Beautiful Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

Beautiful Blu-ray Movie Review

Or, Australian Beauty: Banality in the ‘Burbs

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater July 21, 2010

We all know by now what goes on in the suburbs: the infidelities of desperate housewives, father/daughter incest, sexual perversion, through-the-window voyeurism, lust for teenaged temptresses, murder—you know, the stuff that happens everywhere, basically, but seems dirtier and more scandalous somehow when it takes place outside the big city. The myth of the suburbs as a safe, almost puritanically clean place—which is also tied in to the idea of the perfect 1950s nuclear family—has been the subject of films for at least half a century. In 1956, Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life—a movie way ahead of its time—showed the dissolution of a suburban family because of a father’s addiction. Stanley Kubrick explored the sexual dangers of the girl next door in his adaptation of Nabakov’s Lolita. In Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet, David Lynch unearthed secrets buried beneath green lawns and white picket fences. And in the slightly overrated American Beauty, Sam Mendes showed the suburbs as a doldrums of dissatisfaction, a place of endless frustration and middle-aged angst. First-time Aussie director Dean O’Flaherty’s Beautiful—which might as well be called Australian Beauty—rakes over many of these same themes, but fails to turn up anything new. The film is as cookie cutter as the houses it tries to peer inside.

Lolita much?

If I were to ask, okay, what’s that film about the young guy who’s kind of innocent but also a peeping tom…you’d probably interrupt me and say, “Oh, yeah, Blue Velvet, with Kyle MacLachlan.”

No, wait, let me continue—he starts snooping around with a neighborhood blond and…

“Yeah, that’s Blue Velvet. David Lynch. Laura Dern’s the blond.”

Wait, wait, wait, I’m not finished—the kid gets involved with this dark-haired woman who’s being abused by a hot-headed sexual deviant who…

“Hey, idiot, it’s Blue Velvet. Isabella Rossellini’s the woman, and Dennis Hopper huffs some kind of gas and starts babbling in dirty baby talk.”

No, sorry, that’s not it. Actually, I’m thinking of Beautiful, this new Australian film that totally cribs from Blue Velvet, American Beauty, and a bunch of other films about suburban secrets.

And it does. In melodramatic voice-over narration, we’re introduced to Sunshine Hills, a Lumberton/Twin Peaks stand-in where no one talks about “the fear that resides in our eyes.” Said fear is due to the supposed disappearance of three teenaged girls who—so the rumor goes—have been brutally abused and murdered. Who knows, maybe it’s just one of those suburban legends. Anyway, people are talking about it, and parents are making sure their kids get in before dark. One of these kids is Danny (Sebastian Gregory), a 14-year-old loner with an artistic bent who sullenly shuffles through the neighborhood, taking photos of dead birds and getting picked on for his piss- poor basketball abilities.

He’s also a peeping tom. In one of the opening scenes we see him crouched behind a bush with his camera, leering at Suzy (Tahyna Tozzi), the street’s resident Lolita, who sunbathes in a red swimsuit even when it’s raining, arching her back seductively, knowing full well Danny is snapping away. Suzy likes the power she lords over the hormonal young shutterbug, and in exchange for her affection, she sends Danny on a series of fact-finding missions to investigate what’s going on inside the neighborhood’s houses, specifically “House 46,” a run-down split-level on the end of the street with “a dubious history of murder and rape.”

Apparently everyone’s a total perv in Sunshine Hills, because in each of the windows Danny peers through, something seamy is happening—naked laundry ironing, an old man watching porn with his cat, a woman in lingerie crawling subserviently toward her husband, even a father summoning his daughter to his bedroom. (No one’s, like, watching Jeopardy or doing the dishes… clothed.) The point the film tries so overzealously to make is that the residents of Sunshine Hills have basically indulged in the rumor of a street-roaming killer—an external fear—to help them forget about the unspoken nastiness that’s going on inside their own homes, from husbands with hidden nudie mags to, well, incest. Like Blue Velvet or American Beauty, Beautiful tries to pry back the perfect suburban veneer and reveal the rot, the termites eating the white picket fence from the inside. It just doesn’t do it as well—or very well at all—since everything it tries to say has been stated more eloquently in a number of other films. (That, if you can’t read between the lines, is a nice way of saying there’s a lot of ripping-off going on here.) Director Dean O’Flaherty even steals Lynch’s use of insect imagery from Blue Velvet, with numerous insert shots of centipedes and spiders, the creepy-crawlies in the rose garden. I wouldn’t have been surprised if had Danny stumbled across an ant-covered severed ear.

