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ACTOR
Linus RoacheDanielle CormackIan BlissRoy Billing
DIRECTOR
John Polson
SYNOPSICS
Siam Sunset (1999) is a English movie. John Polson has directed this movie. Linus Roache,Danielle Cormack,Ian Bliss,Roy Billing are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1999. Siam Sunset (1999) is considered one of the best Adventure,Comedy,Romance movie in India and around the world.
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Siam Sunset (1999) Reviews
When you know some of the people behind the making of this film, you will know what to expect
When you know some of the people behind the making of Siam Sunset, you will know what to expect from this film. It is co-written by Andrew Knight who is the creator of some of the most successful comedy on Australian TV in recent times including Fast Forward / Full Frontal and SeaChange. There's Al Clarke, who produces Siam, who was also the producer of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert as well as Nineteen Eighty-Four (now there's an odd paring). Most tellingly though is that it is directed by John Polson - the man behind Tropfest - the fun and popular short film festival in Sydney. Looking at those names should tell you that they will make a fun film with comedy slightly on the dark shade, some unglamorous characters who are realistic in some respects yet totally absurd in others, plus . . . er, a big bus in the middle of Australia's outback. And that is what you get with Siam Sunset. Perry (Linus Roache) an English industrial chemist for a paint company (he makes colours) has his life going just the way he wants it with his wife and work. This is turned completely upside down (or should I say crushed) after a freak accident and begins to feel that he is a curse for everything and everybody around him. From being happy and content, he is now a wreck. He wins a trip to Australia and uses that as a kick start to regaining some of that inner peace that he so dramatically lost. This is expressed in his search for a colour that he calls siam sunset. He joins up with a bus tour in Adelaide and soon wishes he hadn't. Well, at least until he meets up with Grace (Danielle Cormack) who is on the run from her drug dealer boyfriend. Grace helps Perry to find his siam sunset. The help partly involves some very dangerous sex (it involves a bed on the verge of collapse, a ceiling fan that is set to fall onto the bed, some dangerously protruding steel coat hooks, dodgy electrics and a taipan snake sleeping underneath the bed just for good measure - the sex scene had to be coordinated by the stunt people). John Polson is unashamedly a populist as demonstrated in Tropfest and in the fact that this film won the audience award at Cannes. So with Siam he gives us an amusing and entertaining 90 minutes, but it is by no means going to strike up post-film conversations on it's stunning originality or whether it's OK to have an open marriage. This is Polson's feature directorial debut and he has relished the use of the wide screen format. He captures plenty of beauty of the Australian landscape. Roache is suitably fish-out-of-water without slipping into English stereotypes. Cormack (who was in Topless Women Talk About Their Lives) as Grace is an enticing addition to the film and the rest of the cast are great fun to see. Siam includes all of the ingredients of recent successful Australian films - that's a good and bad thing at the same time, but if you enjoyed movies like Priscilla, Muriel's Wedding and Two Hands then you should enjoy this film - just don't expect it to change your life.
An enjoyable, quirky Australian black comedy
I enjoyed this movie. It isn't a classic, but its quirky black comedy should ensure a big following (how many films are about people killed by a fridge falling from the sky?!). As an Englishman living in Australia, I suppose it appealed, as that is the core of the film, and English chemical engineer winning a trip to Australia. The film shows great contrast between the two countries and duly ridicules both. Maybe you have to have been to Australia to appreciate the caricatures of the characters on Bill's bus trip, I'm not sure, but they're done superbly - but maybe act as a bit of a distraction in some ways. There's some excellent black humour, and the lead character's search for the perfect shade of paint is a harmless but involving aspect. I'm not sure the message director John Polson was trying to portray, but that didn't matter to me. If you know Australia and Australians, pay a visit to this film - you'll love it.
Terrific!! 4 of us laughed and enjoyed this gem!
Maybe if you are uptight and too serious you will not like this black comedy, but the four of us loved it! "We" were from 23 yrs to 53 yrs, including Japanese, New Zealand, and American nationalities. I often steer clear of black humour because it can be too weird and cruel, but the Aussies did their normal brilliant work on this film and I do recommend it. There are so many small and big things in this movie that are hugely LAUGH-OUT-LOUD, that we thoroughly enjoyed it. So, grab a drink, put up your feet, forget about being being conventional, expect the unusual... and prepare for a FUN time (with some serious messages under all of it as well!).
