Australian Gothic Film set for DVD release April 21
ACCENT UNDERGROUND are finally set to release the DVD of Alex Frayne's Australian cult psychodrama MODERN LOVE.
The release is slated for April 21, but pre-orders will be taken in the lead-up.
Supply is limited, but pre-orders before April 21 will be guaranteed.
Special extras includes 4 short films by the director made in the mid-90's - ZOYD, THE ART OF TABLOID, THE LONGING, and the goth and rarely seen film DOCTOR BY DAY (1999).
The DVD can be ordered via ezydvd.
NEW ZEALAND THEATRICAL REVIEW - by Graeme Tuckett, DOMINION POST, Wellington, NZ
Modern Love.
Directed by Alex Frayne.
Starring Mark Constable, Victoria Hill.
M. 95 minutes.
4 stars out of 4
Modern Love is a quietly brilliant and entirely unexpected film. Here's a set up: John, a prosperous Adelaide businessman, inherits an old fishing shack from his childhood mentor 'Old Tom'. Tom is dead -apparently- by his own hand, and it falls to John to take over the house, put Tom's affairs in order, and in doing so, revisit the past that he has kept from his own family. John packs up his wife and young son, and drives them to the haunts of his childhood. And there, things take a turn for the frankly terrifying. Modern Love opens at a quiet pace. Details are slowly sketched in, a family dynamic is convincingly teased out of some sparse dialogue and nicely underplayed lead performances. Comparisons to Kubrick's The Shining - Jack Nicholson and family driving into the mountains to winter over in an old hotel- are unavoidable and probably intentional: We know that things will go terribly wrong, but we still hope, somehow, that these likable people can avoid whatever it is that this place, and their own pasts, have prepared for them. Its an old plot, but it hasn't been done quite this well for decades. So if the pace of Modern Love's first few scenes might seem a little sedentary, and if the film pretty much demands that its audience sit up and pay attention, and even if director Alex Frayne does occasionally wear his influences -Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Roeg and Haneke at least I reckon- a little too proudly; then please: Take all of that as a recommendation to go and see this disconcerting little slice of Aussie Gothic. Modern Love is an audaciously impressive low-budget gem: beautifully shot, stunningly sound tracked, and written with a gentle malevolence that'll stay with you for days after watching it. Modern Love is the best thing playing in town this week. No contest.
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