Separation City: The unholy mess of a marriage in crisis informs an accomplished comedy.

Sydney Morning Herald. Feb 26, 2010

TWO weeks ago, we had the opening of the Hollywood rom-com, Valentine's Day, directed by Pretty Woman's Garry Marshall. Now we have the antidote, Separation City.

This one comes from the much more bracing climate of New Zealand's North Island. The writer, Tom Scott, is a former political columnist and the story, which is set mostly in Wellington, revolves around a group of friends in the grip of mid-marriage blues.

Fools for love … Harry (Les Hill) and Simon (Joel Edgerton)

contemplate their desolate romantic lives.

Joel Edgerton plays Simon, whom I'll call the film's hero - although it's a title conferred by default. Nobody here is particularly heroic. The script strews so many banana skins around that Simon, along with everybody else, finds it a battle just to stay upright. It's an engaging role for Edgerton, whose habitual air of expecting the worst has seldom been put to better use.

He's a ministerial speechwriter whose marriage has soured to the point where his wife, Pam (Danielle Cormack), will allow him to make love to her only if she can go on reading her book while it's happening. This anecdote, says Scott, is drawn from life - a claim that could never be made of any of the starry-eyed vignettes decorating Marshall's take on romance.

Scott has also said that he nurtured the script for years before the film was made and I believe that, too. There's a disarming candour here along with a relish for the misunderstandings - wilful and otherwise - that can bedevil relations between men and women. The tone is unashamedly blokey. Scott does little to disguise the fact that he's at his most comfortable in male company. As a result, some of his sharpest dialogue goes to Simon and his friend, Harry, a mordantly misanthropic journalist played by Underbelly's Les Hill.

But if you added up the caricatures among the supporting cast, you'd probably find an even tally between male and female. And Scott does make a valiant, if token, attempt to get inside the mind of at least one of his female characters through bits of voice-over woven into the narrative. He's also learnt the value of self-deprecation. Or maybe he's just mastered the knack. Whatever the truth, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Such is the seductiveness of his humour.

Simon writes speeches for a bluff government minister who's effectively insulated from failure by the intensity of his self-love. When one of his female aides reproves him for addressing his remarks to her cleavage, he isn't offended. How could he be? He knows she loves him anyway.

Reviewed by Sandra Hall