The
Courier-Mail (
Too close for comfort.
Byline: FISCHER P
AUSTRALIAN actor David Wenham, an established member of
Wenham originated the role of a jail inmate on the edge _ one that won him
enormous acclaim initially in the theatre.
He plays Brett Sprague, who was recently released from prison after serving a
sentence for assault with a deadly weapon and grievous bodily harm.
On his way home, bringing with him a coffee table he made behind bars, he
returns with his younger brother Stevie (Anthony
Hayes) to the family suburban house where he grew up with a third brother,
Glenn (John Polson). Also living in the house is Sandra (Lynette Curran),
mother of the three, and her current lover George (Pete Smith), a Maori who is
contemptuously referred to as Abo by the boys.
Brett is both charming and quite psychopathic and was imprisoned for an attack
on the owner of a liquor store.
He's on parole and forbidden to return to the scene of his crime, yet, in true
menacing style, that's precisely what he does. It's clear that he's heading for
major trouble and is likely to drag his brothers down with him.
A key character is Brett's girlfriend Michelle (Toni Collette), who has waited
for him. She's greeted with a mixture of suspicion, hatred and lust.
Brett's impotence provokes Michelle's furious accusation that he indulged in
homosexual sex while he was in prison, resulting in one of the film's major
confrontations.
Brett is also angered by the fact that while he's been away, someone has stolen
his stash from a padlocked locker in his bedroom. He suspects various members
of his family, and as he gets drunker and more stoned,
his rage mounts.
It's often been said that both the stage and screen adaptations of this story,
was loosely based on the Anita Cobby killers. Not
true, says Wenham.
"The play was written nine years ago at a workshop at a Playwrights'
Conference in
"By the time we'd gone into production, it wasn't too far removed from
that particular case, so people immediately assumed that that's what the play
was about.''
Since the success of the play, Wenham has always believed that there was a film
waiting to emerge, and so has stuck with this project through it's
metamorphosis from stage to screen, right from the outset, to the point where
he now serves as the film's associate producer.
"That was always going to happen, because I was always convinced that it
would make a great film, as long as we added a certain cinematic depth to the
material, which I believe we have,'' he says.