The Weekend Australian Review 

Feb 9-10 2002

"Cast adrift in stormy waters"

By David Stratton

An interior novel packed with marginal but essential details, E Annie Proulx’s "The Shipping News" reaches the screen in what has to be described as a careful, rather than a visionary, production. Director Lasse Hallstrom brought similar craftsmanship to his previous American films, notably "The Cider House Rules" (1999) and "Chocolat" (2000), but those films never quite matched the quality of his Swedish work, notably his breakthrough picture, "My Life As A Dog" (1985).

Most of "The Shipping News" is set in an inhospitable coastal landscape on the Island of Newfoundland and it’s about as far away as it’s possible to be from the light and colour of the French village in "Chocolat". This is the dank, dismal place that the Quoyle clan left some 50 years earlier and it’s here that disappointed, disillusioned Quoyle (Kevin Spacey) returns. Admirers of the book may quail at the casting of Spacey, an intelligent and charismatic actor but not exactly the obvious choice for the chubby, beefy character Proulx created.

The film blames Quoyle’s father for his son’s blighted life. As a child, Quoyle was literally thrown in at the deep end by a parent who believed in learning to swim the hard way. In one of the film’s best scenes, the face of the half-drowned boy gradually morphs into that of the world-weary, middle-aged loser that boy has become by the time the story really gets under way.

Quoyle works in a menial capacity on a newspaper and lives a solitary existence ("I got used to being invisible") until the day that Petal (Cate Blanchett) bursts into his life. Petal is everything Quoyle is not – she has lived life to the full, she’s wild and immodest and vulgar. She latches onto Quoyle and seduces him with a gusto that takes his breath away. In no time at all they have a baby girl, Bunny, but Petal certainly isn’t going to act like a loving wife and mother – there’s too much life to live.

And poor Quoyle has to accept her lovers or lose her altogether.

Quoyle’s life falls apart and it’s at this low point that his long-lost aunt, Agnis (Judi Dench) shows up, quickly sums up the hopelessness of her nephew’s situation and wearily decides to take him, and Bunny, to Killick-Claw, Newfoundland, where he can discover his roots and start a new life in the old Quoyle house, a ramshackle affair which teeters on the edge of a cliff.

Here, Quoyle somehow gets a job as reporter on the very overstaffed local newspaper, "The Gammy Bird", and finds himself, in an irony the film never stresses, covering the things he detests most in life – car crashes and life on the water (the shipping news). He also meets the widow Wavey (Julianne Moore), who represents the opportunity of a new relationship and a fresh start.

Hallstrom and his technical team have very successfully created the community of Killick-Claw, which is peopled by eccentrics and where the specialty at the local caff is seal-flipper pie. In this backwater, the owner of the newspaper (Scott Glenn) insists on a car crash on the front page of every issue. A remote, inhospitable and chilly place, it’s the ideal background for a film about the healing of a broken man.

But Hallstrom is far less successful in depicting what the novel is better equipped to explore – Quoyle’s inner journey. Spacey’s lugubrious performance prevents much in the way of audience identification and it’s not being chauvinistic to suggest that no one in the cast matches Blanchett, whose all-too-brief scenes are electrifying. In her hot pants, low-cut top and fishnet stockings, Blanchett’s infuriating but life-loving Petal is the film’s finest creation, and just about everyone else pales alongside her.