In the fish shop on kiama harbor, actors Ben Mendelsohn and Peta Brady are playing out an endless cycle of rejection. According to Mullet's callsheet, the scene being shot this winter's afternoon is "Robbie refuses to take the mullet." In take after take, Mendelsohn, who plays the film's title character, trudges into the shop where his newspaper-wrapped offering is dismissed by Brady's shopkeeper, Mullet's sister. "Can't get rid of it," she says. "No one wants it."
For a while it looked as if writer-director David Caesar's film would suffer the same fate: straight into the bin. His script had floated around for 10 years with no bites from producers. But as Caesar admits, "I'm one of the more stubborn people. The more people say no to me, the more determined I am to actually get the film made." For a movie about rejection, Mullet has been enthusiastically embraced. Last week it shot to No. 8 at the Australian box office on a mere nine screens, averaging second only to Swordfish. As with Mendelsohn's character-slow, wry and troublesome-it's hard not to get snagged by Mullet's charms.
"People think country towns are about rednecks and gossip," says the film's barmaid narrator (Belinda McClory). "This one's about someone coming back." Loping in like a prodigal rock star, Mullet has the weary gaze of someone expecting life to have stopped in the small coastal town he left under a cloud three years before. His parents (Kris McQuade and Tony Barry) don't disappoint; they're still not talking to each other. His tomboy sister can still tackle him to the floor of the local pub. And still parked out in the bush is the caravan and boat, from where he takes off on his beloved nighttime trawls for mullet.
What has changed, and what gives this rent-a-crowd of Aussie battlers an arresting charge and adds some heat to Mullet's icy stare, is that his former girlfriend (Susie Porter) has, in the meantime, married his brother (Andrew S. Gilbert), the town's brooding cop. A family barbecue looms; sparks fly. As premises go, it's as old as East of Eden, but Mullet is filled with enough tender ironies and salty humor to keep things fresh.
To catch the drift of a Caesar film, think of Baz Luhrmann, then think of his opposite. In Mullet things are slowed down, not tricked up. Caesar finds poetry and poignancy in the simplest of things-a toilet's flush, the chopping of wood. But the important thing is what's
spoken by his characters, in accents Bryan Brownbroad, not what's seen. Their tendency to break into song could be viewed as Luhrmannesque, but here it's not done simply for effect. Their offerings (Boys in Town sung in an empty pub, Still in Love With You whispered in a kitchen) are like private soundtracks to their minds.
"So what do you know?" is the movie's often-asked refrain. As a writer, Caesar has an ear for the vernacular, whether it be of the world of lawn bowls (Greenkeeping) or Sydney's western suburbs (Idiot Box). But Mullet's characters ring especially truthful. "I actually come from the South Coast," says the farm-raised and Australian Film Television and Radio Schooltrained director, "so this is the film that's been the closest to my heart in terms of the things I've wanted to say and the stories I've wanted to tell." Caesar's other gift is with actors. A big comfortable presence on set, he gives them room to stretch and relax; capturing with his camera the subtlest flicks of their eyes, the moments when smiles snap to reveal disappointments and fears.
But until now, Caesar has been better known for his mouth than his movies. He's been the trenchant judge of abc-tv's Race Around the World filmmaking quest, and the feisty critic of an Australian film industry courting offshore Hollywood productions. "A lot of people are building renovations on their houses because they got a job on an American science-fiction film, and that's fine," says Caesar. But, he adds, "I think that stories of a culture are a lot more important than that."
He could combine the two (local stories and house renovations) with his next project, due to start shooting next month. At 10 times the budget of the million-dollar Mullet, he describes the Bryan Brown and Toni Collette vehicle Dirty Deeds as "a gangster action comedy. And I don't think that's the worst thing in the world." But swimming round Australian cinemas right now is something closer to the bone. Mullet flips and glides, comfortable in its element.