CINEMA: Stanley Peskin
THE Sum of Us movingly proclaims that love, in the face of the “agonising pain of it all”, is the greatest adventure of all, and that the risks entailed in loving must be undertaken. In an immensely good-natured film that explores family ties (both harmonious and discordant), the possibility of hurt and loneliness is constantly present as a source of self-acceptance and even happiness.
A father (Jack Thompson) and his gay son (Russell Crowe), a mother (Deborah Kennedy) and her daughter, are drawn together in a complex network of shared love and misunderstanding. Two romantic stories (and they are romantic, despite their beginnings in a pub and an introduction agency) are placed side by side: the awkwardness, the hesitations and the needs that are common to both pairs of would-be lovers are amusingly and movingly shown.
The frequent use of voice-overs and the confidential tone employed do not disguise the theatrical origins of the film. At the same time, it is a means not only of conveying the intimate thoughts and feelings that create the bond between father (Harry) and son (Jeff), but also of engaging the audience in what is happening.
Jeff’s several recollections of childhood happiness, shot in black and white, are associated with his grandmother and her companion, Mary. He remembers that, in the brass bed they shared, they “looked natural somehow … like love”. Later, he tries to imagine what they said to each other on the last night they spent together after 40 years of love and companionship before they were forcibly separated.
The first love scene in which the two men kiss and begin to explore each other’s bodies is shot in the most open and matter-of-fact way. Throughout, the stereotypical notions of what a gay man is are broken down and the homosexual relationship is naturalised. At one point in the film, Jeff says: “I don’t want to be limited by anybody’s idea of what I am.”
Jeff is a plumber, and Greg (John Poison) is a gardener who aspires to plant a forest so that he can say: “I planted this, I made this.” Harry, who believes that one has to make a contribution to life and that Greg’s ambition is splendid, would like Jeff to know what the joy of “making a baby” is, but he also accepts the fact that his son is “cheerful”. He is also concerned about Aids: the fear of nursing his son to the grave is always there.
Despite his happy-go-lucky exterior, Harry wants Jeff, whom he regards to be too cautious as a consequence of a hurtful relationship in the past, to prove to him that the way he brought him up wasn’t wrong. He states that “our children are only the sum of us, what we add up to”. He knows what mutual responsibility is.
If at first the film seems simplistic and politically correct, this response is soon eliminated. The dialogue is often raunchy, the ugliness of homophobia is confronted head-on, and there are unexpected twists and many ironies in the plot. And if, behind the facade of humour, the film deals in sadness and a wry fear of commitment, the last expansive travelling shot of the Sydney harbour and its opera house is filled with hope.