May 8, 1992| Australian filmmaker Jocelyn Moorehouse makes her feature debut with Proof, a darkly humorous drama of impressive style and precision. But there is nothing of the novice in the self-assured way she immediately establishes — in the movie’s opening frames, no less — a tone of sharp, sardonic wit.
Martin (Hugo Weaving), an unpleasant fellow who is what the politically correct would call “visually impaired,” is introduced as he brusquely makes his way down a city street, at a pace somewhere between a quick march and a slow dash. Two people are unfortunate enough to be in his way. Martin brushes past them, none too gently, with no apologies. You get the feeling that, if you were foolish enough to ask him about it or, worse, offer the mildest of criticism, he would reply, “Well, what were they doing in my way?”
Later, Martin dines in an Italian restaurant. The service is slow, so Martin makes his impatience known: He picks up a bottle of red wine and, after making absolutely certain his glass is in exactly the wrong spot, he begins to pour. The waitress takes notice.
So does the restaurant’s engagingly boyish dishwasher, Andy (Russell Crowe). The two men begin a tentative acquaintance after Martin inadvertently injures Andy’s cat — not even animals are safe when Martin’s on one of his strolls — and has Andy take them to a nearby veterinarian’s office. In the waiting room, Martin reveals his secret passion: taking pictures.
To be sure, Martin is, for obvious reasons, not the most accomplished of amateur photographers. But what he lacks in skill, he more than makes up with industriousness. He snaps his camera constantly, then asks Andy to describe what the developed pictures contain. That way, he explains to the dishwasher, he has proof that the world is just the way it is described to him.
Martin has been distrustful of others for as long as he has been blind — in other words, for all of his life. In a flashback, he remembers his mother asking: “Why would I lie to you?” Martin’s simple, revealing reply: “Because you can.”
Proof illustrates all manner of deceptions — self-delusions, white lies, manipulative deceptions — as it focuses on a test of wills that is no less savage for seeming so civilized, even elegant.
Martin employs a 30-year-old housekeeper, Celia (Genevieve Picot), whose corrosive intelligence almost, but not quite, disguises her obsessive yearning for him. Martin is by turns abusive and indifferent to her and downright terrified when Celia literally throws herself at him (or, to be more precise, on him). He is far more responsive to Andy’s offer of platonic friendship. Celia takes the measure of her rival, and smiles like a cat who spots a mouse near dinner time.
Moorhouse gracefully strides a fine line between psychological thriller and comedy of manners throughout Proof. As a result, even during some of the movie’s funniest moments, the audience remains slightly anxious about Celia’s potential for serious harm. When she blackmails Martin into taking her on a date, they wind up back at her apartment, which he doesn’t know — but we clearly see — is a shrine devoted to his image. When she lures Andy into Martin’s bedroom, we expect the worst to happen. And, from Andy’s standpoint, it does, although he doesn’t realize it at first.
The three lead actors are exceptionally fine. Weaving is positively heroic in his refusal to play the willfully disagreeable Martin for easy sympathy, and thereby earns something more important: respect. Picot goes one step further, infusing Celia with a calculated, cold-blooded sensuality that recalls the Glenda Jackson of Women in Love and The Music Lovers.
By sharp contrast, Crowe plays Andy with a well-meaning amiability and an almost complete lack of guile. At the snack bar during a disastrous trip to a drive-in movie, he asks the woman behind the counter: “What sort of food do you have that’d be good for blind people?” He isn’t being the least bit ironic, and that’s what makes the character all the more likable. Even the acerbic Martin comes to appreciate Andy’s innocence, although he can never resist mocking it. “See you around,” Andy says by way of farewell. Martin, with just the ghost of a smile, responds: “So to speak.”
