The other night we watched Possession. Not a film for the
faint-hearted. Andrzej
Zulawski takes the kitchen sink and throws it at a marital breakdown. There’s
everything from a sexualised monster (created by the man who would later go on
to create ET) to a three minute subway sequence of Isabelle Adjani having one
of the most severe breakdowns ever seen on film. (She won best actress at
Cannes for it.) Adjani co-stars with a young Sam Neill. The acting is frankly
bizarre. The director clearly told his stars to go for it and that they did.
There are not just moments but whole sequences that are so over-the-top they
give the impression of two fish thrashing around out of water, gasping for
breath. At the same time, there’s a degree of commitment to the work, of zero
compromise, which is impressive. If you want no-holds-barred acting, for better
or for worse, Possession is a good place to go. A coherent script might have
helped, but clearly there was something out of control about Zulawski’s movie,
which is filmed in a divided Berlin and includes shots of East German border
guards looking on from the other side of the omnipresent Wall.
The film was released in 1981. Quite how Sam Neill, then in his early
30s, ended up acting in it is something of a mystery. IMDB reveals he was also
in Omen 3 around this time, but otherwise his previous work seems to have been
predominantly in Australia. Two years later he would go on to become the
protagonist in the British TV series, Reilly Ace of Spies, which cemented his
reputation.
Watching Neill lock horns with Adjani; threaten to cut his arm off; have
a demented fit in a hotel room, turned out to be a Proustian moment. It took me
back over twenty years to an Australian I knew in London, called Bruce. I
cannot remember his surname. We worked together for a while in the Natural Shoe
Store. The Natural Shoe Store purported to be a hippy-vibe place, in keeping
with an emerging New London glamour. The first place to sell Birkenstocks, it
was frequented by stars like Pavarotti, Annie Lennox, Sade etc. The hippie
exterior, like the emerging New London vibe, was deceptive. The Shoe Store was
then, and still is, an astutely marketed company, run by a craven American
capitalist. Located in Covent Garden, it had a high staff turnover, many of
them over-educated foreigners looking to earn a crust during their stay in
London.
Bruce was one of these. A tall man, clean-cut, with what might be
described as old-school Australian values. Australian men can be split into two
camps. The roisterers and the old-school. The latter is a long way from
standard UK perceptions of drunken Antipodeans. There’s something upstanding
and almost Victorian about old-school Aussies. More likely to savour a good
wine than down a tinny. Bruce wore brogues and spoke softly. He was not shy,
but always measured his words carefully. We got on fine.
At the end of my stint at the Shoe Store, I decided to go on a small
tour of Europe, whilst I could still buy an inter-rail pass, the magic ticket which
allowed you to travel anywhere on European rail for a month if you were under
26. Before the days of discount air travel or the Channel Tunnel, cities like
Madrid retained an alien, exotic feel. You arrived at dawn after an endless
train journey. The cafés were full of chain-smokers who looked like they might
once have played a prominent role in a Fascist regime. I hung out with an
American artist who claimed to have sold his work to Dennis Hopper. He tried
desperately to chat up girls who couldn’t understand a word he was saying,
showing them postcards of his paintings, which looked like rip-offs of Douanier
Rousseau.
After Madrid, the artist headed off to visit the caves at Altamira. I
went on to Granada and the Alhambra. Then Gerona, the Pyrenees, Zurich, Naples.
And finally Venice, where Bruce and I had arranged to meet. In the days before
email or mobiles, we had nothing more concrete than a date, a time, and a
place, the place being the Rialto bridge. He was several hours late, but I
never doubted the old-school Australian would show up.
We spent a couple of days together. Neither of us were excited about
seeing the tourist spots. Instead we took boats to far-flung islands and
explored the margins. One of these islands was nothing more than rickety
housing blocks with raw sewage in the ‘street’ and angry dogs. Bruce took black
and white photographs. Later he gave me a couple of large prints which
accompanied me for several years, on walls in Bournemouth, Winchester and
London, before fading away. As did Bruce, who I presume ended up back in
Australia.
I don’t know if it was on this trip or back in the UK that Bruce opened
up. About his former girlfriend, with whom he had lived and hoped to marry. I
may have imagined this, but I understood that he’d chosen to go traveling in
Europe as a result of their break-up. Which occurred, he explained, when she
met the actor, Sam Neill. Then in his post- Reilly phase, when he must have
been something of a superstar in Australia. Neill had a fling with Bruce’s partner
and she had left Bruce for him. It was hard to imagine the upright Bruce and
the Hollywood star with the same woman. As Bruce himself put it. It was a
choice of: “Me… or ‘Reilly Ace of Spies’”. Meaning, he seemed to suggest,
ruefully, there wasn’t really any choice at all.
