Topless Women

Rip It Up, Issue 239, 1 July 1997, Page 14

Topless Women

Harry Sinclair Talks About His Film

“BTrfiu >t an y° ne who has sat through JT CUT about as many soft drink- ; filtered, hair product-styled movies ostensibly about their lives, but patently not, they think they can handle without

taking up a loaded Pepsi bottle and bringing it down on the head of the next Fudge-styled cretin who dares to lecture them on how Generation X we all are whether we like it or not (whew!), Harry Sinclair has come to the rescue. There’s only one glitch in this scenario, and that is the fact he never set out to save us from the aforementioned narrative nightmares with his'unconventionally plotted (just!) first feature film Topless Women Talk About Their Lives in the first place; but he has, whether he likes it or not. “I wasn’t thinking about cinema at large,” our reluctant saviour explains. “I had no desire to remedy anything in the world of film; it was just something that came naturally out of the style of the way we were shooting - the fact we just shot in people’s houses, and people wore their own clothes, and that kind of thing — it has a very natural feeling, compared with some fantastical story... I mean, this is obviously not the only way to make films, but it’s definitely a way to make films that leads it to have an element of realism, I suppose. Although, it’s pretty silly for realA less loaded term to describe the film could simply be ‘reality’. If you’ve ever woken up with a Chinese takeaway in your head, copped a drunken fumble with someone you possibly shouldn’t have, or been cut off at the pass by that insane Auckland tradition known as the Round the Bays, you’ll find plenty worthy of terming ‘reality bytes’ in Topless. The film began life as a series of fourminute, late-night soap opera episodes, shot in the everyday environments of those taking part in them on weekends. “As we were making the first episodes of the TV series, I was keen to present an unsanitised view of these people’s lives.

So, I guess that was partly a reaction to what I was seeing on the TV. I was just trying to describe the things I saw around me.

When one of the series’ stars, Danielle Cormack, arrived at work and announced she was pregnant, a larger scheme began to form in Sinclair’s mind.

“She was worried she was gonna ruin the TV series,” Sinclair explains, “and I suddenly just had this idea that the story of somebody’s pregnancy was an interesting sort of shape for a longer story that obviously wasn’t gonna fit into three or four minutes. So, that was one thing that really kind of triggered the idea of the film.

“Also, the characters and everything were working so well, it was great to take the whole thing a step further, and not just leave it as the little episodes - although they worked pretty well. It was just nice to sort of take a leap into the

unknown. We started with no budget and had no plan at all, just shooting one night

with some friends, and then, a year later, it was at the Cannes Film Festival, so it was an amazing progression from nowhere to being a feature film.” With shooting continuing on a week-end-only basis, and Sinclair’s script evolving in the weeks preceding each shoot, he says he never had time to think of any important message he could impart to viewers through Topless - although that hasn’t stopped people reading their own ones between the lines.

“I think the interesting thing is how meaning sticks to things even when you don’t intend it to,” says Sinclair. “In a way that can be more effective than something you’ve struggled with for ages - ‘cause there are some moments people

have found very moving that just sort of happened. I like the idea of something that allows people to interpret it in different ways, rather than it having a specific agenda as a story.” Sinclair elaborates on the way how a situation is perceived can be wholly dependant on the angle one is looking at it from: “A sunny day can be a totally

depressing thing for someone. I remember summer coming on once, years ago, when it used to really come on, and I found that really depressing because I hadn’t done anything all year and,

ohmigod, it’s summer. So, really, sunny

days were depressing for me.” I He laughs as he says this, perhaps because it’s raining outside the window of | Footprint Films, the Topless distributor; | but it could be because he’s managed to make a piece of something out of a bunch of other people’s nothing — which is surely one of the finest paradoxes art can offer us. On the subject of art, and circumstances conspiring-to stop life from imitating it on this occasion, it is perhaps a good omen for Topless that the International Film Festival has moved j away from the Civic in Auckland this year, as the film’s New Zealand premiere coinj cides with its prestigious placement as the Festivals opening night film at the St James on July 11 (it is also the Festival’s opening night film in Wellington, on July 18). Without wishing to confuse you, it should be explained that Topless Women Talk About Their Lives is actually the name of an ill-fated film within the film

you have been reading about, and during its premiere at the Civic, its director gets all overcome, for reasons best left to the plot turn, and runs outside for a vomit. “That was strange at Cannes,” Sinclair laughs. “I was standing there nervously in front of all these people, and it was so like the scene in the film it was not funny.”

BRONWYN TRUDGEON