Teesh And Trude

This low budget West Australian film aspires to the kind of gritty realism one finds in Mike Leigh's films about the socially-dispossessed but falls a good deal short of its target. 

Originally a stage play by Wilson McCaskill, in the context of theatrical abstraction this may have worked well but in the hands of Rodriga and writer Vanessa Lomma, it becomes a forced display of brain-dead vulgarity or near-risible self-reflection (one wonder's how the always excellent Susie Porter got through her soliloquy on her lover's sexual techniques). Although clearly meant to be taken seriously (it was actually nominated for a 2003 AFI award for best adapted screenplay) it only needed to be pushed a couple of notches to become a comedy, a kind of dyspeptic version of The Castle. And how many times have we seen its ending? Nothwithstanding, like a burning house,Teesh And Trude has a certain gruesome appeal.

 

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