With Or Without You [Private Screening]

​Cogently written and smoothly directed...

​There’s a very, very long history of side players in a movie engulfing the rest of it due to the sheer force of characterisation and brilliance of performance. Think Han Solo in Star Wars, Furiosa in Fury Road, or Johnny “Spit” Spitieri in Gettin’ Square. Joining this group is Marta Dusseldorp in the Aussie drama With or Without You; though the film is essentially built around a bickering, wildly divergent young couple, it’s Dusseldorp’s broad, blowsy, boozy, funny and horribly fucked-up character who owns the movie wholesale. It’s such an actor’s dream of a role that one can almost envision Marta Dusseldorp – a gifted performer with an impressive resume featuring strong titles like TV’s A Place to Call Home, Janet King, Wentworth, Jack Irish, Bay of Fires, The Twelve and Stateless – crying with joy upon reading debut feature writer/director Kelly Schilling’s eloquent screenplay.

​At the centre of With or Without You is troubled twentysomething Chloe (engaging 800 Words star Melina Vidler), who connects with West African man Dalu (Albert Mwangi exudes laidback charm and delivers a deeply moving performance) while escaping an abusive, violent relationship. The two embark on a life-changing journey together that ultimately involves Chloe’s mother, Sharon (Marta Dusseldorp), a hopeless alcoholic with a long history of parental neglect. Despite constantly trying, Sharon just can’t stay off the sauce, slurring and slushing her way from one heightened emotional crisis to the next, much to the continued consternation of Chloe, who has been dealing with her mother’s erratic sloppiness her whole life. On top of all that, the guarded and hesitant Chloe also has to manage her feelings about Dalu, tamping down on a deep well of suspicion and distrust driven up by her ugly childhood.

​Cogently written and smoothly directed by Kelly Schilling (who expands on her own 2009 short Kind of Man), With or Without You is a sensitive treatise on grief, family dysfunction, forgiveness, the pain of vulnerability, and the sins of the parents being visited upon their children. It’s strong, heady, meaty stuff for a local drama, and it’s made even more palatable by its attractive cast (Aussie stalwart Martin Sacks is also on-board with a characteristically fine-tuned and wholly compelling turn) and the towering Marta Dusseldorp, who gets to scream, stagger, hurl abusive comments, collapse and caterwaul, and even fuck a very handsome, nice-guy stranger, played with lashings of charm and swagger by Dustin Clare. Convincing at every turn, Dusseldorp does it all with gutsy, perfectly calibrated