three dollars (2005) - reviews

8/3/2019 Three Dollars (2005) - Reviews

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"As rich an experience as life itself, so full of subtext, themes and messages"

Drew Turney, FilmInk Magazine

Its a provocative portrait of contemporary Australia... Its got plenty of charm and witand its highly entertaining. But, taking its cue from Elliot Perlmans provocative novel,its also a searing portrait of John Howards Australia...

It should become part of many a lively debate

Peter Thompson, Sunday

"You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll countyour blessings. We should make morefilms like this"

Rachael Turk, IF Magazine

* * * * 1/2At last, a quality Australian film to offset the recent drought! Like real life, THREEDOLLARS is sometimes funny, sometimes scary, sometimes sad, sometimes hopeful...I loved it!

David Stratton, At The Movies

* * * *A beautifully made snap shot of contemporary Australia...There should be moreAustralian films made like this one


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Megan Spencer, The Movie Show

* * * *A refreshingly honest and compassionate film

Jaimie Leonarder, The Movie Show

One of the richest and most credible glimpses of family life weve seen on screen fora long time

Julie Rigg, ABC Radio National

An appealing fable of shattered illusions

Colin Fraser, SX

A powerful film that resonates long after the final credits have rolled. THREEDOLLARS encourages you to scrutinize your own beliefs

Luke Benedictus, The Sunday Age

A high class film

Sunday Herald Sun

This is the film Australia has been waiting for: a thoroughly, absolutely credible checkon how we now live as a nation

Noel Purdon, The Adelaide Review

I have seen nothing finer from Wenham. His Eddie has astonishing depth andsensitivity. This is a film of profound and troubling ideas, with many scenes ofheartrending power... A drama of conscience, raising important questions ofcontemporary politics and public morality... The film can be taken as a sorrowfulcritique of the unfeeling market forces that rule our lives and as a touching study offriendship and survival

Evan Williams, The Australian

Robert Connolly is a natural master of film... A fascinating work, filled with littletreasures of observation, performance and technique... Engaging and a pleasure to

watch

Andrew L. Urban, Urbancinefile

* * * *A rare gem of a film... (Connolly) delivers yet again a film of substance, tension andtruisms

Nicole Watts, elevenmagazine.com


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* * * *THREE DOLLARS is easily the best Australian film this year

Rod Chester, The Daily Telegraph

I cant think of an Australian film which has captured marital happiness so truthfullyWit as well as warmth

Sandra Hall, The Sydney Morning Herald

David Wenhams near-flawless performance gives the sense of seeing an entire life onscreen

Rob Lowing, The Sun-Herald

Wenhams performance, a subtle blend of resilience and quiet desperation, is one ofhis best... Not since Lantana has a film taken us so far into the headspace of anAustralian man

Lawrie Zion, The Australian

A powerful film that resonates long after the final credits have rolled... THREEDOLLARS encourages you to scrutinize your own beliefs

Luke Benedictus, The Sunday Age

Painfully funny

Vicky Roach, Marie Claire

"One of the best Australian films yet made"

Bob Ellis, Encore Magazine

"* * * * A cut above the rest... A brave movie that will strike a chord with coupleseverywhere.. A sure bet for AFI glory come November

OK! Magazine

Could be the best film produced in Australia this year. A story worthy of a nationsrapture

Emily Williams, Scene

An important film

Last Magazine


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DAVID STRATTON REVIEWS THREE DOLLARS

* * * * 1/2

Three Dollars is the latest film from Australian director Robert Connolly who brought us TheBank. Hes working again with David Wenham who plays Eddie a man in his late 30s whoworks in a government office responsible for assessing land earmarked for development.One day he loses his job and is escorted from the building. He recalls that every 9 yearshe has crossed paths with Amanda, once the little girl next door he used to play with.

Eddie is married to the lovely and brilliant Tanya, Frances O'Connor, and they have adelightful daughter, Abby, Johanna Hunt-Prokhovnic. Eddie remembers how he met Tanyaand how, despite their love for one another, they've made compromises over the years.Eddie also remembers the occasions he met Amanda, Sarah Wynter, whose father is the richdeveloper whose land he has been assessing.

