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JENNI KAUPPI

FREELANCE REVIEWER, EDITOR &

CONTENT WRITER. PRINT & ONLINE.

ABOUT

Jenni Kauppi is Melbourne-based freelance content writer, reviewer and copy editor. She writes book, film, food, music and travel content for print and online, including The Age, Broadsheet, Lonely Planet, Arts Hub and the AU review. She also has experience with corporate tenders and marketing copy for local and international brands.

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The High Places After receiving international accolades for her Miles Franklin-shortlisted debut novel The Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane follows up with a short story collection, The High Places, laden with wry wit and a deceptive simplicity. The collection ranges boldly between place, perspective and voice, to describe a human-ness that manages to be both hysterically funny and quietly devastating at the same time.	The Sleepers Almanac X Editors Louise Swinn and Zoe Dattner are shrewd arbiters of the dense, fibrous space inhabited by the short story.	Small Acts of Disappearance While she describes in some detail the daily grind of her disease – the careful evasion of meals, the food phobias, the hospital stints and group therapy – the work is a philosophical undertaking, and Wright confronts anorexia’s more metaphysical concerns with a poet’s precision.
7 Chinese Brothers Much of the comedy feels like off-the-cuff material from Schwartzman, the spontaneity of which would have worked in the film’s favour if it didn’t also feel like he was simply working the volume angle, throwing plenty of material at a wall and hoping at least some of it will stick; very little of it does and eventually we stop caring anyway.	Stories I Want to Tell You in Person It is as if by sheer sleight of hand that we suspend disbelief long enough to accept the larger than life character before us - how does an adult woman find herself in these situations? Can the ingénue shtick be real?	You Don't Have to Live Like This Though it’s fiction, it comes at a time in real-life history when the fading lustre of the American dream – and indeed, the American empire – is felt with particular acuteness.
She's Beautiful When She's Angry What could have settled for being a neat little 101 primer of second wave feminist history instead confronts and teases out the complexities that the movement faced, even within itself, revealing a host of growing pains in its attempt to encompass the myriad female experience.	Stone Mattress: Nine Tales Fans of Atwood's work (who may or may not have been hanging out for a novel length work) will not be disappointed by this collection. Atwood’s genius throughout is to be razor-sharp funny, even while she prepares us, speculatively, for a bleak future.	A Girl is a Half-formed Thing When the thread of the story itself becomes obscured by the girl’s inner chaos, if you can surrender old reading habits and squint just so, a three dimensional image is suddenly revealed, clear and devastating.
Consolations of the Forest In connecting place and experience with wider concepts of the human condition, Tesson picks up where the great 19th century travel writers left off, offering an illuminating portrait of today's Russia, and more generally, the condition of modern life.	Your Fathers Where are They? Dave Eggers’ latest work is both a social polemic and tightly paced hostage drama – a page-turner, even – taking in the length and breadth of the modern American condition.	Stoner The novel’s beauty is its candid drawing of this strange, yet achingly relatable character. It is not the plot, but Williams’ handling of this unusually sensitive quality that is so heart-rending and so closely are we given his perspective, that we feel both viscerally conscious of his flaws, and deeply invested in his happiness.
The Dig Cynan Jones’ most recent offering is a bleak and diamond-hard look at man’s relationship with nature (read, literally, as in: the masculine). Breaking with perceptions of farming life as a gentle bucolic idyll, Jones mines it for its most jagged edges, revealing a gothic, and mostly nocturnal perspective on the Welsh countryside where violence and nature are intertwined.	Strange Weather in Tokyo An eerie and quietly enigmatic love story by Japanese novelist Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo lures the reader in to its strange atmospheric pressure with its delicate, dreamlike quality.	Leaving the Atocha Station Leaving the Atocha Station follows American research fellow Adam Gordon in Madrid on a year-long research project: “a research-driven poem” about the Spanish Civil War. Or so he says. Adam’s real project is at odds with this neat ambition, and he finds himself lost in a maze of existential angst – the helplessly neurotic default of an arts graduate with over-developed critical faculties and the unshakeable feeling that the artifice that he is trying to escape is his own.
The Young Desire It In many senses, it is a classic coming of age novel, but Mackenzie draws so heavily on the natural world, delivering such clear and succinct images of the West Australian bush – its oppressive summers and natural beauty – that it also works as a “passionately lyrical” piece of nature writing, as Malouf puts it.	Palo Alto (2013) MA15+ While it’s mostly familiar teen-flick territory, the film’s direction places a lot of responsibility in its young actors to develop these teen archetypes beyond a single dimension – and they deliver. The full-scale awkwardness is captured in averted eyes, slighty-too-long silences and the genuine sense that part of being a teenager is playing a role, and then not knowing how or where to stop.	The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby Having a series of films covering the same story is an inspired idea, and Benson uses this conceit to recreate scenes that differ both subtly and drastically in each telling. It speaks to the very idea of memory and perspective that two people should conceive of of any given moment in such radically different ways, and makes for a very cool film device for channeling their inner worlds.
