Australian
Screen

Clip description

The Japanese man (Rikiya Kurokawa) arrives at a suburban house in Australia to buy a car. A young blind woman (Rose Byrne) shows him into a crime scene, with blood and brains on the ceiling. She is a cousin, now looking after the daughter (Lauren Clark) of the dead couple (who were selling the car). The Japanese man declines her offer of food and leaves in a hurry. He soon returns and asks to see the car.

Curator’s notes

This is a very gothic and darkly funny scene, introducing both the car and the main characters. A number of questions arise, and are not answered – because the script wants to keep us guessing. Why are these two still living in the house, and why hasn’t someone cleaned up the gore? Why does the blind woman seem so unperturbed by the horror of what went on here? Is this what happens when a person is blind, or is there something else seriously wrong with the blind woman? And why does the child pour her drink over her own head?

The light in the house is very dark and dingy, obscuring BG’s face in the hallway, and leaving large sections of the rooms in total blackness. It’s very creepy, but it also sensitises us to the theme of an absence of light (blindness). The car, by contrast, is shown as a miraculously beautiful artefact, with a floating title to accentuate the idea that it comes from another world, like a chariot for the gods – or goddesses. The blind woman is referred to as BG in the credits, but she actually has a name, that sounds like ‘Deirdre Sedragalov’. Initials DS. The blind woman is also a goddess, in other words – although it takes most of the movie before the Japanese man comes to that realisation.