Head On is the title and the way in which young Greek-Australian Ari approaches, no, attacks life and all its riches. At least that is how I remembered it from the original source, Christos Tsiolkas' barbed novel Loaded, about a similar Ari character and his quarter (assuming he lasts that long) life crisis. Alex Dimitriades doesn't quite match my own literary conception - he's tall, dark, with Mediterranean good looks, and although he spits accusations of how white Anglo girls see his kind ("All they see is a hairy back"), he could walk into anywhere and leave with a girl on each arm and a modelling contract. Tsiolkas' Ari wouldn't deliver this observation (a truth in his eyes) with straight contempt, he'd leer and egg the gaze on, relish in his role as a taboo object of desire. The Ari I know simultaneously fetishises and loathes his Greek heritage, his 'wogness', the way it defines his sexual encounters by both limiting his partners and yet opening up a whole new world of built men in dark alleyways looking to satisfy a forbidden urge.
Ari's lifestyle sees him indulge in a frenetic haze of sex, partying and drugs to placate his anger at society and delay his advancement into adulthood. In her sophomore effort, Kokkinos' filmic style captures this hedonistic existence with all the trashiness of the late 90s grunge aesthetic, the hand-held camera following Ari into dirty back alleys, ducking and weaving through crowded clubs, hurtling after its subjects like a music video on speed. The shots use whatever available light, forgoing previously glamourised screen versions of urban Australia and ripping back the covers to reveal the underbelly of the Melbourne nightlife. Sometimes Kokkinos will employ a slow-motion effect similar to that of the step printing in that of Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express, sending streaks of neon light across the shot in a drugged haze. The camera is as infatuated as the characters are, fawning over their aggressive sexual encounters in extreme close-up, never joining the bodies in unison but focusing solely on individual gasps of pleasure. And yet it lacks true edge. It goes for safe, popified images that lack polish merely because of the budget and director's experience, instead of what it shoots. It replaces Ari's handpicked playlists with a vague mix of disco and traditional Greek anthems, which remove a pivotal part of his character. And the editing, which attempts to condense Ari's life into a neatly packaged 24 hours, lacks the urgency of something like Run Lola Run, which races along with a dramatic intensity. The time frame is also the antithesis of Ari's self-described dogma, an aimless, self-destructive pathway to nowhere, in which 24 hours turns into a week, a week into a month, a month into another year of sex, drugs and unemployment.
Kokkinos has simplified Tsiolkas' thesis on multiculturalism, and outlined a path which zigzags through vague, flashy sections of Melbourne at night rather than expose the strict dividing lines that segment the city socio-culturally: "The North, if you're a wog, will entrap you. The Northern suburbs are full of the smells of goats cheese and olive oil, hashish and bitter coffee. The Northern suburbs are unrelentingly flat with ugly little brick boxes where the labouring and unemployed classes roam circular streets; the roads to nowhere." There's no such vitriol in Dimitriades' delivery, although it's difficult on screen rather than through inner monologue. Kokkinos gives him nothing; she's turned the narrative into a sort of black white battle between traditionalist values and transgressive norms, with the parents as the conservative villains who see Ari's build and declare him a real man, a straight man. The script treads around those derogatory terms lightly as if afraid of being too upsetting, when Ari should really be embracing them, re-appropriating them, wearing his othered status with juvenile pride. Finally, as if to loudly declare he and Johnny's cross-dressing alter ego Toula as smears on the shiny glass of a Australia's heteronormative society, they are stripped and violated by two dirty cops. But Ari doesn't need an abusive, antagonistic force to beat him down. His own existence is punishment enough - a sailor and whore to the very end.
Ari's lifestyle sees him indulge in a frenetic haze of sex, partying and drugs to placate his anger at society and delay his advancement into adulthood. In her sophomore effort, Kokkinos' filmic style captures this hedonistic existence with all the trashiness of the late 90s grunge aesthetic, the hand-held camera following Ari into dirty back alleys, ducking and weaving through crowded clubs, hurtling after its subjects like a music video on speed. The shots use whatever available light, forgoing previously glamourised screen versions of urban Australia and ripping back the covers to reveal the underbelly of the Melbourne nightlife. Sometimes Kokkinos will employ a slow-motion effect similar to that of the step printing in that of Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express, sending streaks of neon light across the shot in a drugged haze. The camera is as infatuated as the characters are, fawning over their aggressive sexual encounters in extreme close-up, never joining the bodies in unison but focusing solely on individual gasps of pleasure. And yet it lacks true edge. It goes for safe, popified images that lack polish merely because of the budget and director's experience, instead of what it shoots. It replaces Ari's handpicked playlists with a vague mix of disco and traditional Greek anthems, which remove a pivotal part of his character. And the editing, which attempts to condense Ari's life into a neatly packaged 24 hours, lacks the urgency of something like Run Lola Run, which races along with a dramatic intensity. The time frame is also the antithesis of Ari's self-described dogma, an aimless, self-destructive pathway to nowhere, in which 24 hours turns into a week, a week into a month, a month into another year of sex, drugs and unemployment.
Kokkinos has simplified Tsiolkas' thesis on multiculturalism, and outlined a path which zigzags through vague, flashy sections of Melbourne at night rather than expose the strict dividing lines that segment the city socio-culturally: "The North, if you're a wog, will entrap you. The Northern suburbs are full of the smells of goats cheese and olive oil, hashish and bitter coffee. The Northern suburbs are unrelentingly flat with ugly little brick boxes where the labouring and unemployed classes roam circular streets; the roads to nowhere." There's no such vitriol in Dimitriades' delivery, although it's difficult on screen rather than through inner monologue. Kokkinos gives him nothing; she's turned the narrative into a sort of black white battle between traditionalist values and transgressive norms, with the parents as the conservative villains who see Ari's build and declare him a real man, a straight man. The script treads around those derogatory terms lightly as if afraid of being too upsetting, when Ari should really be embracing them, re-appropriating them, wearing his othered status with juvenile pride. Finally, as if to loudly declare he and Johnny's cross-dressing alter ego Toula as smears on the shiny glass of a Australia's heteronormative society, they are stripped and violated by two dirty cops. But Ari doesn't need an abusive, antagonistic force to beat him down. His own existence is punishment enough - a sailor and whore to the very end.