Three more from Paul Cox

A Woman's Tale

1991, VHS

Cox heads deeply into death and old age in this movie about Martha (Sheila Florance), an independent 78 year-old woman who is rapt just being alive while others her age are struggling. She's struck up a friendship with her part-time care nurse Anna (Gosia Dobrowolska), so much so that she allows her to conduct her affair with a married man at her house. Martha's not without issues like having to look after her forgetful neighbour or the landlords always looking for something more. Then Martha has a spell and has to face death but she's going her way. Excellent movie bolstered by a great final performance from Florance (best known for her role as Lizzie Birdsworth on Prisoner) who died just after the movie was released. She just lights up the screen like nothing else and makes this probably Cox's best movie.

A little bit of nudity in this movie, a bath scene from Sheila, and Gosia Dobrowolska briefly shows her breasts as she dresses.

Gosia Dobrowolska and Sheila Florance film clips (see below)

Dobrowolska



Florance

The Nun and the Bandit

1992

The first time Cox made a movie not set in the present day and this is about a farmer (Chris Haywood) who lives with his discarded brothers/half brothers. When he finds out that his father, who fathered many children, died with a large estate, the farmer comes to town to demand what it rightfully his from the heirs but they push him away when he demands $50,000. The farmer isn't happy so he kidnaps one of his daughters who is travelling with a nun (Gosia Dobrowolska). He wants to let the nun go back to town to tell the family what he's done but she won't leave the daughter, so he takes them both. The family won't pay, his brothers think the farmer has gone mad and the farmer wants something from this so he turns his attention to the nun who he decides to make his wife, much to her objection. The farmer gets into a psychological battle develops between the two which the nun struggles with against her will.

This movie isn't much fun basically turning into a two-hander for the second half as the rest of the cast seem to have abandoned it. You can see the nun wasn't going to cope with the incredibly persistent farmer and the movie dawdles to it ending. Strangely this movie would show up semi-regularly late night on Channel 9 including as recently as the last 5-10 years. Never got around to watching it until now, kept meaning too but it was probably for the best.

Some further nudity from Gosia in three separate scenes, mostly brief stuff and used to show her character's mental degradation.

Gosia Dobrowolska film clips (see below)

Lust and Revenge

1996, vhs

Cox gets back with John Clarke (who co-wrote Lonely Hearts) for another light comedy, this time set in the art world where a new wing of a gallery is being opened and a celebrated sculptor (Victoria Eagger) is commissioned for a new piece. With the gallery director's daughter Georgina (Claudia Karvan), they decide on an ordinary looking man Karl-Heinz (Nicholas Hope, Bad Boy Bubby himself who briefly turns up in Exile) as her model. This works out well for him and his wife Cecilia (Gosia Dobrowolska) as he's getting $10,000 and they might be able to live in a cottage like they planned. But it turns out to be nude modelling which Karl-Heinz isn't worried about but he knows his wife is. She is also deeply into a dodgy religion run by a charlatan Baba (Norman Kaye). Well, Cecilia finds out what's going on and unsurprisingly isn't happy but she accepts it only because she can push her husband into spruiking to the gallery owner about getting funding for the dodgy religion. The gallery owner then wants a bigger sculpture and all hell breaks loose.

Not the best movie and plays on a lot of obvious clichés in the art world/psychiatry/fringe religions that it feels a little lazy. As a result, it may be his most accessible movie as a lot happens, is fast-paced (!) and plays like a jaunty comedy while not being all that funny.

A couple of nude scenes from Claudia including faking a nude sculpture scene plus a baffling nude scene from Gosia where she is drugged and ends up on heat and posing for the redesigned sculpture and shows a fair amount of nudity.

Also depending on what version you'd get, there's a nude woman on the video cover for the movie but you don't see the face of the woman so who knows who it is.

Gosia Dobrowolska and Claudia Karvan film clips (see below)

Dobrowolska



Karvan