MOVIE REVIEW : The Cool Metaphorical Society of ‘Everlasting Secret Family’

What is an “Everlasting Secret Family” anyway? Either an old boy’s network with a tough dress code and some pretty fancy rituals, or a not-uninteresting metaphor for generations of homosexuality flourishing underground in super-macho Australia.

In either case, it’s a deliberately stylized and detached film (at the Monica 4-Plex) by director Michael Thornhill, whom the press notes quote as “having made the film for straight audiences to observe how sex and power are always intertwined.” Except when novelist/screenwriter Frank Moorhouse’s conceits get a bit florid or Victorian--and aside from the fact that the 1987-made film is a period piece now in the age of AIDS--Thornhill has done a sleekly impressive job of it. His cool extends to his film’s palette, so that these young gods and their older appreciators dress entirely in black black black or blazing white white white. Diana Vreeland would have loved it.

“Gallipoli’s” Mark Lee plays the Youth, a blond dazzler theoretically 16 when he is plucked out of a private boy’s academy and into the lap of one of Australia’s most aggressive and successful politicians, the Senator (Arthur Dignam). It’s done covertly; the Senator’s eye sweeps across a playing field crammed with adolescents in blinding white, eye contact is made and the Senator retreats to the shade of his Bentley, chauffeured by the omnipresent and interesting Eric (Dennis Miller).

Eric is the only one in the film to have a name. Senator, Judge, Senator’s eventual wife and Senator’s eventual son presumably all have blanks on their I.D. bracelets. It only gets a little silly when, in a cozy family chat, Wife (Heather Mitchell) must say to Senator/husband, “Our son is well past puberty. . . .” It does break our concentration somewhat.

Eric was also once a Lover. Now he is a Chauffeur. Roles are strictly defined, of exquisite importance. Our Youth comes to appreciate that as he and the Senator pass years together, control passing from one to the other, always under the authority of the Everlasting Secret Family. Secret Family members meet in a grand old mansion, wear white poet’s shirts, go through the masked ritual of the white rose and obey the watchwords Ecstasy, Secrecy, Silence. Actually, the ecstasy is demure, no one is ever silent for a minute, and secrecy goes out the window the first time that Bentley arrives and the Youth is excused from class without so much as a hall pass or a note from his mother.

As our hero reaches 25, he begins to obsess about his vanishing youth, prying the name of a doctor who will keep him young from a Judge with whom he has a sadomasochistic relationship. (Demure, believe it, demure.) The doctor’s warning of dreadful side effects from his ministrations seems excessive; we follow our Youth to the tottering age of 35 and even though he’s seen signs of dropped buns, they’re not visible to the inquiring camera. (The sight of them, however, and the film’s subject matter are the source of the Times’ Mature rating.)

The film is actually quite poignant as it contemplates a not-otherwise-stupid young man who equates the loss of his youth and beauty with death. It’s borderline hilarious in the casting and character of the Youth’s seductive, blowzy art teacher (unnamed in the press kit), apparently an eternal mother figure maintained by the Family. And it is most memorable in Arthur Dignam’s incisive and urbane performance as the Senator, redeeming a lot that is unsubtle with his subtlety and control.

‘THE EVERLASTING SECRET FAMILY’

An International Film Exchange Ltd. release. Producer Anthony I. Ginnane. Director Michael Thornhill. Screenwriter Frank Moorhouse, based on his short stories “The Everlasting Secret Family and Other Secrets.” Camera Julian Penney. Art director Peta Lawson. Editor Pam Parnetta. With Arthur Dignam, Mark Lee, Heather Mitchell, John Meillon, Eric Dennis Miller, Paul Goddard.

Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature .