Directed by Mark Joffe, Cosi is based on a play by Louis Nowra.
Cosi is the story of Lewis, a young man who has dropped out of
college and whom is lacking in any passions or interest. By
default he gets a job at a state-run mental institution as the
director of a variety show because, in the words of the
bureaucratic administrator, "Drama is good therapy."
Of course, this is a job in which has he no training or
credentials. He does, however, have a good friend who is an
"ACTOR" who offers to give him advice from time to time
and who is directing himself in a production of Diary of a Madman.
Roy, (played by Barry Otto who was the dad in Strictly Ballroom)
is one patient who wants something bigger than a variety show. It
is his dream to perform a production of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte (usually
translated Women Are All Like That - a beautiful opera with, as
in many of Mozart's operas, a story line that is not very
enlightened by current standards). The opera is about fidelity
and love, and is a long farce where a philospher teaches two
soldiers that their lovers, representative of all women, are
faithless.
Without voices, without knowledge of opera, the group of patients
and Lewis put on a rag-tag version of the opera, with recorded
music filling in for their lack of singing. Roy has little
respect for Lewis, and Roy constantly urges the young man to aim
for the stars. Referring to one of the patients threatening Lewis'
life, Roy tells another patient, "Killing him, he'll get
life. Killing a director, he'll get eternal gratitude."
There is a small sub-plot around whether or not Lewis' girlfriend,
a law student, is or will be faithful to him, but the real fun of
the movie is in the attempt to put on the play/opera, on how
Lewis develops passion, a gift, really from Roy and the other
patients, and despite the put downs of his actor friend, his
girlfriend, and one pyromaniac, how they all succeed on opening
night, minus, of course, the Wagner playing accordian player.
