The Home Song Stories

J and I go to the movies on a regular basis and our choice of movie depends on the time it is being shown. Our time frame is between 6.15 and 6.45pm on a week night. Last week the Australian film ‘The Home Song Stories’ was on at our time. We chat about the movie over coffee but it would be good to get other opinions. I will post my thoughts on our weekly movie. Even if I don't get your thoughts it may help you to decide whether you want to see the film or not.

The Home Song Stories is the story of a Hong Kong nightclub singer who has two children and marries an Aussie sailor, Bill played by Steve Vidler. He brings them all home to his suburban brick veneer house that is inhabited by his mother. The mother is portrayed as a bigoted, sour and unhappy woman who resents the new comers and makes no effort to welcome them. We don’t find out why she is like this or in fact anything about her life and this is a pity.

Bill leaves them there while he goes back to sea. This is an obvious recipe for disaster.

The film grabbed me right at the beginning and held me as the characters pitch from one disaster to the next. I pitched with them and in the end J and I were wrung out and emotionally drained

The film is said to be the true childhood story of the director Tony Ayres. Joan Chen, who is such a pleasure to look at, plays Rose, his mother and eleven year old Joel Lok plays Tony Ayres or Tom as he is called in the film. Joel was remarkable in the part. Very expressionless most of the time but his actions conveyed all the emotion. J and I wondered afterward whether because his face showed so little emotion we projected what we thought he was feeling onto a sort of blank canvas. It’s hard to know I would have to see it again to be sure.

You do feel a sort of emptiness or desolation in the characters but this doesn’t carry through to the end because we know that things turn out surprisingly well for the two children.

This is a film for a chat around the water cooler and I hope enough people see it to make it talked about. It is easy to discuss what Rose could have and should have done but like so many of the film’s characters she was flawed. It’s also hard to take ourselves back to the mid 60’s and understand how life would have been for someone like Rose, a night club singer from Hong Kong, dumped into suburbia with no friends or support and a husband who takes off to sea again. Bill her husband is a remarkable character. He appears not to understand Rose but he is forgiving and accepting of the person she is and is ready to look after her and her children should they need him.

A great movie – go to see it if you get the chance.