re:mote voices

Title: The Goddess of 1967
Cast: Rose Byrne, Rikiya Kurokawa, Nicholas Hope, Elise McCredie, Tim Richards, Bree Beadman, Satya Gumbert, Tina Bursill
Director: Clara Law

The first film I caught in the second annual Glasgow Chinese film festival was the goddess of 1967 by director Clara Law, who was present to discuss the film after the screening. What struck me as curious when I first read about Goddess was that the film is set in Australia and is about a Japanese man. However the connection for this festival is that Clara Law was born and raised in Hong Kong, before moving to Australia.

The Goddess Of 1967 is a curious and striking film, quirky and highly stylised. The goddess of the title is a car, a Citroen DS, which was nicknamed the goddess. No doubt as is typical of these kind of things, the car was one of the last things to fall into place with the story, which is funny given how central it is to the narrative. On the surface the film is put forward as being the story of a Japanese man, an obsessive collector – his house is filled with reptiles, and he is also willing to fly all the way to Australia and pay thousands to get hold of this particular car. However it becomes clear that this is just another episode in the live of the car, and the family who have owned it since it was new.

On arriving in Australia the man is devastated to find that the man who he has been dealing with has killed himself and his wife. But that isn’t the end. A young blind woman claims that she can take him to who really owned the car. So they set off on a road trip, into the Australian outback. Along the way we start to flash back, first through the life of the girl, then her mother, then her grandmother, all of whom were in possession of this car at some point. While there is initially a certain light heartedness to the film, the joy of driving, interspersed with data on the car, it becomes clear from these flash backs that there is a dark past. One filled with abuse and tragedy, which has shaped and haunted this young girl her entire life.

Visually goddess is striking, setting up the initial contrasts of hyper-industrialised Tokyo against the sparse outback. Tokyo is filled with towering structures, thundering trains and squealing sounds, exaggerated and noise heavy. While the outback is more peaceful, open and filled with colour. In terms of colour the car has been cranked up, it becomes this fantastic object – glowing pink body warm provides a vibrancy accentuated by the palpable blue interiors. A number of the driving scenes are done against a blue screen, allowing for an even greater contrast to be established, the colours of the outside world are washed out, with this external reality becoming an abstract and distant thing at times. Keeping with the sense of exaggeration and colour, the girl’s hair is a bright and unnatural red, something which holds even through the flashbacks of when we see her as a child.

Goddess is strong on visual terms, but the way the narrative unfolds as well also has an impact. As does the interaction between the characters, played by Rikiya Kurokawa and Rose Byrne, the cryptic relationship and motivations that build up between the two of them. The only real criticism I have of the film is the climax, when the girl returns home at last the build up of the scene becomes perhaps excessive. So that the whole film faces the danger of really losing it here, thankfully Law manages to weave her way through this minefield she has created and pull off the closure.