Rated: MA15+
Written and Directed by: Michael Bentham
Starring: Geraldine Hakewill, Matilda Ridgway, Mark Leonard Winter and Tom Wren.
‘There are two sides to every story, and then there is the truth.’ – Anon.
Disclosure is a complex, layered and thought-provoking film, where the perspective of each character shows a different version of their truth.
That’s the narrative of the film: four parents trying to come to an understanding when Emily (Matilda Ridgway) and Danny Bowman’s (Mark Leonard Winter) four-year-old daughter, Natasha describes sexual abuse from Ethan: the nine-year-old son of Bek (Geraldine Hakewill) and Joel Chalmers (Tom Wren).
Bek refuses to believe her son capable of such an act.
And Emily is distraught that such an act has happened to her daughter.
Do they go to Child Protection?
Do they seek counselling for their children?
What decision will do the least damage to their kids?
Set in the house and backyard of the Bowmans, the film is made of silence between the dialogue, between the parents trying to behave as adults while they fall apart.
At first the film shows fractures in the façade: the politician, an MP currently under the watchful eye of police protection with his immaculate wife dressed for a fund raiser. A family doing the best for the community.
And then there’s the two journalists, award winning documentary on the horizon, a book waiting to be published.
Intelligent. Adults. Friends.
Surely they can come to an understanding.
But as the conversation continues, the cicadas fill those awkward silences as the fractures widen into cracks.
‘My daughter has a name,’ says Danny.
While Joel the MP asks for reason as he’s about to launch a campaign: Strong families. Safe children.
The complexities underneath the words are slowly revealed.
The characters drive the film as the environment of the house in the suburbs, filmed in the Dandenong’s, surrounded by trees is deceiving in its simplicity; as the parents sit by the pool, a spider dancing across the water, as shadows move underneath.
The setting is used to show the emotional tone of shock. The distress of even talking about a son abusing a friend’s daughter leaking through the surface adults hold firmly in place: would you like a drink? Snacks are arranged. All those rituals of social engagement are slowly worn away as the parents attempt to process what may or may not have happened with their children. And the consequences.
This is a tough topic to portray in a film, writer and director, Michael Bentham using the slowing down of movement, the drawing away of the camera to show denial; the shadows across a face to represent barely controlled anger, a spider web stepping the process of thought from one layer to another.
The very idea of sex and kids and porn and what’s OK for adults and how that can influence the behaviour of a child, to dealing with allegations from another child is like a minefield. The difficulty of figuring the right way to handle the situation without losing your mind as a parent is navigated through dark corridors, beyond the surface into unexpected deep layers to where the characters hold their own truth.
I didn’t expect the depth of this film.
And the dialogue and delivery is strong.
But not always hitting the mark.
And although the slow motion was used well, the scenes with slow motion and missing frames (like a stop frame technique) feels cheap and makes me think of some re-enactment of a crime story on the news.
Having said that, if you’re in the mood for a quiet thought-provoker, the way the complexity of character is revealed makes, Disclosure a riveting watch.