The kind I walked through Bill Mousoulis´ new film My Darling in Stirling with open eyes and ears appears to me like I have witnessed a strange wonder. The urban landscape of the Australian town Stirling is real, nothing seems to ne designed especially for this film. The bookstores, the coffeeshops, the streets and the alleys are welcoming us. The leaves of the trees are blazing in different colors. Sometimes, especially the red leaves turn this location into an engrossed zone. A duck family crosses a little street. We can not only enjoy looking at all the things enfolded in front of our eyes and we feel invited to dream from time to time. For now the only perceptible artistic engagement seems to be the fact that it is a musical in which each word is sung. Before the film introduces the love story of Emma, the student and Nick, the waiter, I look at this piece of the world like I am already in love myself, especially in this very mixed condition between being engrossed and the innocent perception of a child.
The love story of Emma and Nick, the story about Emma´s mother or her aunt, they all are embedded in these images of Stirling. The emotions, or the kind the film distinguishes its characters are as well connected with a celebration of every day rituals. As the film has a wide range between being realistic and engrossed, it has also a wide range between strong emotions and mundane actions.There are two interactions between Emma´s mother and the postman (who will be retired soon) at the beginning and near the end. At the first encounter the sung text suggest a kind of every day politeness, the second one appears as a subtle almost Ozu-like echo of the whole film. The film like the song texts works itself from the mundane to the depth of the characters souls. The postman might not be a central character in the film. His story is not enfolded but there remains a strong feeling that he has an own story and an own identity which exists beyond the length of the film and the restriction of the frame.
Bill Mousoulis mentioned that his film is inspired by Jacques Demy´s masterpiece Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. There is also a wide range between playfulness and a certain formal strictness. In the combination of two seemingly disparate aspects like realism and the very artificial form of a musical (the songs are recordesd by other singers), My Darling in Stirling approaches in a different way than Demy an authenticity of the characters, not far away from the subtle dramas by Yasujiro Ozu or Mikio Naruse or the films by Eric Rohmer and Rudolf Thome. As we are introduced to the characters through rather mundane moments, the film in its images and sung dialogue, explores the characters with more depth. The mourning of Emma´s mother for his late husband or the aunt who is still dealing with the loss of her son – these moments evoke a lot of emotions. But they never seem to be forced. The emotions and moods which are evoked seem to have grown all from this visible very concrete environment of Stirlingand its ordinary people.
Beside all its beauty, there is often a strong bittersweet feeling for the fleetingness of the moment. One of these moments is a scene with Emma (Amelie Dunda), who has just fallen in love. She is dancing in a park, first alone than with her lover. She dances frolicsome, euphoric. As we can not see the flow of the endorphins, this moment of happiness is entirely translated into music and movement. Amelie Dunda´s mesmerizing dance does not only remind me in my own euphoric moments, when I was in love myself, nor is it only one of the great nearly Proustian moments of this film, but I have to recall also Melanie´s (classical Indian) dance in Jean Renoir´s The River or Olga Kurylenko´s crazy poetic Demy-like and Chaplinesque dance in a supermarket in Terrence Malick´s To the Wonder. If I had to choose one of the most beautiful love scenes in recent cinema, than this one. If I shall melt in joy or feeling very melancholic because these moments are very fleeting – I do not know.
One can be sure that a musical like My Darling in Stirling must have been a very challenging task. Just alone the coordination of the acting and the recorded songs, the combination of image and sound must have been an enormous effort even without having mentioned the very low budget or the interruptions of the shootings caused by the Covid Pandemic. Possible are such films (rather made with love than with money) only with a very dedicated crew who believe in it as much as the filmmaker does. But the wonder is that there is no second in this breezy film which feels exerted or arty. For me it rather looks like a film which is dreamt at night by the filmmaker and written down on the next morning.
There is the book shop in which Emma works as a volunteer. Her love for books is evident. We see her often with a book in her hands. In modern cities, bookstores or coffeeshops are often an unmistakeable sign that at least in some urban quarters a social cultural community is still intact. But serious bookstores are as well like libraries, a cluster of knowledge, wisdom and about nearly everything what people thought, feared, felt, for what they were longing for, or about what they have dreamt of - since books are existing. That goes as well for the history of music, art and of course for the history of cinema, these other cultural clusters. His previous long film Songs of Revolution was an essay about the history of 100 years of Greek music but made with diverse cinematic approaches. As an independent filmmaker for more than 40 years, Bill Mousoulis is himself a part of this gigantic cluster of cinema. But as a curator, critic and activist for Independent Cinema he is at the same time one of its guardians.
My Darling in Stirling defines independent cinema not only as a niche far away from conditions and restrictions dictated by the film industry but as well as an equal contribution to the diversity and richness of cinema. This film by Bill Mousoulis is not only the most beautiful film romance I came across this year, it is as well a strong reminder that there is still this freedom to make such films. The pessimist in me is mostly worried about the future of cinema not because it lacks talents but because of a rising self destruction of the industry. The best medicine against this depression is a film like My Darling in Stirling, one of very few really refreshing film experiences I made this year. It is quite a gift of a film.
Rüdiger Tomczak
The film will have its world premiere on Sunday, October 22, 4.30 pm at the Adelaide Filmfestival, Australia.
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