Love Serenade

This Australian comedy is wonderfully bizarre, in its story of two sisters in a tiny town who both succumb to the charms of their new neighbor: a lanky, honey-voiced disk jockey named Ken Sherry (George Shevtsov), who has escaped from the big city to spin Barry White records on the radio. As the two sisters, Miranda Otto and Rebecca Frith, embody both sisterly nosiness and solidarity, they unexpectedly find themselves competing for Ken's easily captured affections. The humor derives from the contrast between the sisters: one desperate and clinging, the other stand-offish--yet both vulnerable to Ken's strange (he has webbed toes) charms. Writer-director Shirley Barrett keeps the comedy low-key but consistent in a film in which even the owner of the local Chinese restaurant, a part-time nudist, is funny. --Marshall Fine