He Died with a Felafel In His Hand

After far too long a break, cult Australian director Richard Lowenstein has finally committed himself to film again with He Died with a Felafel In His Hand, a film based on John Birmingham's cult novel of the same name.

Funny, philosophical and forthright, He Died with a Felafel In His Hand tracks the life of Danny (Noah Taylor), a terminally unemployed, debt ridden young writer who is in the midst of his 47th chaotic shared household experience in Brisbane, Australia. The wiles of pagan princesses, neo-fascists and love interests aside, the Brisbane experience isn't even going to be Danny's last shared household experience.

At Danny's side in each of the film's shared houses in which he resides are fellow drifters Sam (Emily Hamilton), Flip (Brett Stewart) and Anya (Romane Bohringer). Tipped out of the confines of tertiary education, each of these characters finds themselves lost in a world that can offer them neither jobs, direction, or hope. Brought together by the microcosm that is communal domestic life, these twenty-something's struggle side by side to try and understand the point of love, life and existence as they roam across shared households in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.

The games of cane toad golf played in the shared house in Brisbane, the policemen at the door with twitchy trigger fingers in Melbourne and the polished floorboards carpeted with over-inflated egos in Sydney all act as fitting tip-offs to the character of the city's in which the shared houses reside - effectively creating a neo-realism that is heightened by the film's use of on-location shooting.

While this film shows that the shared household experience is often a source of comedy and melodrama, it isn't always a bed of roses. Central character, Danny, describes the dictum that hell is other people well in the film, as he explains, "I've lived in 49 shared households in what seems as many years. I've been ripped off, raided, threatened, burnt out, shot at, cheated on, scabbed in every one of those years. My beds are foam slabs on the floor. My cupboards are stacks of stolen milk crates. I've lived with tent-dwelling bank clerks, albino moontanners, psycho fucking drama queens, acid eaters, mushroom farmers, brothel crawlers, hard-core separatist lesbians and obscurely tiger-throated Japanese girls! I'm in a psycho-fucking nightmare from hell and I'm fucking fed up with it!"

Having read John Birmingham's book, I can see how this film may upset die hard fans of the novel through its reduction of scores of shared house escapades to just three, however, I tend to think that Lowenstein's approach is the right one. The book simply had too great a volume of characters, locations and scenarios for a feature length film to cover if it was to maintain any sense of coherence as a film. I felt that Lowenstein's crystallisation of the book's key scenes, played out through an amalgamation of its most intriguing characters, allowed the novel's most striking elements to intelligently come to the fore on film.

Lowenstein's approach effectively brings to the screen a beautiful, brooding character study that's one part dirty realist comedy, one part existential allegory, but more than anything, a maturation of Lowenstein's own directorial style, as evidenced in his last cult hit, Dogs in Space. This film's fine performances, allegorical dialogue, philosophical themes, use of music and sense of muted melodrama also stands up well alongside the fine tradition of American independent filmmaking propounded by directors such as Hal Hartley and Jim Jarmusch.

Much like the cult novel and film versions of Less Than Zero, the story of He Died with a Felafel In His Hand has borne two great texts which stand up well in their own right, whilst also complementing one another. He Died with a Felafel In His Hand is similarly destined to be an instant cult favourite. By rights, it should also be the film that makes Richard Lowenstein's name on the international stage.

Highly recommended.

Vanessa Long

Read my October 2002 interview with Richard Lowenstein

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