Main Cast: Lisa Harrow, Bruno Ganz, Kerry Fox, Miranda Otto, Kiri Paramore
Release Year: 1992
Country: AU
Run Time: 105 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Gillian Armstrong directed this quietly bittersweet and coldly ironic examination of the death throes of a crumbling marriage. Set in the lush summer light of Sydney, the film examines the dying marriage of Beth (Lisa Harrow), a middle-aged writer living with her French husband J.P. (Bruno Ganz) and her teenage daughter Annie (Miranda Otto). Beth and J.P. are maintaining their marriage through a delicate thread of disinterest and patronizing that is torn asunder with the arrival of Beth's younger sister Vicki (Kerry Fox). Along with the arrival of Vicki, Beth and J.P. take in a boarder, a clean-cut teen named Tim (Kiri Paramore). These two new additions to the family infuse the home with a new vitality, but that only holds the dissolution of the marriage in abeyance for a time. In an effort to make peace with her father (Bill Hunter), Beth takes him on a trip to the outback, where she believes she might be able to communicate with him. With Beth gone, J.P. and Vicki have an affair, and they abandon the family to start life on their own. Beth, now alone, feels a sense of liberation and purpose and begins to start her life anew. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
Review
Gillian Armstrong is often thought of as a feminist director, and while this film does focus on a woman, the director's methods are too ambiguous and subtle and her effects too complex to allow this brilliant anatomy of the end of a relationship to be thought of as a women's film. The film presents a situation not uncommon in the kind of bohemian ménage it depicts, one which usually works to the disadvantage of the wife: when the couple reaches a certain age, the husband is without the guilt or hypocrisy which often prevents his more conventional counterparts from looking elsewhere for fulfillment, sexual or otherwise. Beth (Lisa Harrow), a successful Australian writer, knows that her marriage to the egotistical J.P. Bruno Ganz is winding down, and that their issues may be insurmountable, but it's not until her younger sister, Vicki (Kerry Fox), arrives that the wheels of change begin to move. In a film that portrays all three of these characters as being restless, dissatisfied, vaguely resentful and ready for change, there's remarkably little melodrama or anger in the way things develop. Events flow naturally, and little seems to be happening, but Armstrong's camera is a keen observer of the quick glances, expressions of hurt, and shifting body language that reveal exactly what's under the skin of its characters. It's a measure of the film's success that when it's over, we don't dislike any of these people, even the potentially repellent J.P. or the ditsy Vicki, but see that everything simply happened as it had to. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
The Last Days of Chez Nous is an Australian drama, directed by Gillian Armstrong and written by Helen Garner. Made in a style which emphasizes naturalism over melodrama, the film centres around what happens after Vicki arrives at the house of her older sister Beth, whose French husband falls for her. The film stars Bruno Ganz as the Frenchman JP, New Zealand actor Kerry Fox as the impulsive younger sister, and Lisa Harrow as her older sibling. The cast also includes Miranda Otto and Bill Hunter.
