‘Lone Wolf’ offbeat tale of spies, surveillance and suspicion
A novel entry from Oz, the Australian espionage thriller “Lone Wolf ” is truly offbeat. It begins when a police officer named Kylie (Diana Glenn) gives a digital data file to the cognac-swilling Minister of Justice (Hugo Weaving). It is cobbled together from bits and pieces of footage from everything from cameras in public spaces and Skype sessions to phone taps and a camera in a smoke detector over a bed. The found footage film within the film is largely a record of events leading up to the accidental death of an innocent person carrying a bomb possibly planted by anarchists that is meant to disrupt a forthcoming G20 forum.
The visuals the minister watches introduces us to most of the film’s characters. Chief among them is animal rights activist and bookstore owner Winnie (Tilda Cobham-Hervey of the terrific Helen Reddy biopic “I Am Woman”); her animal lover, camera buff brother Stevie (Chris Bunton, “Relic”), who is learning impaired; and Winnie’s boyfriend Conrad Verloc (Josh McConville), who is a member of a shady, more radical group. He is also a police informant under the supervision of Kylie. Conrad is paid a lot of money by a banned group to plant the bomb.
Based on Joseph Conrad’s 1907 novel “The Secret Agent” — also the basis of a 1996 Christopher Hampton film and a 2016 BBC miniseries — “Lone Wolf,” which was adapted and directed by Jonathan Ogilvie, who also composed the score, has been transplanted from London to a grubby, present-day Melbourne.
Among the videotapes on Kylie’s digital record are ones filmed by Stevie, who likes to “monitor human species.” In one, he films uneasy passengers on a train while wearing a wolf suit complete with ears and tail. Is he the film’s “lone wolf”? Well, it appears that the film is replete with lone wolves from Kylie herself, who is trying to pull off a coup, to Alex Ossipon (actorsinger-songwriter Marlon Williams), a Mick Jagger-like member of Conrad’s circle who has eyes, and hands, for Winnie.
“Lone Wolf” is both intricate and easy to follow, which is more than I can say for the book. Winnie, Stevie and Conrad, who also plays electric guitar and used to be in a band, live a simple life, working in the bookshop (its name is “Night Watchmen Books”) and inhabiting rooms above it. Winnie reads “Madame Bovary” and seems to ponder a fling with Alex as they romp with Stevie on a beach. Stevie collects “collective nouns” such as “a murder of crows.” When he gets upset, Stevie smacks the sides of his head. Winnie figures out that fax machines are analog and do not “leave a data trail.”
All the characters live in a very credible, total surveillance nation. Ogilvie has taken a Conrad novel from the turn of the 20th century and turned it into a near-future cautionary tale with thematic links to the 2013 Kelly Reichardt film “Night Moves” about another group of troubled radicals. In one bit of diabolical film trickery, the Minister watches Winnie watching a horrific film recorded at a wedding party in a park.
“Lone Wolf ” is a nightmarish maze. It is writer-director Ogilvie’s first film since the 2008 release “The Tender Hook.” Let’s hope he doesn’t have to wait another 13 years to make his next.
(“Lone Wolf ” contains sexually suggestive themes and profanity.)