Last Days of Chez Nous (1992)

Last Days of Chez Nous
Dir. Gillian Armstrong.
AFFC / Australian Film Commission, 1992 / Fine Line Features, 1993.

Director Gillian Armstrong (1950- )

            Trained at the Australian Film and Television School in Sydney, Armstrong defies categorization as a maker of “women’s films” or even “Australian films,” since her work prolifically spans her homeland and this country, evoking the best of classic Hollywood cinema, but always with a twist on generic conventions. Her techniques usually do not call attention to themselves since her editing is fluid and her creation of period settings and costumes is rich, though traditional. Like her compatriot Jane Campion (The Piano), her “commitment to solid character development and acting” (Felperin and Edelman 35) is a directorial goal.

            From her first feature, My Brilliant Career (1979), her thematic concerns have been “sexual politics and family tensions” (35). This story, set in the wild Australian outback at the turn of the century, exploits the trappings of the past to create a romantic tapestry, while at the same time celebrating a modern message of feminine independence in spite of a “smothered sensuality.” Though even contemporary female viewers have expressed a disappointment at the ending, this film suggests that the heroine cannot be a struggling writer and a happy wife.

Starstruck (1982) continues the feminist themes, but through a corny “save the family pub” plot where the star puts on a big show and wins a recording contract. Though amusing, this film suffers from a rather repetitive punk rock score and rather low-cal, if eccentric, characters.

Mrs. Soffel (1984) is Armstrong’s first American production and should have garnered more appreciation than it did in its first run. Perhaps this film is not Hollywood enough for our viewers since it uses an artsy, bleak black-and-white cinematography. Telling the tragic tale of a woman who helps her lover-convict escape from her warden-husband’s prison, the story was perhaps too sadly doomed for most Americans’ taste. Nonetheless, Armstrong provokes strong performances from both Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson.

In High Tide (1987), the director returns to a more positive feminist message while treating “the rejected motherhood role, with all its attendant joys and anxieties” (36). Though the plot is pure tear-jerker, the delightful characters are so engaging that they carry the story beyond its initial limitations. A grandmother, mother and granddaughter play across one another’s jealousies and emotional pain. Judy Davis creates a vital depth of character in a mother who stumbles upon her abandoned child in a trailer park by the sea. The grandmother has a sexual fling, though she has a regular lover, and clings to the attentions of her granddaughter she has raised for years. This film is Armstrong’s most cinematically restless, employing “nervous zip pans, fast tracking and boomshots” (36), which are effectively varied by intense close-ups that provide slow-motion studies of the characters’ emotions.

Little Women (1994), Armstrong’s first successful American film, admirably returns to the period costume drama. Though the feminist positions are completely anachronistic, sterling performances are offered by Wynona Ryder and Susan Sarandon; the film compares favorably to the 1933 George Cukor production with Katherine Hepburn (Felperin and Edelman).

The Film

            The Last Days of Chez Nous, as the title suggests, takes an international perspective on home and family and is one of Armstrong’s most successful productions.   Here, the European patrician perspective is that of J.P., a French gourmand whom Beth, a successful Australian writer, married, as she tells friends, so that he could get his working permit. J.P. openly suggests that he needs more affection than she can give; on the other hand, while she admits she is skeptical about marriage, she complains she feels neglected when J.P. is reserved. Finally, if J.P. comes across as both chauvinist and vulnerable, arrogant and charming, Beth is no merely admirable heroine either. As Molly Haskell suggests, the film “glories in the messiness and ambiguity of real lives” (35).

            Actually, the husband-wife conflict is only one of several very human struggles in the plot. Related to Beth’s own self-doubts as a wife and lover is the conflict between her and her younger sister, Vicki, who returns from abroad after a failed affair to recover in the apparently safe nest of Beth and J.P.’s charmingly ramshackle Sydney home. In fact, while Beth is responsible and professionally driven, Vicki is carefree and self-indulgent; the two resent one another’s inclinations, even though they share a kind of guilty affection. “Beth spoils and disapproves of Vicki; Vicki allows herself to be infantilized, yet resents Beth’s power.   As a writer, Beth uses everything and everyone, then overcompensates by allowing them to walk all over her” (Haskell 36). This tension reaches a crisis when Vicki reveals she is pregnant, and Beth takes charge of her while the younger girl seems meekly, but painfully, to submit.