At last, a quality Australian film to offset the recent drought! THREE DOLLARS is anadaptation by director Robert Connolly and author Elliot Perlman of Perlman'ssuccessful novel and it's a character-driven piece made with intelligence and wit.Eddie is an unfailingly decent and kind man, but often a rather ineffectual andindecisive one; the women in his life, Tanya, Amanda, even his daughter, Abby, have itall over him; and yet you really like Eddie, thanks to David Wenham's typically fineperformance.

The film is about the small things in life which add up to become big things - like TheBeatles said, Life's what happens when you're busy making other plans, and that'sEddie's problem. The film is a brutal reminder of how close to the financial edge manyAustralians are living in these unhealthy times, and how the resulting stresscompromises youthful idealism.

This is a fine local production and the family scenes are especially good, thanks in nosmall part to a terrific performance from young Johanna Hunt-Prokhovnic, who isclearly a natural.

Like real life, THREE DOLLARS is sometimes funny, something scary, sometimes sad,sometimes hopeful - and I hope the film finds the audience it deserves.


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Film: Three Dollars April 24, 2005Reporter : Peter Thompson Sunday Channel 9

The continuing barney about what kind of films we should make in Australia is essentially the eternalconflict between commerce and art. The surprising thing is that so many of our box office hits cover bothbases: Breaker Morant, Strictly Ballroom, Shine, Lantana and so on. What it boils down to for most

Australian filmmakers is that if theyre going to devote two or three years of their lives to a project andpossibly starve in the process, then it had better be something they care passionately about. Thatscertainly the case with Robert Connollys Three Dollars. Like his previous film The Bank, its got plenty ofcharm and wit and its highly entertaining. But, taking its cue from Elliot Perlmans provocative novel, itsalso a searing portrait of John Howards Australia

Eddie Harnovey is a university graduate with a good job in the government bureaucracy. Hes also the

loving father of a bright little girl called Abby and his wife is the tantalizingly beautiful, temperamental Tanya, the girl he fell in love with asa student and has loved ever since.

Robert Connolly: "I feel very strongly that we are supposedly coming out the end of 10 years of great economic growth, yet why arepeople feeling so economically uncertain? Uncertain enough to vote at the last election over the fear of interest rates going up, you know.Why is it that people feel that they are, a fear that they wont be able to educate their children or that the hospital system will let themdown?"

For Robert Connolly, Eddie is a decent man living in an insecure, dog-eat-dog world where the loss of a few weeks work could mean thatthe mortgage doesnt get paid.

Robert Connolly: "I guess the ambition of the film was to tell the story of a family man and a good man (played by David Wenham) intough times, you know, and lets make a story about a guy thats trying to stay true to what he believes and what he feels is right in aworld thats kind of bombarding him with challenges."

The crunch comes when Eddie is asked to push through an environmental assessment on a dodgy residential development. He beginssticking his nose in where its not wanted, finding evidence of dangerous chemical contamination.

Robert Connolly: "I do feel that more than ever we have economic pressures that are coming to bear in away that asks us to turn a blind eye to worrying about things beyond ourself in order to protect ourself."

Eddies boss, Gerard, isnt interested in his problems. Things are complicated by some personal history.Gerard was Tanyas lover briefly in their university days.

While Three Dollarsconcerns itself with the big picture, the world Eddie and his family live in, the storycomes down to very specific, intimate moments. The pressure mounts when Abby gets sick and theres theregular reappearance of Eddies childhood sweetheart Amanda.

Robert Connolly: I really wanted to, to make a film that brought people to tears, you know, that actually took people on an, a complexemotional journey that could break your heart, you know, that would have the ups and down of life and kind of leave you with optimism, acomplex optimism about life rather than necessarily the kind of, you know people in The Bankwere cheering when the bank wasdestroyed.

Three Dollars is a deceptive film, a bit of a fist in a velvet glove. On the surface, its got a witty, slightly absent-minded quality. Eddie is aman constantly surprised by the weird coincidences and improbability of everyday life. He loves it all but sometimes it gets to be a bit of achallenge. At the same time, he senses that the society around him is unraveling. People are getting increasingly insecure andbenevolence is in short supply. Its a provocative portrait of contemporary Australia as well as being a highly entertaining movie and itshould become part of many a lively debate.


