Archive listings for Siam Sunset (2000)

Evening Standard (11Jan01): [Linus Roache] plays an English widower curing his bereavement blues by taking a rackety bus tour through the Australian outback with a party of sleazy Aussies and a maniacal driver. Lured by the success of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, into semi-surreal stopovers - earthquakes, nutters and comic-violent shenanigans in shanty motels - John Polson's debut film throws in every bit of narrative junk that comes to hand without remotely managing to get it all together. The title refers to the eponymous tint of paint that Roache, an industrial chemist, tries to invent inspired by his late wife's auburn hair. Mixing paint seems as long as watching it dry.

Observer (11Jan01): From Australia comes the black comedy Siam Sunset, the ruthless tale of a British industrial chemist (the personable [Linus Roache]) who finds himself surrounded by disasters and calamities after he's widowed by a fridge falling from the skies on to his beloved wife. Obsessed with mixing the eponymous paint that matches the colour of her hair, he takes a holiday in Australia and is stranded in the outback with fellow passengers on a rundown charabanc. The jokes derive from, among other catastrophes, car crashes, a venomous snake, starvation, an earthquake, a suicide, floods, broken limbs, and a villain who undergoes burns on an English Patient scale before being electrocuted. Sadistic kids thrilled by Home Alone might love this movie. The location photography by Brian Breheny, who shot Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, is enchanting.