SAMPLE PEOPLE

Australia, 2000, 97 minutes, Colour.
Kylie Minogue, Ben Mendelssohn, Simon Lyndon, David Field, Paula Arundel, Joel Edgerton, Nathalie Riley, Nathan Page, Justin Ross, Matthew Wilkinson, Gandhi Mac Intyre, Dorian Nkono.
Directed by Clinton Smith.

Sample People is a rather garish to look at the lives of young people in an Australian city, especially in the nightlife, in drug dealings, in clubbing… The characters themselves are rather garish as well. The film was made in Adelaide – standing in for any Australian city, especially Sydney.

The film introduces a wide range of characters and interlinks their stories. By the end of the film, given the strength of performances of many of the actors, there is more interest in their fate than might originally been thought. The film was geared to a younger audience of the time, the end of the 90s. And it will probably be interesting to the same audiences as they look at their lives in some kind of retrospect.

There is a particular drug focus with David Field at a club engineering all kinds of deals, in love with Kylie Minogue who is really in love with the main dealer, played by Simon Lyndon. There is brutality in the relationship, brutality in the treatment of the dealer, harshness in people’s fates.

In another story, Joel Edgerton is an earnest young man, in love with a young woman who is prone to epileptic fits, Paula Arundel. They rescue a bizarre character, Johnny, something of a transvestite, questioningly heterosexual, seemingly homosexual and bashed accordingly. He is played, of all people, by Ben Mendelssohn. On the one hand, he is supported, follows the couple wherever they go but also intrudes, experiments sexually with the young woman, is finally rejected.

Yet another story concerns a takeaway shop, the proprietor, Gandhi Mac Intyre, and his son who wants to perform at clubs, Dorian Nkono, and the young man who works at the diner, somewhat reserved but eager to break out, buying new clothes, defying his boss, encountering a young woman concerned with fashion, going to a club with her.

The other story concerns two middle-class Australians who dream of being gangsters, imitating the style, the language, wanting to do robberies, assert themselves. The more obnoxious is played by Justin Rosniak.

Eventually, the stories come together, the two young thugs wanting to rob the owner of the takeaway, his employee having already taken the money wearing a mask, with a gun. The drug dealer comes upon them as do the couple and Johnny. There are shootings, especially with the dealer stepping in to save someone else’s life. The employee, with his gun, confronts the robbers, one more afraid and urging his friend to back down, the obnoxious one being shot, surprised in death.

Not exactly a wide-ranging sample of people, but a look at a group of young people in the city at the end of the 1990s.