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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALDThree DollarsReviewed by Sandra Hall

April 21, 2005

Think of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara and Colin Firth as Mr Darcy and you'd betempted to conclude the recipe for the ideal adaptation is all in the casting.

First catch your character and the essence of the book should start to permeate yourfilm with the smoothness and consistency of the perfect sauce.

That's the theory, and Robert Connolly has taken it to heart in choosing David

Wenham to take on the role of Eddie Harnovey, the beleaguered hero of ElliotPerlman's novel Three Dollars. Wenham slips so naturally into Eddie's skin it's almosteerie. My copy of the book, the new paperback edition, has him on the cover, but evenwithout this subliminal prompt, his face would have been in front of me as I read.

Eddie may be a lot more dependable and less elusive than Wenham's Diver Dan fromSeaChange, but the essentials are the same. He's funny and honest and likes to help,but the sunniness of his character is shot through with small slivers of irony andpessimism. He has a sharp eye for life's small print - the ominous bits which alert youto the fact that you're not getting the bargain you may have been led to expect.

On the face of it, Eddie and his wife, Tanya - played by Frances O'Connor, anotherimpeccable casting choice - have a right to expect whatever they desire. She's auniversity tutor with a thesis in the works and what looks to be a burgeoning career asan academic, and he's a chemical engineer with the Department of Planning andEnvironment.

The bank likes their prospects enough to give them a mortgage on a house, and theyhave a small daughter, Abby (Joanna Hunt-Prokhovnik), who's already sharing herparents' playful love of words and ideas.

Only one thing mars their happiness. Tanya's apprehensions about life's downside farexceed Eddie's own. He can live with his, but hers strike so hard that she's given thema name - "the all ordinaries". When Tanya's "all ordinaries" index slumps, she takes toher bed until Eddie can talk her up again with his unwavering belief in their ownpersonal futures market.

This makes it sound like a story about depression, which it isn't. Perlman is writingabout all the things that go to shape our lives during their most malleable years. It's astory about good luck, bad luck and the meaning of coincidence. It's also about


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courtship, marriage and the particular brand of emotional shorthand which can keep acouple together when everything around them is falling apart.

Putting this on screen is like catching smoke in a bottle - and not just any old smoke,but the kind which billows on the horizon to warn of the fire approaching from over thehill. For Eddie and Tanya are right to have misgivings about what's to become of them.Both lose their jobs and one day at the ATM, Eddie finds himself with just $3 left.

The novel takes its time in bringing him to this point. The screenplay, which Perlmanand Connolly co-wrote, plunges you right in, starting with the moment when Eddie isfired before being escorted from the building carrying a cardboard box with thecontents of his desk drawers. From here, flashbacks proliferate in an artful jigsawwhich takes you back through his childhood and university days to the assignment thathas brought him undone.

Sent to investigate a proposed development, he writes an adverse report on itsenvironmental impact. The report is ignored and Eddie blows the whistle.

Could he have done otherwise? That's not really Perlman's question. He's asking youto wonder why the forces of cause and effect didn't behave otherwise. What if Eddie'segregious boss, Gerard (David Roberts), a former enemy from his student days, hadn'thated him? And what can he take from the fact that the gorgeous Amanda (SarahWynter), his friend from childhood, keeps turning up in his life at its most significantpoints?

There are some great moments in all this. I can't think of an Australian film which hascaptured marital happiness so truthfully. The scenes between Eddie and Tanya have

wit as well as warmth - the bracing chime of two intellects working as one. Not thatthey always agree. They don't, and that's part of the pleasure as well as the pain.

In fact, their years together are more than enough to fill a film - which is the problemwith this one.

While mediocre novels can be brought to life on the screen by being slashed to fit, thegood ones often resist.

So although Connolly and Perlman have made all the right moves, the result remainsjumpy and unco-ordinated, as if the novel had taken on a life of its own and wasprotesting at being uprooted from its natural home, pulled out of shape and wrestledon to the screen.


