Release date: September 10
Running time: 113 mins
Rating: MA (Strong themes, coarse language and sexual references)
Screen AustraliaandWildheart Zizani
present
in association with
Film Victoria
The Melbourne International Film Festival Premiere Fund
and
Head Gear Films
BLESSED
AN ANA KOKKINOS FILM
Starring
FRANCES O’CONNOR
MIRANDA OTTO
DEBORRA-LEE FURNESS
VICTORIA HARALABIDOU
Directed by
ANA KOKKINOS
Produced by
AL CLARK
Written by
ANDREW BOVELL, MELISSA REEVES, PATRICIA CORNELIUS AND CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS
Based on their play
“WHO’S AFRAID OF THE WORKING CLASS?” co-written with Irine Vela
PRINCIPAL CREW
Directed byANA KOKKINOS
Produced byAL CLARK
Written byANDREW BOVELL
MELISSA REEVES
PATRICIA CORNELIUS
CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS
Executive ProducersMARIAN MACGOWAN
ANA KOKKINOS
Executive ProducersANDRENA FINLAY
PHIL HUNT
COMPTON ROSS
Line Producer/Production ManagerBARBARA GIBBS
Director of PhotographyGEOFF BURTONACS
Edited byJILL BILCOCKACE ASE
Music byCEZARY SKUBISZEWSKI
Production DesignerSIMON McCUTCHEON
Costume DesignerLOUISE McCARTHY
Make-up and Hair DesignerCHRISTINE MILLER
Casting DirectorJANE NORRIS
Sound RecordistJOHN WILKINSON
PRINCIPAL CAST
RhondaFRANCES O’CONNOR
BiancaMIRANDA OTTO
TanyaDEBORRA-LEE FURNESS
GinaVICTORIA HARALABIDOU
LaurelMONICA MAUGHAN
JamesWAYNE BLAIR
PeterWILLIAM MCINNES
GailTASMA WALTON
KatrinaSOPHIE LOWE
TrishaANASTASIA BABOUSSOURAS
DanielHARRISON GILBERTSON
RooEAMON FARREN
StaceyEVA LAZZARO
OrtonREEF IRELAND
Young LaurelMONICA BEDDIE
Young JimmyJAY KENNEDY
Sergeant KerrickNEIL PIGOT
Constable ClarkeKELLIE JONES
MichaelBRETT CLIMO
PornographerKEN RADLEY
SuAMANDA MA
ChrisCOSTAS KILIAS
O’ManneyROBERT PRICE
ScottNICK FARNELL
NathanDITCH DAVEY
SYNOPSIS
ONE LINER
BLESSED is a film about mothers and children, about love and beauty, about being lost and finding your way home.
PARAGRAPH SYNOPSIS
During the course of one day and night, seven children wander the streets in an urban odyssey.But not all of them will find their way home.Dawn breaks and it’s the same day but now we experience the journey from their mothers’ viewpoint.
FULL SYNOPSIS
Seven children wander the streets in an urban odyssey over one day and night.But not all will find their way home.Katrina and Trisha are two street-smart girls, with sharp tongues and attitude.When they wag school and are caught shoplifting, the cops make sure they leave knowing they’ve got nothing, that they’re worth nothing.Having recently fled his mother’s cloying love, Roo is now living on the street.But when he finds himself shooting a porn film he realises he’s not so tough and just wants to go home.Unfairly accused of stealing his mother’s money, Daniel decides he may as well stage a real theft.But the outcome of his actions is not the one he expects.Brother and sister, Orton and Stacey, must flee the mother they love in order to survive.And James is the most lost of all; a young Aboriginal man with no place in the white or black world.
As each child moves deeper into peril, a mother’s scream pierces the night and we know that a life has been lost.
