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DIFFICULT PLEASURE - a film about Brett Whitely
Classification: M
Runtime: 51 min
Directed By: Don Featherstone
Produced By: Don Featherstone
Language: English
Difficult Pleasure is a revealing portrait of one of Australia's finest painters - the only full-length documentary made about Brett Whiteley. Filmed in 1989, the film explores Whiteley's art and life and is richly illustrated with some of his finest paintings. He talks of being "born with a gift" and the desire to test and abuse that gift, to enhance it with addiction but ultimately to share it.
The film starts in Whiteley's studio - a Pandora's Box in which there are clues to his free-ranging talent. Whiteley is seen at a huge blank canvas as he makes the first strokes for a painting that he completes during the making of the film.
Whitely talks of eroticism - the major driving force behind his painting and one of the themes of the film. The landscapes of Byron Bay, Sydney Harbour, Oberon, and Tuscany dissolve between reality and his paintings. He says he sees "sexuality in everything – trees, mountains, in fruit". His paintings of the Olgas bear this out.
The film-makers travel with him and his girlfriend to London where he makes a drawing in a London cab. He then visits the Chamber of Horrors at Madams Tassauds and talks about his Christie series of paintings.
Back in Australia, Bondi Beach is where he talks of painting the nude and the difference between pornography and eroticism. "As long as it is about love, it's OK," he says.
Whiteley's greatest influence is Sir Francis Bacon and in the film he embarks on a major portrait ultimately destined for the Archibald Prize competition. In this sequence he applies interesting techniques as he carves the portrait and slides one half slightly over the other to create tension. References to Bacon are apparent in much of Whiteley's work.
He also reveals Van Gogh as a key inspiration and finds difficulty talking about it, becoming agitated and walking out on the film crew. His "Van Gogh" series is very close to his heart and provides a direct link to the moment that inspired him to become a painter. He reveals that in 1952, while unhappily tucked away at a provincial boarding school in Bathurst, NSW, he saw a small book of Van Gogh's paintings lying on the chapel floor. From that moment, "everything took on an expandingness and I knew I wanted to give my life to painting".
The film concludes with sequences of Whiteley's quirky and beautiful "Birds" and "Sculptures".
He also offers advice to the young artist: "Lie and cheat and distort as much as you can; that is the beginning of difficult pleasure."
Produced and Directed by Don Featherstone
Research and script Joanna Penglase
Cinematographer Kim Batterham
Sound Recordist Leo Sullivan
Featherstone Productions
Financed by the Australian Film Finance Corporation Limited
Produced with the assistance of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS
- Winner Gold Hugo Award, Chicago Film Festival
- Winner Best Arts Documentary, Banff Television Festival
- Nominated for Best Documentary, AFI Awards
REVIEWS
"A fascinating film about a fascinating man."
– Weekend Australian, 10 Feb 1990
"The whole theme of the film was expressed in extremely intimate terms. Whitely was holding nothing back. For him to have been so frank, to explain his immense work in such detail, must have been not only courageous but exhausting."
- Age, Melbourne, 1 March 1990
"A superb documentary ... the film-makers, through the simple but skilful juxtaposition of Whiteley's paintings and words, gives us a heady whiff of the man and his vision."
- Sydney Morning Herald, 28 Feb 1990
"A vivid portrait"
– Melbourne Herald, 22 Feb 1990