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JIM SCHEMBRI

GOOD VALUE IN THREE DOLLARS

* * * 1/2 out of 5

While walking home one night with his takeaway curry, Eddie (David Wenham) encountersNick (Robert Menzies), a distraught, haggard man anxious to find a home for a lost dog.During their revealing outdoor exchange, Eddie learns of Nicks many troubles; flushed withconcern, he offers help. Is there somebody I can call? he asks.

The unforced sincerity in Eddies manner prompts Nick, clearly unused to anyone caring for

him, to demand why hes doing this. You seem like a decent bloke, Eddie replies.

Its one of a cluster of golden, humane moments that grace Robert Connollys moving, finelydirected contemporary drama, touching on themes that riff on the notion of dignity and self-respect in the face of hardship. Recurring motifs particularly the sum of three dollars studthe film to mark how events and people have changed, and how some things, such as Eddiesprosaic sense of decency, do not.

Connolly, who co-wrote the script with novelist Elliot Perlman, deftly infuses the film with apervasive sense of karma and serendipity as Eddies story unfurls. As Eddie bids Nickfarewell, we sense their paths shall cross again.

Eddie is marries to the spirited Tanya (Frances OConnor) and works as a governmentscientist whose soil tests determine whether lucrative planning permits will be granted. Theyhave a child and, for a time, enjoy a life so comfortable and fulfilling, they fleetingly wonderwhether they have unwittingly surrendered to the bourgeois values they faddishly resentedduring their bumpy courtship days at uni.

Eddies voiceover guides us through a boisterous and funny first act as he recounts hisyounger years, most of which were spent hanging out in record stores and trying to winTanyas affections with his startlingly accurate impersonations of Ian Curtis from Joy Division.As he glides into midlife, however, a more somber hue washes over the drama as the weight

of material trouble, child rearing, ballooning debt and career stumbles kick in.

Its hard finding fault in David Wenhams CV. Hes an actor whose versatility stretches to allpoints of the acting compass, from comedy (Getting Square) to epics (Lord of the Rings) tohistorical biopic (Father Damien). Here, as an Aussie everyman, however, he is at his mostimpressive, exuding a quiet dignity that is as possible as it is subtle.


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Three Dollars

ReviewerJulie Rigg, ABC Radio National

Classification M

In Three Dollars David Wenham takes on the toughest role of his career -- playing a

good man, an ordinary bloke called Eddie, with a wife, a child, and mortgage, whowinds up one day with no job and three dollars in his pocket.

In some of Hitchcocks greatest films, the hero struggles with a fear of falling. Think ofJimmy Stewart swooning in the bell tower in Vertigo, or Cary Grant dangling from thegiant granite nose of George Washington on Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest.

The late Ray Durgnat, a Yorkshire critic who understood better than anybody theanxieties behind the lace curtained respectability of the world Hitchcock had sprungfrom, once suggested that this fear of falling was a metaphor for the anxieties his

parents had instilled in him. Step outside the class role you have been assigned anddisgrace and oblivion follow.

The fear of falling, of dropping right off the inspirational ladder and landing in thegutter, has begun to crop up in more than one Australian film of late. It was there inAlkimos Tsilimdos's film Tom White, in which Colin Freils' architect has a breakdown atwork and winds up living on the streets.

And its there in Three Dollars. David Wenhams Eddie is a chemical engineer with apublic service job, a wife, Tanya, whos a rather volatile academic, a six-year-olddaughter and a sardonic sense of humour with which he keeps at bay the more idioticvicissitudes of his work and family life. Hes an middle class man trying to stay afloatwhile his boss puts pressure on him at work, and his wifes best friend leaves herhusband, and moves into his house to sort herself out, and begins to cry on hisshoulder.

Eddies inner life is haunted by memories of his childhood first love, Amanda, whoseparents forbad her to play with him, and moved away to a glossier suburb when herfather began to make good money. And of his own parents, clinging to the meagrematerial fringes of life.


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Amanda the golden princess appears intermittently in Eddies life to remind him of thesocial gulf between them. And Tanya, a much feistier real love, is having her ownstruggle to finish her thesis and hang on to her tutoring job. Then their beloveddaughter gets ill. And Eddie is asked to sign off on an environmental clean bill ofhealth for a big development deal.

