No Joe as the Dust settles

The Daily Mail (London, England)

August 31, 2001

Baz Bamigboye.

Byline: BAZ BAMIGBOYE

DON'T talk to David Wenham about wasps.

The Australian actor, who steals the new picture Dust from Joseph Fiennes, worked on locations in deepest Macedonia last summer.

'It was hotter than hell and we had a scene involving watermelons. There was a plague of wasps and they were all over us. It was creepy,' said Mr Wenham, shivering at the recollection.

Dust comes from the startling visual imagination of director Milcho Manchevski, who won acclaim with Before The Rain, another film shot in his homeland, Macedonia.

Dust seems complex as it spans the turn of the last century to the present.

But essentially it's about two brothers - played by Wenham and Fiennes - who love the same woman and want to kill each other over her.

There are echoes of Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns and the Hollywood movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance, which starred James Stewart, where truth and legend become confused.

The siblings leave America and become embroiled with gangs of bounty-hunters and invading Turks in Macedonia. It's like a Wild West tale, but set in the Wild East.

'I'd never touched a gun until I did this film, and I just had to learn how to use one and how to roll around in the dirt, firing away,' Mr Wenham told me.

Dovetailed into the story is a tale set in present-day New York, with British actor Adrian Lester playing a guy who breaks into an old woman's apartment. This woman makes the Lester character listen to the story of two brothers out for revenge.

Dust's script included many more scenes with Mr Fiennes, but they have not made it into the final version of the film. It's Wenham and Lester who dominate the picture.

Mr Fiennes did not attend the film's world premiere in Venice - an absence that upset many. But Dust's producer Chris Auty explained that Fiennes was exhausted after shooting his film Killing Me Softly, with Heather Graham.

However, there are those who say Mr Fiennes had problems with his character's American accent, which meant many of his scenes could not be used.

Mr Wenham plans to star with French actress Julie Delpy in a film set in South London, where he will play a double-glazing salesman who tells too many lies.

Before that he travels to Toronto where Dust will be screened at the film festival there, along with an Australian film he did called The Bank. 'It's about anti-globalisation, but we aren't planning any demonstrations,' he added.