Dawn breaks, and it’s the same day but now we experience the journey from the viewpoint of the five mothers.Over-wrought Tanya wrongly accuses her son of theft.Deeply religious Gina has a premonition that her missing son is dead.With little to look forward to, but much to reflect upon, Laurel must acknowledge that she kept a child from his rightful mother.Lonely Bianca loses her winning steak but finds comfort from a stranger.And Rhonda, tough yet achingly vulnerable, lets the children she loves go because she believes they are safer without her.Over the course of their respective journeys we understand that they are as lost and defenceless as the children they care for.And by night’s end, one of them must face her worst nightmare.
PRODUCTION NOTES
WHO’S AFRAID OF THE WORKING CLASS?
In 1997, the Melbourne Workers’ Theatre marked their ten-year anniversary by commissioning three writers, with whom they had a past association, to pen a play that would acknowledge various political and socio-economic issues prevalent at that time.They also felt that it was important to introduce a new writer to the mix, and so Christos Tsiolkas joined Andrew Bovell, Melissa Reeves, Patricia Cornelius and composer Irine Vela , to create a work which evolved into the award-winning play WHO’S AFRAID OF THE WORKING CLASS?, first performed at the Victorian Trades Hall Council in May 1998.
The play consisted of four separate but interwoven stories - SUIT written by Christos Tsiolkas; MONEYby Patricia Cornelius; DREAMTOWN by Melissa Reeves and TRASH by Andrew Bovell.Four stories which provided a stark yet profoundly moving portrait of working-class life in Australia at that time.
Director Ana Kokkinos first encountered WHO’S AFRAID OF THE WORKING CLASS? during its premiere season and was struck by its boldness and veracity. “The characters were so compelling and engaging,” she recalled. “Ordinary people dealing with everyday life and adversity with great courage, humour and energy.I was deeply affected and saw the potential for a very moving and beautiful film, so I optioned the play.”
In optioning the material, Kokkinos approached the original writers to work with her on adapting it for the screen.But because of the play’s content and structure, which often involved characters talking directly to the audience, it was never going to be a quick or easy process.So throughout the next eight years, Kokkinos worked on the project predominantly with executive producer Marian Macgowan and writer Andrew Bovell.
“With any adaptation,” explained Kokkinos, “whether it’s a novel or a play, there comes a point where you have to dispense with the source material and reinvent the work as a film without losing the richness, texture and essence of what initially attracted.After a number of early drafts, we certainly had a great bunch of characters but the screenplay just wasn’t hanging together.So we took a break and what emerged during this hiatus was that we were really dealing with a story about mothers and children.This certainly resonated for Andrew and he subsequently proposed a fresh structure; tell the story in two parts, starting with the children’s journey over the course of one day and night and then revisit the same twenty-four hours, but explore the narrative from the mothers’ viewpoint.We then created connections between the characters and expanded on the mothers’ stories, whilst maintaining the central theme.”
“What makes a good play doesn’t necessarily make a good film,” agreed Andrew Bovell. “WHO’S AFRAID OF THE WORKING CLASS? was a multi-narrative, multi-character piece.But we needed to identify a core theme that would carry a feature film. With theatre, you generally need dialogue to convey the meaning and emotion to the audience, whereas with film, which is such a visual medium, you just keep stripping it back, as often a gesture, pause, or even silence will suffice. Therefore we had to ‘bust open the world of the play’ in order to find the world of the film.And given that the women in the play were such interesting and compelling characters, we gradually realized that it was, in fact, a fascinating study of motherhood.So we broke it into two parts - the first being a story of seven children told over twenty-four hours, with the second being the story of their five mothers throughout the same period.This was a real breakthrough in our cinematic conceptualisation and allowed us to create a clear structure.”
BLESSED is about the depth of connection between mothers and children.It’s about love and beauty, about being lost and finding your way home.
