Dust Off The Wings
Director: Lee Rogers.
Starring: Lee Rogers, Ward Stevens, Kate Ceberano, Phil Ceberano, Kate
Fischer.
Dust Off The Wings is an Australian movie, shot on a very
small budget (I heard the number $30,000). While this won't
automatically make a movie, ...um, pathetic, it means that the story
and the acting have to stand on their own.
The story follows Lee (Mr. Lee Rogers), a surfer from Bondi, on the day
before his wedding. He hangs out with his friends, has a bucks' night
and learns some disturbing things about his fiancee. Intermixed with
this, the cameras also follow Jenna (Ms. Kate Ceberano), the best
friend of the bride. In precis form, it doesn't sound too bad and
parts of movie actually work. The bucks' night, contrasted with the
hens' night, was reasonably effective at getting its point across,
although subtlety isn't one of the failings of this movie.
One of the major problems of Dust Off The Wings is the
acting. As musicians-turned-actors, the Ceberanos make Ms. Whitney
Houston look like a dramatic actor. They are, however, by no means
the weakest performers in the movie. While there are moments of
competent acting, for the most part the movie looks like a high school
production.
It attempts to be daring in two ways: by discussing gender politics
and by showing lots of nudity. The gender politics are sadly
disappointing, falling prey to traditional stereotypes, most of which
are inaccurate. The standard garbage about how men want casual sex
and women want a relationship is
recycled, including the old stand-by that men are scared of
commitment (75% of men surveyed were happy with casual sex, with no
commitment, and the other 25% were lying). Probably the only
interesting idea brought to light was
the double standards that apply to men and women: his cheating was
somehow less damning than her cheating.
Overriding the whole movie was the idea that nobody is responsible for
anything that they do. Drugs and alcohol, while shown as a
fundamental part of the Bondi surfing life style, were given as the
excuse for everything. Somehow these inanimate objects leapt into the
characters bodies and were to blame for all the bad things that they
did. Perhaps, using this reasoning, the people involved in the movie
can be excused its failings.
Dust Off The Wings lacks in all directions: acting, story,
ideas, production values. It was fun playing spot-the-location and I
was never bored, possibly because it was quite a short movie. Given its
reasonable premise of following the wedding participants the day
before the wedding, if more time had been spent on coming up
with better dialogue, as well as some original ideas, Dust Off The
Wings might not have been such an embarrassment.
Rating: CP
© Nikki Lesley 1997