MIFF NOTES: The Rehearsal (2016, Dir. Alison Maclean)

I once got my balls served up to me on a platter for accusing an actor friend of mine of acting when she was in the middle of a heated discussion with me. It wasn't pretty. I've never pressed that particular line since but it is something that popped back into my consciousness watching The Rehearsal, Alison Maclean's adaptation of Eleanor Catton's debut novel.

During his first year at a prestigious acting school, Stanley (a grown up James Rolleston of Boy fame) and his classmates are pressured into coming out of their acting shells by a head teacher, Hannah (a tyrannical Kerry Fox). Hannah's methods are questioned by staff and students, but there's a playfulness to her severity. It is almost as if she is acting it out her intensity so as to draw the best from her students. I've done that as a teacher. I'm sure as an acting teacher it is even more effective.

It is this multi-layered presentation of reality that brings such vibrancy to Maclean's film. You can never be sure exactly who is meaning what they say, being who they are, or rehearsing to be someone else - a future self or someone entirely different. All those things are true of Stanley and his classmates, especially when they opt to tackle a local scandal for their end of year group production, a scandal Stanley is tangentially associated with via his new love interest, Isolde (Ella Edward). Suddenly, another couple of layers of morality are thrown on top of the already layered context.

Maclean's deft handling of all of these competing complexities makes the exceptional clear-eyedness of The Rehearsal a small marvel. Serious, often quite dark issues are handled with bright but respectful humour and despite the brilliance of the competing personalities, nothing is lost in the glare. Even Rolleston's magnetic turn as leading man is subsumed into one of the film's central (but beautifully inconspicuous) themes. It'd be a shame to call out how, suffice to say that Rolleston has grown into an astonishingly attractive leading man, and that is something that may distract from narrative considerations that should probably have been more apparent, at least to my mind.

Such is the power of acting. And such is the power of The Rehearsal in being able to communicate it.

★★★★

Trailer:

The Rehearsal screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.