LONG STORY SHORT, Australia, 2021. Starring Rafe Spall, Zahra Newman, Noni Hazlehurst, Ronnie Chieng, Dena Kaplan, Josh Lawson. Directed by Josh Lawson. 95 minutes. Rated M (Coarse language)
Long Story Short sounds a touch enigmatic. However, it is actually a witty summary of how this entertaining moral fable works. It is a fantasy, a what if…? kind of story.
And, it explicitly notes its debt to Groundhog Day. In fact, this is something of a Groundhog Decade. Our hero, Teddy, wakes up each morning not to find that he is reliving the same day but rather a whole year has gone by – with a complication that he does not remember anything of the year that has passed but everybody else does and takes it for granted.
A moral fable. What if one had the opportunity to look into the future, to see what happens or, as a strong caution, to see what might have happened. How would we change our lives?
There was a film of the 1950s with Debbie Reynolds, It Started with a Kiss. And that is what happens here – vistas of Sydney Harbour, the bridge, the Opera House, the atmosphere of New Year’s Eve, and Teddy (Spall) rushing to see his girlfriend, kissing her at the midnight moment – only to find that it is someone else wearing a similar dress and colour! The screenplay doesn’t waste much time and soon the couple are in love and engaged. Zahra Newman plays Leanne, a genial and sympathetic woman with whom anyone could fall in love.
Teddy goes to talk to his father in his grave at Waverley Cemetery and there he meets a strange older woman, played with dignity by Noni Hazlehurst, who challenges him about his forever delaying matters, always talking about ‘later’, being preoccupied with work and putting things on the long finger. Then, before you can say long story short, Leanne and Teddy get married. Needless to say, even on the wedding night, Teddy becomes preoccupied with his work.
When he wakes up the next morning, his Groundhog Decade has begun. The audience is tantalised, along with Teddy, about what has happened in the previous year, of which he knows nothing! He gets filled in by Leanne and his close friend Sam (Chieng). What could happen over a decade in a marriage? Yes, fondness and love, busyness and work, pregnancy, the birth of a child (and Teddy having to learn whether it was a boy or a girl and dislikes the name, Tallulah), distance, Leanne upset, leaving, possibilities of other relationships, even divorce. With Teddy all the while bewildered because it is still for him, the morning after the wedding night and he still loves Leanne.
There is a mysterious tin with a rattle, a gift from the strange woman at the cemetery, to be opened only after 10 years.
The question is, will 10 years, even in long story short form, be enough for Teddy to realise what he believes in, his love for Leanne, his love for Tallulah?
The film was written and directed by Josh Lawson, national and international actor, who wrote the comedy, The Little Death, and appears here in a significant cameo role as a psychologist with Leanne – and whom Teddy definitely dislikes.
The light touch but serious implications in this moral fable. (There is an M rating because of coarse language – quite a lot, offputting for many an audience which would enjoy it.)
Studio Canal
Released 11 February
Peter Malone MSC is an associate Jesuit Media