The panning last year of Chris Lilley’s “brownface” in the ABC’s Jonah From Tonga program and the recent tsunami of criticism hurled at director Cameron Crowe for casting white-as-white-can-be Emma Stone as a half-Asian character in romantic comedy Aloha reminded film-makers of a pertinent message: the days when actors were afforded carte blanche to play whichever characters they like are over.
In this context, writer/director Rolf de Heer’s acclaimed 1998 drama Dance Me to My Song presents the fascinating possibility the debate could extend further than race and into other areas such as disability. An achingly genuine and profoundly moving drama about a woman born with cerebral palsy, the film was based on a fictitious screenplay that nevertheless closely mirrors the experiences of its star and co-writer Heather Rose, who plays the protagonist.
Rose, like her character Julia, was confined to an electric wheelchair, had difficulty moving any part of her body and was unable to speak without a voice synthesiser. Her involvement is what gives the film its resounding authenticity. Rolf de Heer and Fred Stahl worked with her in writing the screenplay and de Heer sat in the director’s chair, though Dance Me to My Song is introduced as “A film by Heather Rose.”
Two years before Rose passed away, age 36, the actor and disability rights campaigner spoke as a keynote speaker at the Pacific Rim Disability Conference in 2000. She described her intentions behind venturing into the world of film-making: “I wanted to create a screenplay but not just another soppy disability film,” she said. “I wanted to make it a hot sexy film, which showed the real world.”
The story is essentially a love triangle drama, albeit one that – cliched though it may sound – is quite unlike any other. The first shot is an off-centre high angle image of Julia lying in bed naked; from that moment on, we are thrown head-first into her world and surrounded by her day-to-day dramas and frustrations.
Julia’s latest carer Madelaine (Joey Kennedy) is a nasty piece of work. Her love life is in disarray and she regularly takes out her frustrations on Julia, mocking her as a “spastic” and pretending to be her on the phone. With her computer unplugged from the wall, one day, home alone, Julia whizzes onto the street and barrages into the path of a stranger named Eddie (John Brumpton) and convinces him to come inside.
The two develop a friendship that hits a stirring emotional epoch when the film’s title is referenced. In a tender moment, Eddie holds Julia in his arms and dances in the living room. When Madelaine makes a play for him, Julia responds by doing the same thing, creating a volatile chemistry between the characters and an unlikely intersection of desires and motivations.
Reminiscent of the fraught relationship between Hugo Weaving’s blind protagonist in director Jocelyn Moorehouse’s Proof and his wicked carer, Dance Me to My Song goes to dark places. De Heer depicts domestic violence with an emotional rather than visual sense of horror; it’s the feelings rather than the brutality that stays with you. The film is nevertheless immensely rewarding and not without moments of joy and reprieve.
Julia is a complex character, far from a straight-up figure of pity. We emphasise with the hardships she undertakes and the reliance she is forced to play on other people to do everyday things, from eating to going to the bathroom. Her dogged determination and mischievous sense of humour also comes across in spades; more than anything else, her character is an inspiration. As US critic Roger Ebert put it: “It is the kind of film where the human will and spirit overwhelm you.”
Dance Me to My Song was selected for official competition at Cannes, where Rose was wheeled up the red carpet. Its uniqueness and authenticity has given it a long shelf life. The film, according to de Heer, is used in teaching institutions across the world and still plays at festivals. Its power can be pegged almost entirely on the soul-stirring performance at the heart of it – far too genuine for any actor to fake, and too moving for any viewer to forget.
