Some fraught and morally complex spaces are entered in the six-part New Zealand drama After the Party, which is executed with a white-knuckle intensity that almost pushes it into the realm of a thriller. The show is led by an expertly layered performance from Robyn Malcolm as Penny Wilding, a high school teacher who believes she caught her ex-husband, Phil (Peter Mullan), engaged in a sex crime with an intoxicated minor during his birthday party. The easy choice would have been not to show it but, like her, we see the moment around which the show pivots.
Penny is convinced she is right about what she saw and she’s not the kind of person to let things go. At first I found her character thoroughly likable; one early scene depicts her in a classroom explaining pornography to young male students straightforwardly and empathetically: she’s clearly a teacher who thinks outside the box, though not in the extravagant stand-on-the-desk, Oh Captain My Captain sort of way.
But then I began to feel the show – co-created by Malcolm and Dianne Taylor, and directed by Peter Salmon – challenging my initial assumptions and nudging us towards the possibility that Penny is potentially an unreliable witness. After the Party isn’t really about whether she is right or wrong – although eventually it arrives at quite precise conclusions, which for me were its least interesting aspects. Far more intriguing are the dramas created by Penny’s assumptions and dogged advocacy.
Phil returns to Wellington after living in Scotland for five years and moves in with their daughter Grace (Tara Canton). This sparks a renewed desire in Penny to see him punished, or at least for her impression of events to be vindicated. But not a single other person at the titular party – including Grace and the alleged victim, Ollie (Ian Blackburn) – agree with her interpretation.
Part of the show’s appeal is that people are likely to see different things and ponder different questions. Is it ethical to pursue allegations that deeply traumatise an alleged victim, even when they’re adamant that nothing untoward took place? Is it about being wrong for the right reasons … or right for the wrong ones?
I was swept away by this drama, feeling almost corporally immersed in this world. But I wondered if there was something missing from the script: an additional event from the past, for instance, that might help contextualise Penny’s perspective. On the other hand, being coy about aspects of the characters’ pasts and remaining more or less in the moment – notwithstanding intermittent flashbacks to the night in question – gives the writers (Taylor, Martha Hardy-Ward, Emily Perkins and Samuel E Shore) another opportunity to play with us. Again, certain questions beckon. For instance: does Penny know something we’re not being told?
I smashed through all six episodes in a day and, while I won’t go into detail, I was in two minds about its conclusion, which reaches for the kind of denouements so shrewdly avoided until that point, minimising some of the elements that distinguish this series from more conventional offerings. But it’s rousing throughout and admittedly the writers faced various challenges, including the conundrum of delivering finality versus open-endedness.
Stylistically, After the Party is fashioned by Salmon to not draw attention to itself. The colours are a little washed out, but not too much. It’s cut in naturalistic ways, embracing editing as “the invisible art”. The idea being that the best kind of editing goes unnoticed, leaving the viewer to sink into the narrative and forget they’re watching a mediated experience. We see that logic reflected elsewhere: in the gently handheld camerawork, and in performances that feel intensely lived-in, as if the actors have occupied these characters for decades.
No one impresses more than Malcolm, who really gets under your skin and pinches you from the inside. The anguish she feels for being alone in her beliefs makes her increasingly desperate; watching Malcolm illustrate her reach and reach and reach is exhilaratingly painful. It’s no overstatement to say that this great performance ranks among the best television portrayals in years, from anywhere in the world.
After the Party is screening on the ABC and is available to view on ABC iView
