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LOVE SERENADE
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The homeliest man in Australia drives his beat-up sandblasted sports sedan through flat scrub of southwestern New South Wales, and over his radio comes the thrombotic voice of Barry White crooning Love Serenade, to whose beat the driver begins contentedly and silently murmuring along:
Take it off
Baby, take it all off
I want you to wave your hand to the world
I dont wanna feel no clothes
He has a face for radio, which is handy as he is none other than celebrated Brisbane disk jockey Ken Sherry (George Shevtsov, a revelation), on his way to spin platters for landlocked agricultural Sunray, Victoria, on the banks of the mighty Murray River, where as fate will have it he has rented a house next to sisters Dimity and Vicki-Ann Hurley (Rebecca Frith). As unlike as sisters can be, they squabble incessantly, with vivacious Vicki-Ann rushing across the red-dirt driveway to present Ken with a fresh-caught large-mouth bass she caught herself, only to be told flatly he doesn't eat fish ("that's just the way it is"), while diffident Dimity (Miranda Otto, The Two Towers) holds herself tightly and practically cringes when, as waitress in Albert's Chinese restaurant, she cannot tell Ken whether the prawns are fresh. Every day Vicki-Ann and Dimity meet for lunch at the concrete picnic table across the railroad tracks, where Vicki-Ann spins fantasies about the bond she is establishing with Ken, and urges Dimity to be outgoing:
No people skills. People like to feel welcome, you know.
Piss off.
Charming.
But in a quirk of fate, it is Dimity who will, as Ken puts it, ease his loneliness.
Dimity: Do you ever feel loneliness?
[Surprised] Loneliness? Of course I feel loneliness.
Me too. Sometimes. Not all the time. [Pause] Would you like me to ease it for you?
Ease what?
Your loneliness.
My loneliness?
I could ease it for you, maybe...
Ken, thrice married and thrice divorced, with nary a ruffled eyebrow, shows her how, "with just a little pain at first and then very great pleasure …"
And when we get behind closed doors
Then she lets her hair hang down
And she makes me glad that I'm a man
Oh, no-one knows what goes on behind closed doors
The unlikeliest Lothario, Ken is his own doppelganger. In person he is remote, faintly superior ("are your prawns fresh?" he asks poor Dimity), reserved, closed, but when confronted with nothing but the waiting suspended mike, he seduces the airwaves with a smooth murmur that effortlessly bridges from one love song to another as he tells the unseen community of his past loves, his endless yearnings, and his remarkable romantic success:
I'd just like to pay tribute, if I may, to the generous nature of Sunray girls ... especially in regard to the easing of a man's loneliness.
The key to Ken's character lies in that faux-deferential "if I may," spoken into an uncomplaining microphone.
To the many quirky romantic movies that Australia has birthed -- The Coca-Cola Kid, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Muriel's Wedding, The Sirens -- we can now add Love Serenade, as placidly dangerous as the mighty Murray down which Dimity and Vicki-Ann float in their aluminum fishing boat with its tiny three-horse Evinrude, still bickering, still sisters, as we hear echoes of some poetry that Ken likes to quote:
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
Sing it to me, baby.