Steward), Peter Sullivan (Piano playing Steward), Chris Haywood (Stationmaster) John Flaus (Taxi Driver), Peter Carmody (Second-class Passenger).

    The title, with its mellow and erotic overtones, immediately promises titillation. That would also seem to be borne out when Girl (Wendy Hughes) enters the scene, an interstate train, exuding cheap glamour. She travels by train, picks up men, takes them back to her compartment and then announces there is to be a fee for her services. On each trip she assumes a different persona (different clothes, accents, disguise), no doubt to inject some variety into the scheme of things and to give some credibility to the different pick-ups. But after two such episodes we discover Girl teaching art to a class of Catholic schoolgirls and that she is undertaking her activities on the train to support a crippled brother addicted to morphine. We also realise that she is being watched by a mysterious stranger.
    Only the dab and fanciful hand of Bob Ellis could dream up a combination of these elements and enliven it with his own brand of aphorisms, bantering exchanges, references and prejudices ('Everything is fated, like the course of the class struggle in these Nostradamus years.' 'Everyone has to believe their system of belief is correct. This is what whoring means.' 'In a reasonable society no man should be held responsible happens after 3.00 am. And no woman
either'.).
    The film, then, is constructed around a series of two-hander episodes between Girl, 'playing' a succession of (somewhat mindless) Australian females, and a succession of typical (somewhat lacklustre) Australian males. It has an amusement value at least while each scene is being played. Some of these exchanges even have gamely heroic dialogue which, when delivered with some conviction by Hughes and such competent character actors as John Clayton (as the out of-work Football Coach) and Rod Zuanic (as the near-innocent Young Soldier), have a ring of truth that overcomes the somewhat tasteless/pretentious surroundings.
    The film might have remained a pleasant comedy about the deceptiveness of appearances had it continued to stay within these limits. Instead, it embarks on a further plot extravagance involving the mysterious stranger, Man (Colin Friels, affecting an Irish brogue as manufactured by a NIDA graduate). Man works for some security agency ('I work in the dark. I find things out. Such as there are to be found out.') and he takes Girl to bed in what one is led to believe is true love, and then induces her to administer a death drug to a travelling politician. The film ends in betrayal and Girl remains a lonely and saddened figure.
    The comedy thus moves to melodrama of the fruitiest kind and it requires a degree of aplomb and sang-froid on the part of both the film-makers and the audience to cope with its increasingly bizarre plot. That its essential risibility only becomes apparent on reflection is a further tribute to the power of the moving image to keep us transfixed no matter what is put before us.

GEOFF GARDNER

1     The commercially released version of this film was disowned by the director when it was cut some 35 minutes by the producer Ross Dimsey.

Reference

'Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train', a review by Lorraine Mortimer, Cinema Papers, no. 69, Mav 1988, pp. 58-9.