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In its native Australia, Cherie Nowlan's Introducing the Dwights was called Clubland, and you can see how that title could have been confusing to an American -- or to a British -- audience. The clubs of Sydney, where the film is set, feature magicians, ventriloquists, even a guy who imitates bird-songs. In short, they are leftovers from 1950s-vintage British music hall -- or, as we would say, vaudeville -- magically preserved in present-day Australia. Brenda Blethyn plays Jeanie Dwight, a now-aging British-born comedienne specializing in the sort of double entendre humor that used to be thought of as "naughty" on the halls but has long since given way in the rest of the world to something much more raunchy -- and much less innocent.
Somehow she's managed to hang on through all the changes in comedic fashion of the last 30 or 40 years -- to hang on, but not to make a living at it. Yet she continues to live in hope. Now, she says, "I'm going to become a gay icon." But when she gets what she sees as her big break, an audition with Australian television executives, they see her humor as "too phallocentric." In her less optimistic moments, Jeanie clings to whatever cold comfort she can derive from the fancy that she had been headed for super-stardom until, as she tells her two sons, "you boys arrived and brought a luminous career to a grinding halt. Not that I'm bitter."
© The American Spectator