One of the joys of Robert Connollys new film is the warmth and delicacy with which itdeals with family life: the marital jokes, the bedtime musings, the sudden rush ofdelight watching a child interpret the world.

When American films speak of 'family values' these days we know we are in for quite abit of breast-beating, or worse: a parent using a threat to a child to justify any kind oflurid vigilante action. The world outside is a hostile place.

This film creates a beguiling domestic mood. When Eddies household starts to comeunstuck, those moments with their daughter, the memories of Tanya taking on the

world as an undergraduate 'well why shouldnt a woman play Hamlet?' are whatkeep him on track.

Frances OConnor as Tanya and the stunning child actor Joanna Hunt-Prokovnik astheir daughter Abby make this one of the richest and most credible glimpses of familylife weve seen onscreen for a long time.

But the world outside is, if not a hostile place, then an increasingly slippery one. Self-interest is the only acceptable motivation. The challenge for the film is to hold ourattention as the mood darkens, and the kinds of pressures with which Australians now

wrestle: downsizing, political expediency, mortgage payments, the various ways thateconomic rationalism impinge on us all. There comes a time when Eddies two maindefences: a sardonic sense of humour, and a stubborn, even perverse, sense ofkindness, will no longer hold them all at bay.

Three Dollars Robert Connollys second feature film as a director. As a producer, hemade The Boywith David Wenham. Then he wrote and directed The Bank, a caperfilm about a computer genius who tries to use the greed of the operators of a bigbanking corporation to exact revenge. Different genre, similar themes.

This film, adapted from Elliot Perlmans novel, is an altogether more modest film, anda surer one. Watching it, I was surprised to find myself laughing with Eddies sardonictake on the world. And on the way home on the bus, still captured by the memory of afamily huddled together on the sofa in the dawn, I was just as surprised to find myselfhaving a little weep.


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Megan Spencer, Triple J

THREE DOLLARS

The filmmaking is so goodImpeccably madeActed incredibly wellCompellingI found myself completely compelled and enjoying spending time with these characters andgoing on their journeyIt challenges the audience

Not unlike Lantana you could compare it to thatI found myself laughing a lot


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Three Dollarshttp://www.urbancinefile.com.au/Review by Andrew L. Urban:

Three Dollars is such a strange film I am tempted to read the novel (only time constraintshave held me back so far) to see if the tantalising episodes of Eddie's life captured here findsome cohesion through the inner voice of literature. The cinematic arts of the film are beyonddoubt: Robert Connolly is a natural master of film, and he makes this a fascinating work, filledwith little treasures of observation, performance and technique.

The symbolism is obtuse, and three dollars and the three women in Eddie's life (wife,daughter, Amanda) are not readily identifiable as cross symbolic. For me, the film's theme is

decency or integrity, something Eddie suffers for in various ways, from losing his job tohelping others. Each time he goes to help someone, he pays the price. But in the case of hisdecency toward one homeless man (Robert Menzies in top form), he is repaid in kind.

The fact that it is this outcast of society who returns the good deed is perhaps one of the film'smelancholy messages about our world. David Wenham brings his humanity to the role with asubtle and wide ranging performance in which he is required to show many facets of a morallyupright man in a morally uncertain world. Frances O'Connor shows once again her range andher depth as Tanya, while the tiny, sweet little Joanna Hunt-Prokhovnik is a terrific find.

Eddie's reflection on the coincidence that he meets Amanda every nine and a half years - and

this is the fourth - is a more important to him for its obscurity, perhaps, than for any realmeaning. Like wise for us, but the film is engaging and a pleasure to watch, especially the firsthalf. First and foremost a character study, Three Dollars also brings together elements thatcould be identified (loosely) as romantic comedy, thriller and psychological drama.

In the end, Eddie comes through his trials with his integrity and decency providing the comfortthat financial security could not. Family and self knowledge give him the strength and peaceof mind he could never find elsewhere. On the way, he comes face to face with the brutality ofthe modern world - in every walk of life.


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www.infilm.com.au

****1/2 Review by Luke Buckmaster

As the sweaty climate for Australian filmmaking rages on, promising new directorRobert Connolly releases his second picture Three Dollars, a diligent and well refineddrama starring David Wenham as a wholesome man whose values becomethreatened by financial burdens and social conscience.