What he does stumble across is a mystery involving House 46’s seldom-seen inhabitants, a despondent woman (Asher Keddie) who stares out the window all day—she’s the film’s Isabella Rossellini—and her abusive, leather-jacket wearing boyfriend (Socratis Otto). Nothing is exactly as it seems—nothing, in a good mystery, should be—but the trouble is that the mystery ultimately comes to nothing. If you’re easily frustrated by films with endings that seem sloppily resolved, you’ll want to steer clear of Beautiful, which has a conclusion that won’t so much leave you scratching your head as tearing your hair out. The performances and the script tend to provoke a similar response. There’s a lot of overacting by newcomer Tahyna Tozzi, who strains for teen sexpot credibility, and underacting by sleepy-eyed Sebastian Gregory, who seems far duller than his character needs to be. In a film where all of the characters speak in over-obvious proclamations, Danny’s dad, played by Ray Liotta look-a-like Aaron Jeffery, gets one of the most unsubtle: disappointed with Danny’s artistic temperament, he turns and says, “You have got to change. Learn to be like everyone else!” Maybe someone told the director this, and that’s why Beautiful lacks an original vision of suburbia.

Beautiful Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shot natively on high definition video, Beautiful's 1080i/AVC-encoded digital-to-digital transfer is fairly strong for a low budget indie drama. Yes, the film is interlaced and not progressive, but aside from a few moments of shimmer and brief aliasing, I didn't spot any overt motion artifacts. There are a few soft shots, but in general, the film looks quite sharp. Just check out some of the macro close-ups of wet flowers, or Suzy's face as she "sunbathes" in the rain—you make out even the tiniest droplets of water clinging to the ultra-fine hair on the side of her cheek. Clarity takes a bit of hit during the nighttime scenes, due to increased noise levels, but the noise is never heavy enough to distract. Though color during interior scenes sometimes seems a bit weak and "video-ish"—I can't really think of any other way to put it—there are some vivid hues outdoors, from magenta roses to Suzy's red swimsuit. A typical downside to shooting on video is blown out highlights, but here bright whites and colors are kept mostly under control, and black levels are deep enough to give the picture a decent sense of contrast. Overall, the film looks better than its modest budget would suggest.

Beautiful Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The same goes for the film's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, which gets a bit heavy handed at times when the movie tries to ratchet the tension, but otherwise sounds full, bright, and clean. Near the beginning of the film you'll hear all sorts of "creepy" sounds—wind chimes clinking in the rear speakers, slow music box tinkling—and throughout there's a fair amount of quiet ambience in the surround channels, like rain and thunder. The use of the rear speakers isn't incredibly immersive, but the soundfield is filled out nicely. Whenever Danny gets near "House 46," the LFE channel kicks in almost ridiculously, shaking and throbbing and trying to sustain a feeling of dread. It's definitely over the top. The score by Aussie musician Paul Mac has a grotesque fairy tale vibe—a la Danny Elfman— but he also incorporates some electronic elements, veering too close, in one particular cue, to the main theme of American Beauty. Still the music sounds good, with deep, defined bass and plenty of clarity in the high end. There were a few instances when dialogue sounded slightly low, but I had no trouble understanding what was being said. English SDH subtitles are available in bright yellow lettering that appears both in and out of the 2.35:1 frame.

Beautiful Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Behind the Scenes - "The Beautiful Vision" (1080i, 14:54)
A typical production documentary, featuring plenty of on-set footage and interviews with director Dean O'Flaherty, actors Socratis Otto and Tahnya Tozzi, and composer Paul Mac.

Deleted Scenes (SD, 10:44)
There are six scenes here, including a "dance of the dead girls" that I can't believe anyone would ever even consider putting in a film, along with an alternate ending.

Theatrical Trailer (1080p, 2:25)

Beautiful Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm not sure, at this point, that we need another film about the seedy underbelly of the suburbs, considering superior movies like Blue Velvet and American Beauty have explored that territory so thoroughly. First time writer/director Dean O'Flaherty definitely exposes his influences here, but rather than the usual wink wink homage, he outright cribs themes and motifs from a handful of better films and piles them onto a brittle, poorly resolved story that buckles under the weight. Supporters of independent Australian cinema may want to give this one a rental, but everyone else would be better off watching Blue Velvet again and imagining all the characters have Aussie accents. Here's Dennis Hopper to start you off: "F—k Heineken! Fosters: Australian for beer!"