Here Out West ★★★★½
Standing in front of her bedroom mirror, smoking, selecting a lipstick and choosing a hair accessory, Nancy (Genevieve Lemon) is preparing to go out. But when a car pulls up and hastily deposits a young girl at her doorstep, she has to adjust her plans for her. Nancy has forgotten to cancel her child-minding arrangement. She still heads out, but now she has young Amirah (Mia-Lore Bayeh) in tow. A Lebanese migrant who speaks no English, Amirah, carrying her pet spider in a jar, is a watchful observer who keeps her thoughts from her to herself, although they’re revealed to viewers via subtitles.
Written by Nisrine Amine and directed by Lucy Gaffy, We the Spiders is the first of the eight loosely connected stories that make up Here Out Westa carefully curated portmanteau film that has been deftly scripted by eight writers (Amine, Arka Das, Bina Bhattacharya, Matias Bolla, Claire Cao, Dee Dogan, Vonne Patiag and Tien Tran) and fluidly directed by Gaffy, Ana Kokkinos, Leah Purcell, Fadia Abboud and Julie Kalceff.
Leah Vandenberg in the Eternal Dance, one of the standout stories in the portmanteau production Here Out West.Credit:John Platt
Nancy’s destination, the local hospital in Sydney’s inner west where her daughter has just given birth, becomes a key location where many of its racially diverse characters cross paths. And an impulsive action by the new grandmother becomes the springboard for the events that follow.
Nothing goes smoothly for the characters in Here Out West. Everyone’s plans are disrupted and they have to find ways to adapt. Flowering into a vibrant mosaic, the beautifully assembled telemovie is made up of stories about people under pressure and it smoothly draws together a wide cross-section of migrant communities. What’s more, it does so without waving a self-congratulatory flag for its representation of diversity. This, it is perceptively showing but not blatantly declaring, is the melting pot that is Sydney’s west.
There are parents who’ve been separated from their children or are fighting with them. There are children struggling with or rebelling against expectations. There are migrants endeavoring to honor the traditions of their homelands while battling to adapt to the realities of a more recently adopted country: trying to find work, to meet the demands of employers, to keep their businesses afloat, to cope with health issues.
Arka Das, Rahel Romahn, Thuso Lekwape in Here Out West, a beautifully assembled telemovie set in Sydney’s migrant communities. Credit:ABC
All manner of compromises are seen to be required in order for them to get by. There’s stress and strain everywhere and, in such an environment, small gestures of kindness assume great significance. Events unfold in unpredictable ways and nothing is overstated. The drama is poignant without ever sliding into sentimentality.
Two of the standout stories – and there are no doubts – are The Eternal Dance and The Musicians. The first, written by Bhattacharya and directed by Kokkinos, finds Ashmita (Leah Vandenberg) hurrying to visit her father in hospital, her mother sitting nervously at his bedside. She rushes in looking worried, carrying her favorite sweets from her, and promptly snaps at a terse, over-worked nurse (Anita Hegh).