Adapting from a book by Victorian novelist Elliott Perlman, who also co-wrote thescreenplay, Connelly combines a strong character arc with an intriguing story andpieces together the smartest and most interesting Australian film so far on thecalendar for 2005.

Three Dollars makes a number of topical and thought provoking observations aboutthe fickle nature of financial security and how many lower/middle class families areonly a couple of pay checks away from the poverty line.

Similar in theme to Alkinos Tsilimidos' Tom White (2004) the film traces the descent ofprotagonist Eddie Harnovey (Wenham) into financial and personal insecurity,laboriously sketching him as an ordinary bloke slowly shredded by the system. Alongthe way a number of fleeting but memorable minor characters reinforce Connolly andPerlman's perspective on metropolitan life as a detached, borderline inhumane culture,a housing ground for congregations of flawed folk bound by the shackles of society

where man made practises often get the better of moral liability. Coyly intertwinedwith suggestive nods towards fate and unusual circumstances, there is a graceful airof humanity that swoons the film's dramatics into modes of expressive, surreptitiousexposition.

Eddie is a cleat-cut all round nice guy with a gentle way about him and a good headon his shoulders. His job as a chemical engineer who examines soil for sitedevelopments allows him to zone out of the groan of his day to day existence, whichincludes issues with his wife Tanya (Frances O'Connor) and the parenting of their sixyear old daughter Abby (Joanna Hunt-Prokhovnik). Strange things happen to Eddie in

vague and subtle ways -- every nine and a half years, for example, he bumps intochildhood friend Amanda (Sarah Wynter) for a quick coffee and a chinwag. Eddie'sliving situation complicates when Tanya loses her job and he is forced to nut out sometough decisions regarding a site that may not be appropriate for housing.

Despise some scepticisms littered in the press regarding the legitimacy of the film'sfinal act, Three Dollars remains a plausible and affecting social fable bereft of preachymessages and glossy peripheral devices. With a highly apt cast and crew theelements very quickly fall into place: a bunch of strong and realistic performances,


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even handed direction and a skilful lens comprised of sharp and unobtrusivephotography.

The moments in which Connolly and Perlman tug at the hearts and identities ofwandering strangers are perhaps their most impressionable: a desperate, broken mantears himself apart at the prospect of abandoning a stray dog, a chatty hospital patientpleads for some food and a friend, and Eddie's introverted father silently aches from

undefined depression. Three Dollars even comes equipped with a "don't do it!"moment of nail-chewing movie anxiousness, in which Eddie stops to assist a verticallychallenged old lady while running late to a job interview.

Images of a struggling family unit are close-up and personal -- the dialogue betweenEddie and Tanya feels a little too spiffy and stagy for low-key domestic chatter, butpassable nonetheless -- and the film's latter suggestions towards homelessness andplebeian existence add a resonant sense of perspective to the production's overalltone and meaning.

Connolly's steadily moving pace gently unravels layers of his characters and thestandard of acting in Three Dollars is kept at admirable benchmark levels by Wenham,who provides a strong and malleable anchor and broadly takes the story onto hisshoulders, delivering a quietly expressive and affecting performance that continues tohumanise the film even as it advocates a running depiction of robotic modernideology. Connolly also evokes a sense of sadness in the way things change, howexternal factors can distance and separate relationships and how in today's world offierce legalities and heartless professionalism personal integrity fights against aconstantly manifesting tide of compromising values and crooked infrastructure.


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theblurb.com.au

A few dollars more

Our rating: * * * *

TV and radio current affairs programs seem to be filled with economic news andcommentary. The price of oil, global markets, the Dow Jones, current account

deficits, rising and falling dollars and GDP figures all make fodder for politicians

and economic prognosticators. But its all a bit esoteric, high-minded talk that

means little to our daily lives. For director Bob Connolly and writer Elliot Perlman,that wasnt good enough; so their new film Three Dollars makes the impact of all

that economic theory only too real.

Connolly and Perlman have created an insightful and gripping film about the way

in which modern economics affects one individual - Eddie Harnovey, playedsuperbly by David Wenham. As Eddie says at one point, he and his family (like

many Australians) live in the ever-diminishing margin between their mortgage

and their incomes. What Three Dollars does is to look at what happens when that

margin becomes too small.

