The Illustrated Family Doctor

(Kriv Stenders, Australia, 2005)

There is a captivating scene early in Kriv Stenders’ The Illustrated Family Doctor where a disillusioned Gary (Samuel Johnson) complains about the reassuring, apolitical glut of self-help books favoured by the publishing company for which he works.

After this rousing, consciousness-raising diatribe, the gathered assembly of staff brainstorm a Dying Planet series. But one gruff word from Colin Friels – playing a laconic senior editor with the intriguing character name of Ray Gill (also the name of a former Arts Editor for The Age newspaper in Melbourne) – puts an end to such fantasy.

Almost instantly, the film drops its interest in real-world politics and makes Gary himself the supreme embodiment of self-centred solipsism. Editing and laying out a manuscript called The Illustrated Family Doctor full of gruesome pictures of physical ailments, Gary’s own health begins to rapidly and spectacularly deteriorate.

His external decline seems to be a reflection or symptom of emotional ailments – especially at home with Jennifer (Kestie Morassi), and with family members including his angry sister Carol (Sacha Horler) and grieving, ailing mother (Sarah Pierse).

Gary is the kind of passive, alienated, neurotic hero familiar from many Australian films. Like Robert Connolly’s Three Dollars (2005), the message of the piece is simple, even trite: stop fixating on yourself and your own little world, and start caring for others in the wider context of society. It is the kind of premise that might have made a decent 30 or 40 minute movie, but seems very thinly stretched over 100 minutes.

Stenders is a director who became known in the 1990s for some striking shorts and highly stylised documentaries (including Motherland, 1994). He would later make a touching tribute to the band The Go-Betweens (Right Here, 2017), with whom he made the clip for “Streets of Your Town” back in 1988. His biggest commercial success has come from the Red Dog series (2011 & 2016); he has also done plenty of TV work.

Adapted by Stenders and David Snell from the latter’s novel, The Illustrated Family Doctor is keen to synthesise and display all the filmic lessons Stenders had learned to that point.

The movie, driven by an unusual score by Tom Ellard of the art-rock band Severed Heads, carefully emulates the hard edge, painterly visual approach of Stanley Kubrick and the dry humour of Shirley Barrett. Another daintily gruesome, heavily Kubrick-inspired film often swam into my mind: The Young Poisoner’s Handbook (1995).

Although a Chopper-like character named Snapper (Paul Sonkkila) provides some sharp laughs, unfortunately the film never galvanises its diverse elements into anything more than Gothic whimsy.

In the panorama of Australian cinema of the early 21st century, The Illustrated Family Doctor sits with Kathryn Millard’s Travelling Light (2003). Both are films more fixed on atmosphere and incidental detail than narrative momentum, and both are lovingly stylised. But, despite my sympathies for the efforts of both directors and a high regard for the essentially European traditions in which they are working, neither film, finally, really cuts the mustard.

© Adrian Martin March 2005 (+ update May 2024)