Director Matthew Walker’s irresistibly fun and jaunty documentary follows an artist you’ve most likely never heard of, but after a viewing will probably never forget: Wanita Bahtiyar, Australia’s self-professed “queen of honky tonk”, country music singer and longtime sex worker. The film begins with her walking down an outback road in a beautiful royal blue dress, declaring via voiceover that “it’s insane, all of this is insane” – an accurate description of the contemporary human condition.
Flighty, squirrely and eccentric, Wanita is someone most would call “a free spirit” – though she is certainly no pushover or shrinking violet; early in the film, Wanita reflects on how her mother once told her Hank Williams died from singing, which led her to think “that’s how I’m going to go”. There is an inference that Wanita has frittered some of her life away, getting “sidetracked” in Tamworth, New South Wales for 25 years, missing or squandering opportunities, partly as a result of her fickle and bullish personality.
But now the subject is a “woman on a mission”, in her own words, who “always goes her own way” as her husband Baba puts it. This mission – to fly to America and record a full country album – gives the rudderless Wanita a purpose and the film a straightforward “on the road” narrative arc. We follow Wanita and her friends and fellow musos, her manager Gleny, and Archer, who she claims to have found under a bridge, as they travel to Nashville, making some stops along the way – performing to strangers on the street and in the airport, and recording a track in a New Orleans studio.
Wanita has a terrific voice, no doubt about it, and – more importantly for the documentary – a colourful turn of phrase. She is charming in a rough and rowdy way, with a straight-to-the-bone candidness and self-effacing style. “I’d like to not look like a fuckwit,” she says at one point, of her big plan. On another occasion she enters a room and declares: “Take your hands off your genitals, the queen is in your presence.”
In other words, Wanita is “good talent” as they say in documentary land, whose charm is very entertainingly reflected in the tone and texture of the film. Like a rollicking piece of music, I’m Wanita has a zesty rhythm and tempo; even when there’s no singing or tunes, one feels inclined to strum their knees and tap their toes to it. It joins a growing list of recent Australian docos presented in aesthetics inspired by the artists they explore, such as The Witch of King’s Cross (one of the best homegrown films of 2021), Ecco Homo and Whiteley.
This is an easier task to achieve in productions about visual artists, whose work can be presented on screen, rather than those about musicians, beyond peppering the soundtrack with their music. Director Walker does that but also brings visual playfulness, avoiding the boring talking heads format and picking out certain words and turns of phrase from Wanita’s unpredictable tongue and displaying them in large capital letters, including “SOFT COCKERISM”, “I’M AN INFINITE NUMBER CONFIDENT” and “FUCK! YA KNOW?”
I’m Wanita comes together very smoothly and appealingly, with some meaty themes under the hood: this is a film about how life dreams do not (or do not have to) disappear as youth fades. And – without wanting to sound cheesy, because the film certainly isn’t – I’m Wanita is about embracing life as a journey, rather than a destination. It’s also a vivid portrait of a very artistic way of living: about the pain, exhilaration, fun, and terror, and the highs and lows of living life outside the prescribed boxes and definitions.
Walker doesn’t make the mistake of suggesting this is the “right” or the “wrong” way to live, and in fact draws attention to some of the selfish aspects of art as a way of life – articulated primarily by the subject’s estranged daughter, who clearly has complex feelings towards her mother. Perhaps the core message is that we are all walking in our own way, to our own beat, through the wilderness – or, as the case may be, down an outback tree-lined road, reflecting on the insanity of existence.
I’m Wanita is in Australian cinemas now
