Sirens (film)
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Sirens is a 1994 film, written and directed by John Duigan, and set in Australia between the two World Wars. The film stars Hugh Grant as Tony, an Anglican priest, asked to visit a notorious artist (Norman Lindsay, based loosely on that real Australian artist) out of the church's concern about a blasphemous painting the artist wants to exhibit, Crucified Venus.
The artist is played by Sam Neill; Tara Fitzgerald plays Estella, the priest's wife, who accompanies him on the visit to the artist's bucolic compound in the Blue Mountains. The artist's models are played by Elle Macpherson and Kate Fischer; Portia de Rossi (in her film debut) plays the maid who has just begun demurely modeling for him as well. Mark Gerber plays Devlin, the "odd-job" man who also poses for Lindsay.
While both Grant and Neill play characters critical to the film's story, the film is really about Estella, who responds to the sensuality of her surroundings over the course of her visit to Lindsay's estate. Her relationship with Tony includes the intimacy and commitment needed in a well-rounded marriage, but is missing the passion, in all of that term's senses.
All of Estella's senses are engaged by the backdrop for the film, a lush and dangerous landscape filled with the distinctive flora and fauna of Australia. It's all quite exotic to the "proper" English wife of a priest. Lindsay's voluptuous models (played by Macpherson and Fischer) live the libertine lives that Lindsay champions through his paintings and his animated postprandial conversations with her husband. Those scenes and conversations, and various brief glimpses of naked models and a naked Devlin, contribute to the stimulating environment.
The surroundings and the lives of the models are siren calls which lead Estella to fantasize, and (with encouragement from the models) act on a few of her impulses. She suffers morning-after remorse about a late-night encounter with Devlin, and perhaps influenced by supportive words from her husband (who had witnessed her acting on one of her impulses, though not the one with Devlin), the film ends with a playful scene between the two of them. The scene hints at the possibility that she may find passion with her husband after all.
A separate story arc follows de Rossi's character as she grows up under the influence of the two models. It intersects with the primary arc in the person of Devlin, to whom de Rossi's character is attracted.
Trivia
The start of the film has Grant's character walking past paintings in the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, including:- Spring Frost by Elioth Gruner,
- The Golden Fleece (1894) by Tom Roberts,
- Still Glides the Stream and Shall Forever Glide (1890) by Arthur Streeton,
- Bailed Up by Tom Roberts, and
- Chaucer at the Court of Edward III (1847-51) by Ford Maddox Brown.
See also
- Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum, the original home of Lindsay now managed by the National Trust of Australia and the setting for most of the film
- List of movies set in Australia
External links
- [Film Sirens]
- [Entry for the film] on the Australian Film Commission website
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