Anna Kokkinos' success with' Head On' now begins to look like it depended totally on the script and Alex Dimitriades great lead performance. The degree to which this latest, "The Book of Revelation" is both derivative , pretentious and utterly unoriginal ( except for Tristan Milani's fine cinematography) seems to bear this out. .
Alas, there have already been quite a few Aussie movies dealing with such themes , some reviled for 'sexism' (and/or explicit sex scenes) in the 1970s and 1980s and beyond and maybe they're worth looking at again after this piece of fluff. Of course, setting the whole thing in the world of ballet and making it all achingly slow (and in its choreography, like a 1960s Dutch Ballet experimental number) does suggest Great Art if you've not traveled around much-and then only if you never progressed beyond Art Theory 101.
Add to the pretension, appallingly arch dialog ( "you will do as we command...") and the whole shebang falls onto its well funded face. Then there are the 'sexy' bits : straight from Dario Argento.
Given the lovely but truncated performance by Colin Friels - how about a real city primeval thriller ?
All in, all ,with 'The Book of Revelation' , the feminist project has been set back yet another decade - and with the willing and deeply imitative (of male writers like Henry Miller, William Burroughs, even Bukowski) collaboration of some collective in Melbourne, Oz, suffering from a form of educational -and ideological- amnesia! No revelations await us here.
Alas, there have already been quite a few Aussie movies dealing with such themes , some reviled for 'sexism' (and/or explicit sex scenes) in the 1970s and 1980s and beyond and maybe they're worth looking at again after this piece of fluff. Of course, setting the whole thing in the world of ballet and making it all achingly slow (and in its choreography, like a 1960s Dutch Ballet experimental number) does suggest Great Art if you've not traveled around much-and then only if you never progressed beyond Art Theory 101.
Add to the pretension, appallingly arch dialog ( "you will do as we command...") and the whole shebang falls onto its well funded face. Then there are the 'sexy' bits : straight from Dario Argento.
Given the lovely but truncated performance by Colin Friels - how about a real city primeval thriller ?
All in, all ,with 'The Book of Revelation' , the feminist project has been set back yet another decade - and with the willing and deeply imitative (of male writers like Henry Miller, William Burroughs, even Bukowski) collaboration of some collective in Melbourne, Oz, suffering from a form of educational -and ideological- amnesia! No revelations await us here.