            The “chaotic tangle of desire” is brought to the boiling point by J.P.’s infidelity with Vicki, but Armstrong conveys the non-judgmental perspective that Vicki’s crime toward her sister is no less hateful, and perhaps equal to Beth’s unsympathetic refusal to acknowledge Vicki’s longing for a child, a longing she has, perhaps, denied in herself. Thus, Armstrong’s portrait of modern woman is unflinching in its desire for complexity and honesty. Beth is portrayed as “the essence of the enlightened, professionally fulfilled modern feminist, down to the streak of guilt and masochism that corrupts her dealings with the most important people in her life” (Haskell 35). Ms. magazine reportedly refused to publish a review of the film because the philanderer J.P. is not punished more severely, though Armstrong seems not to blame him, just as she does not blame Beth’s need for complete self-sufficiency (36). Even in the conflict between Beth and her father, an unregenerate patriarch, there is only an ambiguous resolution in facing death with no expectations. However, he is still a cranky old man who has never given his daughter her due. Armstrong seems to be driven by an honest ambiguity; we can respect that.

Works Cited

Felperin, Leslie, and Rob Edelman. “Gillian Armstrong.” International Dictionary of Films and

Filmmakers, Volume 2, Directors. 3rd ed. Ed. Laurie Collier Hillstrom. Detroit: St. James Press,

1997. 34-37.

Haskell, Molly. “Wildflowers.” Film Comment 29.2 (March-April 1993): 35-37.

Some Other Features in the "Offbeat Cinema" Film Series, Fall 2000:

Nov. 3 Oscar and Lucinda, dir. Gillian Armstrong, 1997, with Ralph Fiennes & Cate Blanchett

Nov. 17 The Limey, dir. Steven Soderbergh, 1999, with Terrence Stamp, Lesley Ann Warren, & Peter Fonda

Handout prepared by Greg Lyons
for the Fall 2000 Off Beat Cinema Series,
organized by Greg Lyons, with the support of
COCC Humanities Dept. & Westside Video (Bend, OR)

Related Links

All-Movie Guide. All Media Guide, AEC One Stop Group, Inc., 1992-2002.
Search by Title, Person, or Keyword: http://allmovie.com/
...Last Days of Chez Nous
URL: http://allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=A28305
...Gillian Armstrong: Director, Producer
URL: http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=B79948

Gillian Armstrong. Internet Movie Database - IMDb.com, 1990-2002.
URL: http://us.imdb.com/Name?Armstrong,+Gillian
...Last Days of Chez Nous (1992)
URL: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0104685
...External Reviews of Last Days of Chez Nous (1992)
URL: http://us.imdb.com/TUrls?COM+0104685

Available online handouts for films shown in Fall 2000 "Offbeat Cinema" Series:

Days of Heaven (1978). Dir. Terrence Malick.
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/humanities/HIR/Film/daysofheaven.htm
Down by Law (1986). Dir. Jim Jarmusch.
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/humanities/HIR/Film/downbylaw.htm
Last Days of Chez Nous (1992). Dir. Gillian Armstrong.
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/humanities/HIR/Film/lastdaysofcheznous.htm
Oscar and Lucinda (1997). Dir. Gillian Armstrong.
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/humanities/HIR/Film/oscarlucinda.htm
The Limey (1999). Dir. Steven Soderbergh.
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/humanities/HIR/Film/thelimey.htm

See also Popular Culture Video List (2000).
Detective | Science fiction | Travel | Film noir | Spy thriller | Western
Greg Lyons, comp. COCC Library & Humanities Dept. video holdings, 2000.
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/humanities/courses/film/popculture.html

Return to Film Studies - Index of Online Resources
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/humanities/HIR/Film/index.htm

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Last updated: 26 May 2003
Cora Agatucci ~ E-Mail: cagatucci@cocc.edu
Copyright © 2002-2003, Greg Lyons
Humanities Department, Central Oregon Community College