Product Details

• Actors: Lisa Harrow, Bruno Ganz, Kerry Fox, Miranda Otto, Kiri Paramore
• Directors: Gillian Armstrong
• Writers: Helen Garner
• Producers: Jan Chapman, Mark Turnbull
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: New Line Home Video
• VHS Release Date: April 16, 1996
• Run Time: 96 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303980325
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #205,204 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

In a ramshackle Sydney household, an Australian family gets on with its life, but only just. Beth (Lisa Harrow) starts to lose her French husband J.P. (Bruno Ganz) to the attentions of her sister Vicki (Kerry Fox); meanwhile, her daughter Annie (Miranda Otto) is falling quietly for Tim (Kiri Paramore), their lodger with the crewcut and the sense of humor. Gillian Armstrong's new movie is a worthy successor to "My Brilliant Career" and "High Tide"; if anything, it feels even more mobile, charting every shift in the emotional climate. It's hard to pin down just what kind of work it is: jokes at the dinner table can turn nasty and upsetting, but people also recover quickly, and sometimes dance without warning. It's a true ensemble movie: none of the performances is vain or showy-Harrow in particular braves all manner of self-exposure, so we can see the fear beneath her strength. She longs to keep the house in order, while everyone else is itching to relax or break free-you can see it in the look of the film, the way that figures mess around within careful compositions. This fluent, hopeful comedy (and it is a comedy, for all the encroachments of sadness) is Armstrong's best movie to date. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Biiter-sweet romancing with an air of doom, December 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Days of Chez Nous [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is classic Gillian Armstrong giving us a snapshot of inner-urban life in a Sydney home one long humid summer.

JP (played brilliantly by Bruno Ganz who was so memorable in Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire") is a Frenchman far from home. With his marriage to Beth (a woman whose vitality seems to have been snuffed out by marriage) already under stress, it takes only the arrival of Beth's wild and vibrant sister Vicki to send everything spinning out of control.

Vicki is Beth mirror image - but she is a reflection of what Beth once was. Beth longs to be wild and alive once more but that can never be. JP sees in Vicki what attracted him to Beth - and alone and longing for something that he can't find Down Under, JP drifts apart from Beth as she does from him.

But Beth has another problem - unresolved issues with her father (played by Bill Hunter who seems to be everywhere in Australian movies). Her father has all the personality of a prune, and won't admit his oldest child is now a grown woman with a mind of her own.

Beth, played in a deeply stressed manner by beautiful NZ actress Lisa Harrow, finds is being tossed about from the roles of mother, daughter and wife all at once - and she's the one that is left to suffer.

Truly a brilliant film, with a young Miranda Otto in the role of Beth's all-observing but resilient daughter, this is a touching film that captures much of the tension of our lives that will often cannot identify.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bitter-sweet romancing with an air of doom, September 19, 2006

By 

Sam Sneed (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Days of Chez Nous [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ] (DVD)

This is classic Gillian Armstrong giving us a snapshot of inner-urban life in a Sydney home one long humid summer.

JP (played brilliantly by Bruno Ganz who was so memorable in Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire") is a Frenchman far from home. With his marriage to Beth (a woman whose vitality seems to have been snuffed out by marriage) already under stress, it takes only the arrival of Beth's wild and vibrant sister Vicki to send everything spinning out of control.

Vicki is Beth mirror image - but she is a reflection of what Beth once was. Beth longs to be wild and alive once more but that can never be. JP sees in Vicki what attracted him to Beth - and alone and longing for something that he can't find Down Under, JP drifts apart from Beth as she does from him.

But Beth has another problem - unresolved issues with her father (played by Bill Hunter who seems to be everywhere in Australian movies). Her father has all the personality of a prune, and won't admit his oldest child is now a grown woman with a mind of her own.

Beth, played in a deeply stressed manner by beautiful NZ actress Lisa Harrow, finds is being tossed about from the roles of mother, daughter and wife all at once - and she's the one that is left to suffer.

Truly a brilliant film, with a young Miranda Otto in the role of Beth's all-observing but resilient daughter, this is a touching film that captures much of the tension of our lives that will often cannot identify.

4.0 out of 5 stars Very well acted portrait of an eccentric family, April 14, 2011

By 

K. Gordon - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Days of Chez Nous [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Full of wonderfully acted, beautifully observed moments in the life of an
unconventional family, this was called, by one critic, `an Australian `Hannah
and her Sisters'. And to an extent that's not a bad description.

But this film is messier, less complete in it's vision and less bold in its
style. None-the-less, it's still entertaining, moving, and very worth seeing.

Bruno Ganz's half French, half German accent is a bit distracting (he's terrific otherwise),
and, for me, the ending felt rushed, as if things had to get to a conclusion.

It's a film I'd actually wished had gone on longer, or had been willing to leave things less
resolved. Once you start with the messiness of life, you lose something with a last
minute switch to the neatness of movies.

Yet another of the ever growing list of good films that are inexplicably unavailable
on region 1 DVD.