On another level, this is a tale about the Australian spirit; about never giving up

hope and about how far our idea of a fair go for all has been debased. This is acontemporary snapshot of our nation, a place where even those consideredmiddle-class are at risk, and where the line between success and ruin can be a

very thin one indeed. But its also a place where a helping hand is rarely refused,

and where you can always count on your real mates.

Its also the story of one man, a journey through an ordinary life turned upsidedown by extraordinary events. When we first meet Eddie, he seems to have it all

- a beautiful wife Tanya (Frances OConnor) and daughter (Joanna Hunt-Prokhovnic), a solid job as a chemical engineer for a government department, a

nice house in the suburbs. The film jumps between Eddies past life, including hisattraction to his childhood friend Amanda (Sarah Wynter); and his handling of an

investigation into possible chemical contamination of a site earmarked for a

future residential development. When his past and his present collide however,

the result is disastrous.

Three Dollars is a challenging film in many ways. It asks its audience to accept a

non-linear, and in some ways, non-narrative structure; to concentrate less on

story than on character and to work through a thicket of themes and ideas on ourway to its final resolution. At times, it wanders a little, while at others it tends to


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stretch credibility somewhat; but at its heart, this is a film that deserves

acknowledgment for taking on such complex subject-matter.

Connolly peppers his film with great images. From the dreary gray-walled officeswhere Eddie works to the golden fields surrounding the development site; from

the homey domesticity of the familys house to the plastic formality of shopping

centre. He borrows from the likes of Alfred Hitchcock (North by Northwest) and

Curtis Hanson (Wonder Boys), yet those scenes never feel cheap or stolenbecause he manages to inject them with a sensibility all their own.

As the portrait of one persons life, the central performance is crucial, and David

Wenham doesnt disappoint. Weve all known for some time now that Wenham isone of the most versatile actors this country has ever produced, so it should

come as no great surprise that he gives a brilliant performance as Eddie. WhileHollywood fare like Van Helsing might pay the bills, this is the kind of part

Wenham was born to play. Frances OConnor is also exquisite as Tanya; although

I did have a little trouble relating to Sarah Wynter as the object of Eddiesobsession.

Three Dollars is a minor breakthrough for the Australian film industry. Its a film

about real people facing real problems; and it tells its story in an accessible,sensible way. With terrific performances to support it, this is the kind of film that

can put Australia back on the international film map.

David Edwards


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THE NEWCASTLE HERALD April 22, 2005

THREE DOLLARS

A bankable performanceTHIS quiet rumination on a family man in crisis floats along ever so gently on DavidWenham's still-waters-run-deep charisma.

Dry laidback charm has become Wenham's trademark in his popular television outings asSeaChange's Diver Dan and, more recently, Murray Whelan - the political troubleshooter fromthe Shane Maloney novels.

Here, Wenham is perfectly cast as an everyday bloke forced to take stock of his life when heloses his job.

We meet Eddie, a chemical engineer in the public service, as he's clearing out his desk.From flashback to flashback, and with Wenham's lilting voice-over talking us through histhoughts, we trace how Eddie's life has, slowly and almost imperceptibly, fallen apart - to thepoint where he is standing in front of an ATM with just $3 in his savings account.

Where to now for Eddie, wife Tanya (Frances O'Connor) and daughter Abby (Joanna Hunt-Prokhovnik)?

Granted, the story of a middle-class bloke trying to keep it all together for his family soundslike a pretty slender, and probably even unappetising, subject matter for a movie.

For many it will sound too much like what they did yesterday and what they will be doingtoday.

But if you're in a contemplative mood and have two hours to spare for some thoughtfulobservations on the contemporary human condition there's plenty to savour here.

Nice, too, to see Sarah Wynter in what might have been her natural element had she notgone off and become a Hollywood star, She's suitably gorgeous and radiant as Eddie'schildhood sweetheart but it's her character's sweetly awkward restaurant confessions overdinner with Wenham that suggest a delicate skill we've not seen from her before.

three dollars (2005) - reviews

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