Cheap Careful, He Might Hear You (DVD) (Wendy Hughes, Robyn Nevin) (Carl Schultz) Price

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Customer Reviews of Careful, He Might Hear You

Particularly successful in the leading female role is the fine Australian actor Wendy Hughes (most recently seen in the magnificent Melbourne Theatre Company 2003 production of Edward Albee's "The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?" with Phillip Quast) Also an undoubtable standout, I think, is Geraldine Turner, the irrepressible Australian performer with bewildering versatility, (recently see in Cameron Mackintosh's production of "The Witches of Eastwick" at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne, Australia)

This beautiful period film will certainly not disappoint.

Australian soap opera.
Though with some shocking, dirty twists. The title and the rather kinky cover-art for this DVD prove correct your darkest suspicions about this movie: yes, "you-know-what" really happens in *Careful, He Might Hear You*, though with a quite different aftermath than you might expect. It's about two sisters in a custody battle over their 7-year-old nephew (a startling, talented Nicholas Gledhill) in 1930's Australia. The mother has died from the birth, but not before pegging the poor little bugger with the name "PS", e.g., "a postscript to a ridiculous life". Robyn Nevin is the lower-middle-class auntie whom PS would prefer to live with; Wendy Hughes is the very wealthy auntie who suddenly takes an interest in the boy, for frightening psychological reasons that will be made clear soon enough. Hughes is just marvelous as the rich, beautiful, and sexually sociopathic aunt Vanessa. This character is a whole new variation on the wicked stepmother archetype. Her abusive behavior stems from a fearful frigidity -- though WHY she is frigid is left unexplained by director Carl Schultz, as is the reason for Vanessa's much vaster wealth in comparison with her working-class sister. At face value, everything remains on the surface in *Careful* -- any psychological or philosophical nugget-hunting in these characters' lives will have to be done by the viewer. Indeed, the movie is very much a latter-day Sirkian (is that less offensive than "Dickensian"?) melodrama, complete with an over-the-top score that takes some getting-used-to, but which also fits the material grandly, especially after you accept the film's logic. The image is overflowing with profuse flora, fauna, trinkets, details -- anything that's colorful. Recently, *Far from Heaven* has tried to mine this same vein -- it failed, because it was too overt in its copycatting. Here, Schultz goes for the feel of old melodramas, but rather than re-hash something like *All that Heaven Allows*, he relies firmly on an obscure novel by Sumner Locke Elliott. The originality of the subject-matter helps Schultz to avoid being a pale imitator. Instead, he emerges as an ENLARGER of Sirk's style, themes, and characterizations. Indeed, it is a measure of Schutlz' subtlety that by movie's end, you realize that you feel pity for Vanessa, whom you thought you had reviled, while simultaneously thinking that the "decent", poorer aunt is more tiresome -- and limiting -- than at first seemed apparent. Meanwhile, the boy's a hero through all this, easily demonstrating the petty insanity of the adults who unfortunately determine the courses of his life. *Careful, He Might Hear You* is quite simply a modern classic that demands to be discovered. [The DVD, by Image Entertainment, looks pretty good, but there are zero features -- not even a trailer. I guess Image goes broke just by securing the rights to masterpieces like this; hence the lack of any effort put into the product. I guess I should be glad they took the trouble to put it on DVD in the first place.]

Careful He Might Say Dickensien
This is one of my favorite movies ever. I was thrilled to search for it on DVD at a whim and find it is available. It's an excellent drama to get lost in. "Careful..." is one of those movies you can sink into. It's a book of a movie. The first clue is that it's all about character development. I highly recommend this movie as an avid movie goer. My advice is,ignore the review that uses the word "Dickensien". Dickensien?!