MOVIE MUSIC UK

THROWBACK THIRTY

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

Sirens is an Australian comedy-drama film written and directed by John Duigan, starring Hugh Grant, Tara Fitzgerald, Sam Neill, and supermodel Elle MacPherson. It is loosely based on the life of artist and author Norman Lindsay, who was one of the most prolific and popular Australian artists of his generation, and is set in Australia in the 1920s. Grant plays Anthony Campion, an Anglican priest newly arrived in Australia from the United Kingdom, who is asked to visit Lindsay (Neill) by the church, who have concerns about a blasphemous painting of a crucifix that the artist plans to exhibit. When Campion and his reserved wife Estella (Fitzgerald) arrive at Lindsay’s home they are initially shocked to discover just how sexually free and uninhibited Lindsay, his wife Rose, and their beautiful ‘models’ are. However, as the days pass Estella finds herself increasingly intrigued by their relationship, which leads to her beginning to embrace her own sexuality in unexpected ways.

The score for Sirens was by Rachel Portman, and was written slap-bang in the middle of the period where she was establishing herself as the go-to composer for wistful period drama scores with playfully romantic undertones. Chronologically, Sirens was immediately preceded by scores like The Joy Luck Club, Ethan Frome, and Benny & Joon, and was immediately followed by scores like Only You and Emma, for which she would receive her Academy Award. Anyone who has any experience of any of those other scores will know what Sirens sounds like, because it is cut from almost exactly the same cloth: light, dainty, elegant orchestral passages led by dancing flutes and sprightly pianos, with more longing and romantic string passages that address the more serious, more profound, and – dare one say it – more erotic elements of the story.

The album opens with the jaunty “March Past of the Kitchen Utensils” from Ralph Vaughn Williams’s score for the 1909 stage play Wasps, but this quickly segues into the first statement of Portman’s main theme for the film, as heard in “The Yearning/Sirens Suite”. The sound of this piece is prototypical Portman, and sits firmly within the realms of the lush, romantic sound she developed over several years in the early 1990s. The Yearning theme is clearly the inspiration for several of Portman’s most beloved scores, including The Cider House Rules and The Legend of Bagger Vance, while the Sirens theme is clearly the inspiration for the sound of later scores like Chocolat.

The Yearning Theme is gorgeous, layers of warm strings in beautiful harmony, backed by magical chimes, but which have a slightly bittersweet, slightly melancholy sound, perfect for depicting the sense of longing and unfulfilled sexual desire felt by Campion and Estella when presented with the temptations that Lindsay’s ‘sirens’ offer. The second half of the cue is more playful and brisk, with a more prancing string element and lyrical woodwinds of various types, which often emerge into a wonderfully merry cascade of mischief.

The Yearning theme is present throughout a lot of the score, including in the hesitant and curious first half of “Allure,” all throughout the sumptuous “Sirens,” towards the end of the superb, emotionally resonant “Waves,” in “Beckoning,” and in the gorgeous and elegant “Candide”. The Sirens theme also features prominently, dominating the second half of the aforementioned “Allure,” “Hylas and the Nymphs,” “Promise and Regret,” “The Sprightly Don,” “Mysterioso,” and “Terra Australia,” each time with a gently comedic and caper-like attitude, although in the conclusive “Ophelia” it is performed as a stripped down and tender flute solo.

“Sam Sawnoff’s Pipe” and “Sam Sawnoff’s Horn” are a pair of sea-shanty like ditties with a nautical flavor, and this sound returns in the two source music cues, “Calliope House” performed by the Scottish-Irish Celtic music band The Boys of the Lough, and “Grey Funnel Line” a traditional song originally written for the British Royal Navy and which is performed here by English folk music duo The Silly Sisters.

However, one thing that perhaps brings Sirens down overall as a score is how repetitive it is. Once you take out the source music and the two Sam Sawnoff sea shanties, everything else is a variation on one or both of the themes heard in the opening suite, and listeners who crave a little more variety and development in the music will likely find this frustrating. It helps, of course, that the music is lovely, with the Yearning theme standing out especially, but in terms of how the score works at depicting the film’s progressing narrative… well… it doesn’t, really. You don’t get a sense of how Campion and Estella’s relationship changes as a result of being exposed to Lindsay’s more free-spirited sexuality, other than the fact that the final statement of the theme in “Ophelia” is orchestrated slightly differently, and this is disappointing from a dramatic point of view.

In the end, Sirens is a pleasant, romantic, sunny, delightfully entertaining score that, along with the scores for The Joy Luck Club and Ethan Frome that preceded it, established the Rachel Portman sound that led to her Oscar win for Emma in 1996, and allowed her to enjoy a 10-year-plus stint as the undisputed musical queen of Hollywood romantic dramas. Anyone who has ever enjoyed the lyrical, sometimes poignant, sometimes peppy sound of a 1990s Rachel Portman score will find Sirens to be rewarding enough, if you can overlook its limited scope.

Buy the Sirens soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• March Past of the Kitchen Utensils from ‘Wasps’ (written by Ralph Vaughn Williams, performed by The Queensland Symphony Orchestra cond. Patrick Thomas) (3:10)
• The Yearnings/Sirens Suite (3:29)
• Sam Sawnoff’s Pipe (0:37)
• Allure (4:18)
• Sam Sawnoff’s Horn (0:48)
• Sirens (2:55)
• Calliope House (written by Dave Richardson, Ronan Heenan, and Alison Marr, performed by The Boys of the Lough) (3:52)
• Hylas and the Nymphs/Waves (5:27)
• Beckoning/Promise and Regret (2:16)
• The Sprightly Don (2:18)
• Mysterioso (2:30)
• Candide (2:23)
• Terra Australis (2:58)
• Grey Funnel Line (written by Cyril Tawney, performed by The Silly Sisters: Maddy Pryor and June Tabor) (3:06)
• Ophelia (1:07)

Milan Records 7313835669-2 (1994)

Running Time: 41 minutes 14 seconds

Music composed by Rachel Portman. Conducted by David Snell. Orchestrations by Rachel Portman. Recorded and mixed by Chris Dibble. Edited by Mike Brown. Album produced by Rachel Portman and Ian Hierons.