Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #171814 in DVD
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Running time: 96 minutes

From The New Yorker
In a ramshackle Sydney household, an Australian family gets on with its life, but only just. Beth (Lisa Harrow) starts to lose her French husband J.P. (Bruno Ganz) to the attentions of her sister Vicki (Kerry Fox); meanwhile, her daughter Annie (Miranda Otto) is falling quietly for Tim (Kiri Paramore), their lodger with the crewcut and the sense of humor. Gillian Armstrong's new movie is a worthy successor to "My Brilliant Career" and "High Tide"; if anything, it feels even more mobile, charting every shift in the emotional climate. It's hard to pin down just what kind of work it is: jokes at the dinner table can turn nasty and upsetting, but people also recover quickly, and sometimes dance without warning. It's a true ensemble movie: none of the performances is vain or showy-Harrow in particular braves all manner of self-exposure, so we can see the fear beneath her strength. She longs to keep the house in order, while everyone else is itching to relax or break free-you can see it in the look of the film, the way that figures mess around within careful compositions. This fluent, hopeful comedy (and it is a comedy, for all the encroachments of sadness) is Armstrong's best movie to date. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Biiter-sweet romancing with an air of doom
This is classic Gillian Armstrong giving us a snapshot of inner-urban life in a Sydney home one long humid summer.

JP (played brilliantly by Bruno Ganz who was so memorable in Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire") is a Frenchman far from home. With his marriage to Beth (a woman whose vitality seems to have been snuffed out by marriage) already under stress, it takes only the arrival of Beth's wild and vibrant sister Vicki to send everything spinning out of control.

Vicki is Beth mirror image - but she is a reflection of what Beth once was. Beth longs to be wild and alive once more but that can never be. JP sees in Vicki what attracted him to Beth - and alone and longing for something that he can't find Down Under, JP drifts apart from Beth as she does from him.

But Beth has another problem - unresolved issues with her father (played by Bill Hunter who seems to be everywhere in Australian movies). Her father has all the personality of a prune, and won't admit his oldest child is now a grown woman with a mind of her own.

Beth, played in a deeply stressed manner by beautiful NZ actress Lisa Harrow, finds is being tossed about from the roles of mother, daughter and wife all at once - and she's the one that is left to suffer.

Truly a brilliant film, with a young Miranda Otto in the role of Beth's all-observing but resilient daughter, this is a touching film that captures much of the tension of our lives that will often cannot identify.

A slice of Australian life - Gillian Armstrong's integrity in filmaking
This is a gem from aussie film maker Gillian Armstrong - no Hollywood glam here; an honest portrayal of Aussie sisters and their family life. One of Bruno Ganz' earlier films. great to hear Everlovin' Man by the Loved Ones. Not sure if US audience would relate to this.

As disconnected and disjointed as films come: CHEZ NOUS
CHEZ NOUS-French for "Our House"....and a most unpleasant house it is in Gillian Armstrongs's 1992 Down Under film THE LAST DAYS OF CHEZ NOUS.This is 90 minutes of complete disconnect of both people and consciences and Armstrong directs it accordingly.
Beth (Lisa Harrow) is a writer who lives in suburban Sydney,Australia with her French husband Jean-Pierre (Bruno Ganz).He has married her in order to ultimately obtain citizenship; but it would seem that their marriage is on shaky foundation.Beth's younger sister Vicki (Kerry Fox) returns home and is pregnant.She aborts the child and falls into an affair with Jean-Pierre while Beth goes on a road tour with her Dad (Bill Hunter) with whom she has never had connection.Beth returns home to be confronted by this affair.All the while, Beth's daughter (Miranda Otto) and boyfriend are playing "Jelly's Last Jam" on the piano.GOT IT? GOOD!...now you don't have to watch it!
This is the fourth Gillian Armstrong film I have seen, and every one of them tells plot points but never divulges character feelings and motivations.The films flit from point to point with no connective material.You scratch your head and say, "What?" Armstrong is only mildly more successful in later years with OSCAR AND LUCINDA and CHARLOTTE GRAY, thanks to fellow Aussie Cate Blanchett whose presence lightens Armstrong's terribly unconventional sensibility.As a director,Armstrong is at the bottom of the Down Under!