Hemerocallis

by | Mar 19, 2018 | Hemerocallis

How Can We Help?
You are here:
< Back

Head On is a 1998 Australian LGBT-related drama film directed by Ana Kokkinos, who wrote the screenplay with Andrew Bovell and Mira Robertson. The film is based on the 1995 novel Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas. The film stars Alex Dimitriades, Paul Capsis, Julian Garner and Tony Nikolakopoulos. The film tells the story of Ari, a dissolute 19-year-old gay Greek-Australian unemployed drug user living in St Kilda in Melbourne. The film gained notoriety upon its release for its sexual explicitness, including a graphic masturbation scene performed by Dimitriades and numerous sex scenes. The film received mixed reviews from critics, with positive reviewers praising its stark realism, the lead performance by Dimitriades and the uncompromising subject matter.[1]

Australia's National Film and Sound Archive curator recognises it as a pioneering project in Australian filmmaking: "The intensity of Head On, compressing all of its drama into one 24-hour period, is almost without precedent in an Australian movie." Continuing that it concludes with the "most beautiful and enigmatic endings of any Australian film."[2]

Plot

Over a 24-hour period, 19-year-old Ari confronts his sexuality and his Greek background. Ari is obsessed with sex and has sexual encounters with multiple people, most of them gay, and attempts to fulfill the sister of one of his best friends. At the same time, he is facing problems with his traditional Greek parents, who have no clue about his sexual and drug-related activities.

Cast

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 63% based on reviews from 24 critics.[1] Film critics Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton both gave the film 4.5 out of 5 stars.[3]

The film critic, Paul Byrnes wrote about the film's importance for the National Film and Sound Archive: "In terms of iconoclastic daring, Head On has no equal in Australian cinema...Head On is not just about the state of denial within the Greek community in Melbourne. It’s a bomb aimed at the placid and polite styles of Australian film." Byrnes concluded "It is more like a Scorsese film, a descent into a form of hell, in which the main character must battle his demons or die. The extraordinary finale, in which Ari dances on the docks where so many migrant families arrived on Australian soil, coupled with a narration that remains defiant and unapologetic, is one of the most beautiful and enigmatic endings of any Australian film."[2]

Head On divided the Greek community in Australia, Kokkinos said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. Kokkinos said "what it did is that it opened up a dialogue between younger Greeks and their parents. What the film has done is that it has broken down barriers."[4]

The film received a retrospective review in The Guardian in 2014: "Head On is social realism crossed with a nightmare; kitchen sink drama that enters the realm of the senses...But viewed as a slow-burning portrait of an extended nightmare – of a coming of age gone brutally wrong – the film is painfully brilliant."[5]

Accolades

Australian Film Institute

L.A. Outfest

  • Grand Jury Award: Outstanding Foreign Narrative Feature (Ana Kokkinos, won)

San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival

  • Best First Feature (Ana Kokkinos, won)

References

  1. ^ a b "Head On (1999)". Rotten Tomatoes. 3 October 2000. Retrieved 1 January 2021.
  2. ^ a b Head On: I love you Betty National Film and Sound Archive. Retrieved on 12 July 2024
  3. ^ Head On review: Shocking, confronting and dazzling SBS. 11 August 1998
  4. ^ Thomas, Kevin (2 September 1999). "MOVIES : Collision with Life : Director looks at what it means to be Greek and Australian, gay and conflicted". Los Angeles Times. ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved 6 October 2015.
  5. ^ Head On rewatched – hot-blooded and hyper-styled social realism The Guardian. 19 September 2014

External links


Categories
Table of Contents