When a mortuary worker finds Annabel and Enoch, the two protagonists of Gus Van Sant’s latest film RESTLESS (M) scoping out the morgue and asks “Can I help you?” Enoch’s jaunty reply is “No thanks. We’re just browsing.”

Enoch is morbidly obsessed with death. Our first glimpse of him is chalking his own outline as if he was a dead body at a crime scene. Recently orphaned – both parents killed in a car crash which he survived- he is a pathological funeral goer.

It’s at a memorial service he meets Annabel. She is legitimately attending the requiem of a fellow cancer patient. A relationship develops. She has three months to live. He was lucky to survive to car wreck that claimed his parents. She is optimistic and a passionate Darwinian. He is moody, gloomy, and has visitations from the ghost of a Kamikaze pilot.

Annabel lives with her mother and older sister. Mum has hit the bottle as a coping mechanism to deal with her daughter’s disease and imminent death. Her sister is stoic and supportive. Enoch lives with his aunt, Mabel, who he blames for the loss of his parents.

RESTLESS is profoundly more satisfying than most disease of the week sudsers with the seemingly ubiquitous Mia Wasikowska as “the kid with cancer, not a cancer kid” and Denis Hopper’s son, Henry Hopper distilling a quirky existentialism into the character of Enoch. Dad would be proud.

Continuing the Hollywood lineage and legacy, Schuyler Fisk, daughter of Sissy Spacek, stars as Annabel’s sister and the film is produced by Ron Howard’s daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard.

Rounding off an excellent ensemble is Lusia Strus as Annabel’s melancholic alcoholic mama, Jane Adams as Auntie Mabel, and Ryo Kase as the kamikaze ghost.

© Richard Cotter

27th November, 2011

Tags: SYDNEY MOVIE OF THE WEEK, RESTLESS, Gus Van Sant, Mia Wasikowska, Denis Hopper, Schuyler Fisk, Bryce Dallas Howard, Luisa Strus, Jane Adams, Ryo Kase.