Geoffrey Rush's latest film is lively but chaotic

By MICHAEL FITZGERALD

or a celluloid experiment, it begins aptly enough--in a laboratory, where shy scientist Richard Shorkinghorn (David Wenham) is edging closer to the secret of eternal youth. A Little Bit of Soul's writer-director, Peter Duncan, also wanted to keep things young and fresh. After the arduous post-production of last year's Children of the Revolution, Duncan dreamed of making a movie immune to the aging process. His solution: round up your filmmaking mates, cart them to country New South Wales for three weeks, and shoot on a shoestring.

The pressure-cooker environment gave rise to wild ideas. As Shorkinghorn vies with his former flame (Frances O'Connor) for research funding at the country house of a foxy philanthropist (Heather Mitchell) and her politician husband (Rush), structural conventions are exploded. "Disorder is the only thing we can protect," says Rush's dipsomaniac Australian Treasurer Godfrey Usher. He could be referring to the film, which chaotically explores such issues as economic rationalism, satanism, and the beauty myth while genre-surfing between screwball comedy, Hammer horror and courtroom drama.

It is a brave attempt. What is missing is a binding agent to turn all these piquant film flavors into a digestible whole. And Duncan's climactic revelation--that his young scientists must literally sell their souls to the devil--comes too soon, leaving A Little Bit of Soul with nowhere to go.

When Usher's giggly veneer is stripped back to an evil core, the film shows depth beneath its frenetic surface. But even O'Connor, an expert at irony (Love and Other Catastrophes) and menace (Kiss or Kill), is lost here. Trapped at someone else's house party, she is, like the audience, left to scratch her head.

--By Michael Fitzgerald