Still the funniest Oz movie I've seen. But maybe that's just me...
It's been over a decade since I first caught this film and I've got to say that in spite of playing with stereotypes, it still has a rare quality; something quintessentially Australian entirely devoid of our renowned cringe factor. Linus Roache, Danielle Cormack and Ian Bliss bring each of their characters to life with great craft and humour. Two Hands is the Sydney experience, Animal Kingdom is the Melbourne experience but Siam Sunset is the completely Oz experience. John Polson and the writers Max Dann and Andrew Knight did a wonderful job in highlighting many of our quirks and mores (for better or for worse) in a thoughtful and funny as hell way as we follow Perry (Roache) - the hapless disaster magnet from England through the shockingly funny death of his wife, his suburban London life crippled by the memories, and on to the tourist trip from hell as he sets off from Adelaide into the red heart of Australia. Grace (Cormack) and Martin (Bliss) are two of the most original cinema characters I've seen in years. In fact, these two characters remind me of many people I've known over the years, so in spite of comments of this movie playing to populism or stereotypes, I can't help but watch it and see the opposite. Alan Borough shines as Stuart - the Stratocaster-mangling singer songwriter and Bill Leach (Roy Billing) who still sticks in my mind not so much as the bus driver from hell, but rather as a ubiquitous bureaucrat of the worst order. Overall a surrealist but highly accurate and well observed ninety minute odyssey that will keep you laughing years after you've experienced it.
mixed
The latest Australian film Siam Sunset is a mixed bag, a blend of styles and ideas, often attractive and entertaining but as a whole pretty sloppy. But there's enough there to ensure a pretty rosy sunset. An English paint technologist (that's new!), miserable after the on screen, bizarre, death of his wife (remember this is a comedy) wins a bus tour from Adelaide to Darwin. The other tourists are ugly Aussies. Once the quirky Australian flavour is established, most effectively by Roy Billing as Bill Leach the tour bus operator from hell, predictably, the tour becomes a comic nightmare, and a rather formulaic one in spite of some surprising plot details. The English fish out of water in our bush theme has become something of a tradition in recent Australian films. Oscar And Lucinda, Welcome To Woop Woop, Sirens and even Priscilla Queen Of The Desert where the proper, effete and English Terrence Stamp drag queen tries to make sense of outback customs spring to mind. Getting back to nature, or at least nearly perishing in the Australian desert seems to be considered to be a sure way to personal growth according to this genre. And not just for foreigners. On this particular bus to hell, an Australian Vietnamese, an atrocious singer songwriter, a masculine female army reservist, an overbearing tour bus operator, assorted be holidayed subrubanites and an urban lass on the run, face comic, sometimes ghastly dusty terror and learn from the experience. But for the most part the bit players aren't afforded enough interest by first time feature director John Polsen. They're just character bit players in a film full of bit playing plot elements. Danielle Cormack (the pregnant lead in Topless Women Talk About Their Lives) plays Grace, the female foil for our pommie paint specialist Perry played by Linus Roache (Priest). She's stolen a lot of money from her crooked doctor boyfriend Martin (Ian Bliss) and to escape joins the bus tour. She has the look of jail about her from the start, a hardness that is believable and more remarkable given her very different role and demeanor in Topless. Grace and Perry are effective even if they have to make do with some terrible scenes, especially one where they decide to throw paint against a wall. Some of the set ups just don't work, some are very effective. The elimination of the head villain is memorable but his character is for the most part far too obvious. Siam Sunset begins with an atrocious factory scene, a poorly imagined car washing (would you believe) sequence and then a strange death. But I can't stand car washing or room painting scenes featuring Paltrow young love! Hopes of another Sweetie or Love Serenade, Death In Brunswick or at least Welcome To Woop Woop sprang to mind; macabre Australian black comedies, but Siam Sunset only gave hints. John Polsen (the gay boy in The Sum Of Us) just flirted with that and with about six other genres and left us with a film that was much less than the sum of its parts.