The Goddess of 1967
Directed by Clara Law.
Starring Rose Byrne, Rikiya Kurokawa & Nicholas Hope.
This is not Linda Lovelace’s bioflick. The title refers to a classic car, the Citroen DS (ie Déesse, ‘Goddess’), in production from 1955 to 1975, an icon of futurism and efficiency (so I’m told). Japanese collector ‘JM’ (Kurokawa) comes to Australia when he learns that one is for sale but when he arrives he finds the car but not the seller. A blind woman Deirdre aka ‘BG’ (Byrne) offers to take him to the real owner, her grandfather (Hope), five days away on an isolated mining lease. The journey is punctuated by incidents and flashbacks that reveal the characters’ troubled pasts.
I have not seen Clara Law’s other efforts (which include Autumn Moon and Floating Life) but I understand that they generally deal with people’s sense of dislocation. This is certainly the tone of The Goddess, generated by a self-conscious cinematic style: over-bleached photography, disorienting camera angles, rapid editing and sudden changes in background noise. Byrne is excellent as the erratic, chocoholic BG, wanting to trust people but unable to do so. Unfortunately, her disturbed past, the substance that the film has to offer, isn’t really that interesting or involving. You learn little about JM at all. This film is vaguely interesting but is laboured, remote, and more concerned with technique than substance. Its symbols and allusions tend to be overplayed or — as far as I can tell — meaningless, epitomised in the Goddess which, though a reoccurring feature, has no significance apart from being a plot device to get JM and BG together. Again, the flashbacks are done in a realistic style, contrasting with the contemporary scenes’ dislocation, symbolising — what? That the past is concrete and comprehensible whereas the present is uncertain? The whole thing is permeated with a suggestiveness which ultimately doesn’t suggest a great deal.
Guy
