Vacant Possession
Written and directed By Margot Nash
Opens May 23 Melbourne, August 9 Hobart
Reviewed By Kim Linden
Vacant Possession intertwines memories, dreams, reality, the past and the present, all culminating in a vivid story about the concept of home, the meaning of place and all the memories and emotions that a home or former home can evoke.
The home in this movie is an old weatherboard house called "Irene". The spectacular setting of the film, at Botany Bay and Kurnell in Sydney, creates a moody background, contrasting heath and mangrove vegetation with the industrial and airport landscape while Sydney's skyscraper skyline lies on the horizon in the distance.
The central character is Tessa (Pamela Rabe). Just before she dies, Tessa's mum, Joyce (Toni Scanlon), changes her will to bequeath the house, which Tessa grew up in, to Tessa and her sister, Kate (Linden Wilkinson). Joyce has left the will somewhere in the house, and Tessa, who lives the life of a gambler somewhere overseas, goes back to stay in the home full of emotional secrets to search for the new will.
In every corner there is a memory of Tessa's childhood (young Tessa played by Melissa Ippolito) and her teenage years (played by Simonne Pengelly), the memory of being told not to play with the Aboriginal kids down the road, the memory of the Aboriginal guy she loved (Mitch, played by Graham Moore) and her pregnancy to him, the memory of her mother taking her out one night to have an abortion, and more.
The most haunting memories for Tessa are of her father, Frank (John Stanton). Frank is plagued by his own memories of World War II. The war left Frank with a mental illness and made him a violent man. His violence is what drove Tessa out of her home and overseas.
Margot Nash, the feminist writer/director, was fascinated by housing in Australia as a symbol of an alien European culture imposed on the land. The story is constantly interrelated to the way in which Aboriginal people feel about home and land and contrasted to the way white people relate to them.
Nash says she got the title of the movie from a vacant possession party she went to at an inner city Sydney squat which was about to be sold. "For me it invoked not only the image of the empty house but the idea of Terra nullius, the principle that stated Australia was an empty continent, and could be taken possession of and colonised."