Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5028 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-10-04
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 90 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Sirens is an affectionate, semi-fictional comedy of manners set in 1930s Australia. In an audacious stroke of casting Hugh Grant plays a stereotypically awkward and diffident Englishman, in this case a Church of England priest. The priest is despatched into the Blue Mountains west of Sydney in an effort to press the Good Word upon Norman Lindsay, an artist whose lurid works are scandalising the upright citizenry. Lindsay--capably played here by Sam Neill--really existed and though he fancied himself as a dashing Bohemian artist, his paintings were dreadful.

Sirens sees Grant's rigidly decent young priest and his equally prim wife (Tara Fitzgerald) gradually tempted further and further into the rustic bacchanalia that Lindsay has founded up in the bush. This sensual world is represented by Lindsay's young muses, played by supermodel Elle MacPherson, a pre-Ally McBeal Portia De Rossi and Kate Fischer. The three are more or less unclothed for most of the film, and spend what seems an unnecessary amount of time washing each other in rock-pools. This may or may not reflect awareness on the part of the producers that the film's predictable plot and overwrought dialogue weren't going to fill a lot of seats without some help.

On the DVD: Sirens is presented in 1.85:1 widescreen, but there are no extra features.--Andrew Mueller

Special Features
English
Region 2

Synopsis
When a young English minister (Hugh Grant) takes an Australian parish, his first assignment is to dissuade a local painter (Sam Neill) from showing a provocative painting. He and his wife (Tara Fitzgerald) visit the artist's home only to be smitten by three ravishing models posing, ironically, as the mythological sirens who lured men to their doom. On the artist's bohemian estate, the minister and his wife are shown a guilt-free Eden-like world where they find their own sexuality awakening.

Customer Reviews

slow storyline that makes your heart beat faster
This is one of those films that was made enjoyable by the quality of the acting.The story is basically about a reserved english vicar and his wife who are made more sexually adventurous by some models who work for an artist in the Australian countryside.A film with a lot of nudity in it but the naked bodies are always used to tell the story rather than make it appear shocking or daring.If you've seen Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a funeral - the production he is most famous for - you'll see in this movie that he really is a rather good actor and can do the serious stuff too.And watch out for a fine acting performance from Elle Macpherson who shows she is more than just the most attractive tall woman in the world!

The minister, his wife, and four nude models
SIRENS is a beguiling film that pokes fun at the sexual repression that may result from an overactive religious zeal. Hugh Grant, as the Anglican minister Anthony Champion newly arrived in early 20th century Australia, is asked by the bishop to pay a call on a local artist, Norman Lindsay, and to beseech him to withdraw from exhibition a painting considered scandalous. Horror of horrors, it includes scantily clad ladies. Starkers, actually.

Anthony and his young spouse Estella, played by Tara Fitzgerald, arrive at Lindsay's estate to find the artist, portrayed by Sam Neill, busily painting away. Norman's earthy wife and three resident female models serve as his inspiration, and clothing on the four is, more oft than not, unabashedly optional. This in-your-face display of live, nubile flesh leaves the Reverend rather tongue-tied and confused (as only Grant can play it). At first, wife Estella shares her husband's righteous indignation. Then, the lush, humid, tropical surroundings and free-spirited lifestyle of the Lindsay estate, along with the presence of a hunky handyman, begin to work their liberating magic on her repressed desires. (A very nice touch is the representation of Temptation as a large serpent that slithers through occasional scenes unnoticed by anyone but the viewer.)

It all sounds potentially raunchy, but never is. Rather than being a manipulative, licentious debauchee, Neill's on-screen persona is one of an amused, live and let live observer of human nature - a sort of detached Hugh Hefner. There's an abundance of casual nudity, but it's almost artistically presented. The sexual nature of a couple scenes is more sensuous than bawdy. And, one of this film's undeniable attractions is real-life model Elle MacPherson, who plays the role of one of the uninhibited SIRENS, and who shows an eyeful. Boy, does she ever. It's an amusing and well-done adult, fairy tale.

Beautiful, erotic, and unashamed.
I have always had trouble with the fact that all the posters, adverts, and box-notes for this film make it out to be some kind of romantic comedy for Hugh Grant and Elle MacPherson. Such a position is not only misleading, it's flat-out untrue.

Sirens is about the debate of human sexuality, and the two extreme opinions: Grant's Catholic priest and the tight-laced conservatives who denounce sexuality as sinful and guilty, and Neill's bohemian artist, his family, and his live-in models, who celebrate it as healthy and wholesome. It's obvious from the start which side writer/director John Duigan supports, but he gives both sides their due. The principals and the minor characters are all entertaining and well-acted, even if only Tara Fitzgarald's Estella and Portia DiRossi's Giddy get any real development through the story.

Credit is also due to the production side, especially to cinematographer Geoff Burton, who provides lush and beautiful visuals throughout, and composer Rachel Portman, who skillfully interweaves the mystical and the mirthful.

If you're looking for a romantic comedy or a chance to see Elle MacPherson prance around in the alltogether, leave this alone. But if you're interested in a sumptuous, non-exploitive, and thought-provoking discourse on our sexuality and how it makes us human, Sirens is a movie to treasure.