In the first half of BLESSED we meet the seven children of five mothers.There’s fourteen year-old Orton, who has run away from home, and his fey, younger sister Stacey, who has been sent to find him, and in the process opts to stay by his side. Fifteen-year-old schoolgirls, Trisha and Katrina, smoke, drink, skip school, and indulge in petty theft, whilst Trisha’s older brother, Roo, tired of his mother’s smothering love, has absented himself from the family nest to live on his terms and explore his sexuality.Fifteen year-old Daniel feels disconnected from his parents - an overworked mother and an unemployed father - and in the process has lost sight of himself, whilst James Parker, a young Aboriginal man with suppressed emotions, has turned his back on the white mother who adopted him as a child.Angry, resentful and spiritually lost.Seven children whose core maternal relationship has apparently failed them.But nothing in life is black and white and a mother’s love endures, regardless of how it’s expressed.
Halfway through the film we’re introduced to five very different women, with varying degrees of parental skills. Rhonda, the mother of Orton and Stacey, is the sort of person whom ‘decent’ people love to hate.Dependent on social welfare, unmarried with a passing parade of boyfriends, and pregnant...yet again.Then there’s Bianca, whose daughter Katrina yearns for a mother, but instead has a helpless ‘older sister’ who seeks refuge in sleep, waking only to lose herself amidst the tawdry excitement of poker machines.Battler Tanya, mother of Daniel, is the sole breadwinner for a family that has ceased to care, whilst widowed Gina, mother to Trisha and Roo, spends her time sewing and praying, but not necessarily in that order.And lastly there’s Laurel, the elderly adoptive mother of James, adrift in a big house with nothing but memories for company.
A BLESSED CAST
In casting BLESSED, Kokkinos, producer Al Clark and casting director Jane Norris, assembled an amazing ensemble.“The most important thing about actors,” observed Clark, “is that you believe in them, because if you don’t, there’s nothing else.Although BLESSED is an intimate drama, it’s full of big emotions and despite taking place over just twenty-four hours, the world changes in some way for everyone concerned.So it was vital that our actors were credible and understood the power of the camera, because in this instance they weren’t playing to the back row of the balcony, but on a very personal level, reflecting the intimacy of the material.”
Internationally acclaimed actor Frances O’Connor was cast as Rhonda, who Kokkinos describes as ‘an extreme character.’ “Rhonda pushes and pulls an audience’s sympathies,” observed Kokkinos, “so we needed an actress who could embody her without playing a single false note to allow people to experience her journey in all its toughness, bravado and vulnerability.Frances physically transformed herself into Rhonda so totally, inhabiting her so deeply, that by the end, her emotional truth was undeniable, which is a rare thing to achieve.”
“Rhonda is stuck in a vicious cycle on several levels,” reflected O’Connor. “She’s totally dependent on welfare with no foreseeable escape, yet hates being so dependent.But although she’s quite an irresponsible mother, she loves her children very much.When we meet her, she’s just lost one of them to the state, which she has difficulty accepting, and her other two, Orton and Stacey, have run away. She’s also pregnant and stuck in a slightly abusive relationship, as having a man in her life is paramount.I suspect that she wasn’t well mothered, so when it comes to caring for her own children, she doesn’t have the necessary skills or maturity to provide them with a grounded upbringing.And because she often feels empty, she needs to fill the void with things - people, going out, getting drunk, etc.As a character, she’s always moving.It’s very hard for her to be still, because if she actually stopped for a minute, she would feel that emptiness, so she goes from relationship to relationship which is really bad for both her and her children.One could also imagine that she gives Orton too much responsibility by treating him as an equal, instead of a son.Such behaviour can be flattering, but no child should be placed in that position.So when we encounter them, their relationship is very fractious and her daughter Stacey has regressed into a semi-childlike state, possibly because of abuse she has suffered at the hands of several of Rhonda’s boyfriends.”
