Starstruck

Blonde Venus in a Sydney New Wave nightclub is just one of the fizzy witticisms, the heroine (Jo Kennedy) doffs her red, floppy kangaroo costume and reveals a flaming shock of hair and two-tone tights. The family business at the pub is a teeming matriarchy presided over by aging queen-bee Mum (Margo Lee), the 14-year-old cousin/manager/songwriter (Ross O'Donovan) reads Sexual Symbolism while washing blue dye off his hair. ("Guitars are like phallic symbols and guitarists masturbate for a living," Kennedy snaps at her beau. "So God knows why you need me.") The bouncy punkette is practically the tomboy of Gillian Armstrong's period debut updated to the dawn of MTV, only here her brilliant career doesn't take off until she seizes media attention with a tightrope stunt. "Will she drop," a reporter wonders as she dangles between two buildings. "Not until I finish this interview, I'm not!" The pop guru (John O'May) casts her in The Wow! Show, a mad dash to save the pub and a plan to infiltrate the Opera House follow. Even before the queer-eyed "Tough" number, with its Busby Berkeley-cum-Village People kaleidoscopes in a pool full of inflatable sharks, the filmmaker displays her cheeky savvy—the musical interludes are micro-Demy arias, the lyrics have their own flaky effervescence. ("It's the monkey in me, makes me wanna do it / The monkey in me, makes me wanna chew it...") The metaphor is of the female artist asked to melodically round off her edges to survive inside the industry: Akerman deconstructs the theme the following year with Les Années 80, Armstrong prefers to hail her beguiled heroine, last seen ascending onto the showbiz spotlight on a shooting-star cutout. With Max Cullen, Pat Evison, Dennis Miller, Norman Erskine, and Ned Lander.