The Sum of Us

Written by David Stevens and based on his play, The Sum of Us tells the story of Harry (Jack Thompson, in his element) and Jeff (Russell Crowe, decidedly not so), a widowed father and his gay son, and their search for love.

The film tries over-hard to be endearing and founders in sentimentality and political correctness. This is most insistently obvious in the central relationship between Jeff and his Dad. With its friendly banter and occasional flare-ups it is intended to be a refreshingly candid depiction of a domestic situation but slowly the naturalness is eroded as Harry's continual references to Jeff's homosexuality and his obtrusive presence under the supposed guise of interest in his son approaches get-me-out-of-here intolerability and/or another (sexually frustrated) agenda. With saintly blitheness Jeff, who eventually is called upon to display even greater selflessness when Harry has a stroke, remains unperturbed. This may have worked in a theatrical situation but is too insistently improbable in the more naturalistic context of this film. Surely gayness is not this good!!

The main narrative thread is supported by two other story-lines involving the respective love interests (Deborah Kennedy and John Polson) both of which stay religiously within the mundanity which is the film's avowed calling card. And if this is not enough sexual catholicism, the film also manages to incorporate the lesbian pairing of Jeff's Gran and auntie.

If Steven's script lacks verisimilitude, where the film does succeed is in capturing the working class ethos of inner Sydney with its al fresco, "village" atmosphere. Credit here goes to Geoff Burton's cinematography which makes full use of Sydney's visual iconography. Harry and Jeff live within a stone's throw of the Botanical Gardens (Woolloomooloo perhaps), Harry's a ferry captain, Jeff's a plumber, they go to the market, the local pub and so on and above all there's a palpable sense of being part of a community and finding meaning/happiness therein, something which is hard to envisage working anywhere near as well in the original setting of Melbourne's Western suburbs).

 

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