Versatile leading lady, Miranda Otto, portrays Bianca, mother to fifteen year-old Katrina.Bianca is a dreamer, but lonely and depressed.One day a high-spirited young girl, the next, a single mother with a teenage daughter, who finds it difficult to cope with life’s responsibilities.Leaving her bed is challenging, and the only time she comes alive is when she loses herself amidst the tawdry excitement of the ‘pokies.’ There, she can enjoy a glass of wine and dream of a big win.For Bianca, gambling is an escape from a life that seems sad and empty and a daughter whom she struggles to relate to, as a mother should. “I’d always wanted to work with Miranda,” remarked Kokkinos. “She gives Bianca a presence that’s quite remarkable.She’s a highly intelligent and physical actor who imbues Bianca with fragility, without reducing her to the status of victim.Bianca may be misguided and somewhat lost in a fantasy world, but she’s forever the optimist who hits emotional highs and lows”.Otto concurred. “Bianca likes to be high, energetic and ‘turned on.’ On a personal level, I imagine that her best years were her late teens and early twenties, when she would have been going out, listening to music and just enjoying herself.Gambling represents a way, perhaps, of gaining a potential ‘high.’ It allows her to dream her way out of a situation that she’s not happy with.And when it comes to her daughter, Katrina, I suspect that Bianca has difficulty disciplining her.Katrina is looking for some boundaries, but Bianca really doesn’t know how to be a mother.I’ve no doubt that she loves Katrina deeply, but she finds it hard to accept the role of authoritarian, as she doesn’t really want to move into that stage of her life.She would rather be Katrina’s sister and friend.”
Of the five mothers in BLESSED, only Tanya, portrayed with great humanity by Deborra-lee Furness, has a husband, Peter.However, given the state of their marriage and his contribution to the family dynamic, she may as well be single.A battler by nature and a nurse by profession, Tanya is a giver, but somewhere along the way, her relationship with Peter, and their son Daniel, has floundered.Peter, unemployed and resentful of being supported by his wife, is a broken man who has lost the respect of his son.They’re a family that barely exists and Peter is no longer engaging in life.As William McInnes who portrays Peter, describes him, “he’s like a moon orbiting a star.A dying rock that’s being held by the gravity of the sun, which in this case, is Tanya.”Peter’s self esteem has been seriously eroded and in the process he has stopped treating his wife as a woman.He also hates the fact that despite their financial stress, she still manages to pay their monthly mortgage, a constant cause of friction.Tragically, their dysfunctional relationship impacts upon their son Daniel, who at fifteen is already experiencing the emotional rebellion that afflicts most teenagers.Daniel desperately wants his mother’s attention, but goes about attracting it, as some children do, in a negative way. “Tanya is not fulfilled,” explained Furness, “and when your own needs aren’t being met it’s very hard to meet the needs of someone else.Therefore, you have this relationship where both parties want to connect but they haven’t got the necessary tools.Subsequently they try to do so in an adverse fashion, which doesn’t serve either.Daniel seeks her attention by taking money and engaging in bad behaviour, so she tries to discipline him, which only makes things worse.As for the mortgage - a frequent bone of contention between her and Peter - it represents the one thing in her life - their house - which is constant.The relationships in her life might keep changing, but having a home provides security for her.It’s something that she has achieved, that she can hold onto, because although she’s desperately trying to maintain relationships with her husband and her son she’s flailing, so the house has become her anchor.”
In fact, the only relationship in Tanya’s life that provides her with any warmth is one that she shares with Michael, a patient.Together, they enjoy an intimacy that is non-sexual, yet provides each with a vital connection. “Tanya’s relationship with Michael is unusual, but not necessarily uncommon,” observed Furness. “We form these connections because of a need within ourselves.Michael has a very obvious need in that he’s sick and needs to be cared for.Tanya’s whole ‘modus operandi’ is to serve, so her role as his nurse allows her to reach out to him.She’s needed. He needs her, which is not the case at home.But with Michael, she has a physical relationship, even though it’s non-sexual.She’s able to hold him. He’s curious about who she is.Tanya doesn’t get that from her husband, or her son.They have ceased to find her interesting.So with Michael she can enjoy an intimacy under the umbrella of her job, whilst still making money to survive.”