Sundays sees Kiwi Clarke at his finest
A Month of Sundays (PG) 116 mins
Like a character in a James Joyce short story, Adelaide real estate agent Frank Mollard (Anthony LaPaglia) has become stuck in a rut. Unable to move on from his divorce to hospital soap star Wendy (Justin Clarke), or connect with his teenage son, he simply goes from house sale to house sale displaying no enthusiasm for either the commodity or the result.
‘‘My 12-year-old knuckledragging nephew could have sold that,’’ snarks his real estate boss, Phillip Lang (Kiwi-born legend John Clarke), about Mollard’s latest, ‘‘solid’’ result. However, Mollard is jolted from his torpor by a phone call from a woman (Julia Blake), who initially claims to be his mother. It intrigues him since she died the previous year. After a few minutes he realises the elderly woman has the wrong number, but the connection has left him wanting to know more and perhaps redress mistakes he made in his own maternal relationship.
Best known for his work with Aussie comedian Chris Lilley on We Can Be Heroes, as well as noughties’ drama The Secret Life of Us, writer-director Matthew Saville here provides a terrific showcase for the quieter qualities of his leading man, LaPaglia. This is the actor who so impressed in the likes of Lantana and Balibo, rather than the more demonstrative character we’ve seen on United States TV in Without a Trace and Frasier. His emotionally constipated, middleclass male is an identifiable Australian archetype, but Mollard is also so brilliantly understated and nuanced that you desperately want him to incrementally find new joy in his flat life.
Around him are a cadre of scene-stealing, quirky characters, from Blake’s elderly caller to Justine Clarke’s amiable ex and John Clarke’s Freud-obsessed real estate agency boss. The deadpan interplay between him and LaPaglia’s Mollard is a particular delight, as they discuss websites, golf and parental problems in that unemotional, Australian-bloke way.
While the plot feels a little too predictable, Saville deserves credit for keeping the potentially wild tonal variations in check and delivering a tale rich with characterisation and memorable lines. – James Croot