As the sweaty climate for Australian filmmaking rages on, promising new director Robert Connolly releases his second picture Three Dollars, a diligent and well-refined drama starring David Wenham as a wholesome man whose values become threatened by financial burdens and a social conscience.

Adapting from a book by Victorian novelist Elliott Perlman, who also co-wrote the screenplay, Connelly combines a strong character arc with an intriguing story and pieces together the smartest and most interesting Australian film so far on the calendar for 2005.

Three Dollars makes a number of topical and thought provoking observations about the fickle nature of financial security, and how many lower/middle class families are only a couple of pay checks away from the poverty line.

Similar in theme to Alkinos Tsilimidos’ Tom White (2004) the film traces the descent of protagonist Eddie Harnovey (Wenham) into financial and personal insecurity, laboriously sketching him as an ordinary bloke slowly shredded by the system. Along the way a number of fleeting but memorable minor characters reinforce Connolly and Perlman’s perspective on metropolitan life as a detached, borderline inhumane culture, a housing ground for congregations of flawed folk bound by the shackles of society where man made practises often get the better of moral liability. Coyly intertwined with suggestive nods towards fate and unusual circumstances, there is a graceful air of humanity that swoons the film’s dramatics into modes of expressive, surreptitious exposition.

Eddie is a cleat-cut all round nice guy with a gentle way about him and a good head on his shoulders. His job as a chemical engineer who examines soil for site developments allows him to zone out of the groan of his day to day existence, which includes issues with his wife Tanya (Frances O’Connor) and the parenting of their six year old daughter Abby (Joanna Hunt-Prokhovnik). Strange things happen to Eddie in vague and subtle ways - every nine and a half years, for example, he bumps into childhood friend Amanda (Sarah Wynter) for a quick coffee and a chinwag.  Eddie’s living situation complicates when Tanya loses her job and he is forced to nut out some tough decisions regarding a site that may not be appropriate for housing.

Despise some scepticisms littered in the press regarding the legitimacy of the film’s final act, Three Dollars remains a plausible and affecting social fable bereft of preachy messages and glossy peripheral devices.  With a highly apt cast and crew the elements very quickly fall into place: a bunch of strong and realistic performances, even handed direction and a skilful lens comprised of sharp and unobtrusive photography.

The moments in which Connolly and Perlman tug at the hearts and identities of wandering strangers are perhaps their most impressionable: a desperate, broken man tears himself apart at the prospect of abandoning a stray dog, a chatty hospital patient pleads for some food and a friend, and Eddie’s introverted father silently aches from undefined depression.  Three Dollars even comes equipped with a “don’t do it!” moment of nail-chewing movie anxiousness, in which Eddie stops to assist a vertically challenged old lady while running late to a job interview.

Images of a struggling family unit are close-up and personal - the dialogue between Eddie and Tanya feels a little too spiffy and stagy for low-key domestic chatter, but passable nonetheless - and the film’s latter suggestions towards homelessness  add a sense of perspective to the production’s overall tone and meaning.

Connolly’s steadily moving pace gently unravels layers of his characters and the standard of acting in Three Dollars is kept at admirable benchmark levels by Wenham, who provides a strong and malleable anchor and broadly takes the story onto his shoulders, delivering a quietly expressive and affecting performance that continues to humanise the film even as it advocates a running depiction of robotic modern ideology.  Connolly also evokes a sense of sadness in the way things change, how external factors can distance and separate relationships and how in today’s world of fierce legalities and heartless professionalism personal integrity fights against a constantly manifesting tide of compromising values and crooked infrastructure.

Review by Luke Buckmaster

Cast:    David Wenham, Frances O’Connor, Sarah Wynter, Robert Menzies
Director: Robert Connolly
Producers: John Maynard
Screenplay: Robert Connolly, Elliot Perlman (novel by Elliot Perlman)
Australian theatrical release: April 21, 2005