The Home Song Stories and Halfway Review

I happened upon Tom Macher’s memoir “Halfway” (2018) around the same time I watched Tony Ayres’s autobiographical film “The Home Song Stories” (2007) and was struck by several similarities in their narratives. Both men endured peripatetic childhoods, their mothers searching for an elusive stability that numerous marriages and alliances could not provide. Macher’s mother did eventually find a reliable mate, but her son had already drifted into a life of petty crime and alcohol abuse. It would take decades to conquer his addiction and begin his writing career. 

Tony Ayres dealt with his childhood demons by burying himself in work. After graduating from film school, Ayres embarked on a successful career as a screenwriter and director. “The Home Song Stories” is his second feature and tells the story of his childhood from the point of view of his young alter ego, Tom (Joel Lok). Both Macher’s book and Ayres’s film, consciously or not, are a critique of a patriarchal system that offers no safety net for wives and mothers. Without any immediate family to assist them, and community support lacking, both mothers struggle to obtain food and housing. In Ayres’s case, his mother’s issues are compounded by mental illness, which ultimately overwhelms her. 

“The Home Song Stories” is set in the early 1970s. The film’s prologue quickly establishes the family’s complicated history. Rose (Joan Chen), Tom’s mother, meets an Aussie sailor in the Shanghai nightclub where she works as a singer. She emigrates to Australia to marry Bill (Steven Vidler), bringing her two children with her. Inexplicably, Rose abandons the marriage after one week. After a fruitless seven years spent seeking a new provider in Sydney, a contrite Rose returns to Melbourne and Bill.  

Bill is frequently at sea, however, and Rose is a woman who cannot bear to be alone. While her overt sexuality may be viewed as liberating, Rose has internalized the traditional gender roles of Chinese and Australian culture. She tells her children that when women get old, they are “ugly and useless”. No one wants them. Her own desperation as she ages is palpable. When her younger lover declares his attraction to May (Irene Chen), Rose’s daughter, she attacks her child both verbally and physically. The result is both women attempt suicide. 

 As the women reconcile, gathered in an embrace, Rose reveals her past. The youngest daughter in an affluent family, she occupied the lowliest position. She was not allowed to be educated and acted as a servant in the household. Married off as a teenager, she suffered two miscarriages. After her husband takes up with a concubine, Rose finds herself falling in love with her erudite brother-in-law. The resulting scandal ends with his death and Rose ostracized by her family. An illiterate woman on her own with two children, Rose has no other option than to barter her beauty for financial survival. 

Rose frames her monologue as a story. Her son Tom also seeks solace in story, concocting escapist fantasies in which he is a kung fu superhero who vanquishes his enemies. “The Home Song Stories” begins with Tom as an adult stating, “If everyone has one story which defines them, which shapes who they are, then this is mine.” The importance of story as a tool for structuring experience is one of the film’s major themes. In an interview, writer-director Tony Ayres states that in “The Home Song Stories” Tom has come to terms with his mother by examining their past and learning to forgive. Ayres himself, however, is still not sure if he has reached a similar resolution.  

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Find “The Home Song Stories” DVD here.

Order your copy of “Halfway: A Memoir” here.