Coming Forth by Day (2012) CTC Set in current day Cairo over the course of one day, Coming Forth By Day is a slow moving and bleak meditation on the life of Suad (Donia Maher) an unmarried 30-something who lives with her parents, and together with her mother (Salma Al-Najjar), looks after her ailing father (Ahmed Lutfi) . As the film unravels, there is a fiercely tense, yet eerily quiet push-and-pull between her life within the apartment, and the external world outside.	10,000km (2014) CTC Littered with casual examples of the way that technology infiltrates our intimate relationships, the film examines the chasm between the virtual and the real with plenty of relatable examples. From a half-hearted conversation while a preoccupied Alex digitally crops images on her computer, to an enthusiastic yet somehow melancholy erotic Skype encounter that only serves to amplify their distance.	Ballad of the Weeping Spring (2012) Steeped in the spell-binding music of the Middle East, known in Israel simply as, Mizrachi (Eastern), what ensues is a buddy-film, road movie, getting-the-band-back-together piece of cinema, heavy on genre borrowing from mid-century cowboy flicks, to form a genre new to Israeli cinema, nicknamed, I am so happy to report, the ‘Felafel Western’.
Israel: A Home Movie (2013) CTC The footage itself is dazzling. An archival treasure of mint condition 8mm, 16mm and Super-8 film, both nostalgic and confronting; footage from the 1930s showing early Jewish arrivals, the trauma of Holocaust survivors in Israel, the absorption of Jewish immigrants through the 50s, the euphoria of the end of the ‘67 war, and a camping trip gone awry as Syria makes a surprise attack on Yom Kippur in 1973.	Farewell My Queen (2012) CTC The palpable glamour and grime of the period unfolds on the precipice of revolution, with dead rats, sewers and disaffected citizens set against the opulence, finery and creamy décolletages of the royal court. But when the shocking news of the storming of the Bastille reaches the walls, deserters and traitors abound, and as heads are set to roll, the Queen’s legendary self-obsession and maddening lack of perspective comes to the fore as she frets about embroidery and jewels.	Flowers of War (2011) CTC The horror of war is painted with devastating clarity in Flowers of War, a historical fiction drama by director Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers). Set during the 1937 Japanese massacre in Nanjing, under imminent occupation, the city is reduced to dusty rubble and the last remaining citizens are fleeing for their lives amid piles of civilian bodies lining the streets.
Beauty (2012) R18+ The palpable, understated tension of each shot bubbles diabolically beneath the surface, and when the film explodes in a shocking climax, it comes with a visceral shock that is set to change everything.	Your Sister's Sister (2012) CTC While occasionally veering dangerously close to too-familiar territory, what elevates this rendering of the rom-com formula above the ho-hum, is the delightful frisson between the actors. It’s a talk-heavy film with an improvised feel – natural and dynamic, like the conversations you might be having if you were an extremely cool, funny, comfortably neurotic 20-something from Seattle.	Lore (2012) MA15+ Tense and beautiful, the drama of the film forms a restrained tableau of a German springtime in full bloom set against the aftermath of war: death, lice, hunger and mud. Each shot works in still-frame as a piece of art and the result is a stunning fusion of beauty and death.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) Shot in long, unbroken single-takes, the trance-like tension is broken with the occasional thickening of plot when subtle but shocking details of the characters’ lives are revealed, only to slip quietly away amid long, existential moments of characters staring into the middle distance.	I Anna (2011) CTC Beginning with a series of narrative threads woven together through a mosaic of flashbacks, the film draws on the classic murder mystery genre, with Anna (Charlotte Rampling) at its centre. With each flashback – from a murder, to a sex scene, to grandmotherly babysitting duties, and the singles’ nights she awkwardly attends – Anna swings in the audience’s perception between being a harmless, and somewhat batty, middle-age woman, to a sinister femme fatale.	Appropriate Behaviour (2014) CTC Played with deadpan composure by writer and feature debut director Desiree Akhavan, we meet Shirin in the last stage of her breakup with long-term girlfriend, Maxine (Rebecca Henderson). In the opening scene she is collecting her remaining belongings, exchanging final barbs and discussing the future custody of a shared strap-on dildo. The scene closes on Shirin walking down a street with said relationship artefact dangling jauntily from her hand.
It Felt Like Love (2013) CTC Rich visual minutiae give the plot its potency – beautiful, shadowy, semi-focused close-ups of the cherubic face of Piersanti, and long, languid takes of young body parts going through the motions of youth.	Josh Pyke \| 15 Nov 2012 Pyke’s standard-issue boy-with-a-guitar schtick is elevated to a cut above by a consummate professionalism and complete at-homeness on stage; where others might make this comfort look like another day at the office, Pyke’s self-confessed and well-known love for live performance translates to genuine audience engagement. “It’s an amazingly joyous experience,” he tells me in an earlier interview, “to connect with people every night in that way.”	Tim Rogers \| 5 Sep 2012 On a Wednesday night at the The Darwin Railway Club, where the fairylights flash epileptically and punters are known to happily perch on the floor for a gig as if for story time, the atmosphere is expectant. In this moment, Rogers’ distinct look and sound is on show – dapper and dishevelled at once.
Dappled Cities \| 29 Sep 2012 Derricourt plays his role of frontman with gusto, stepping completely into character and owning it with a delightfully theatrical brand of rock star. Not one for that shoe-staring business, he locks eyes with his audience and engages in some full-body dancing, bouncing, leaping and general rocking-out. Rennick (who is barefoot; in good company among the permanently sandled) follows suit along with and Ned Cooke (keyboard, sampler) and Allan Kumpulainen (drums) and Alex Moore (Bass).	Green Stone Garden \| 16 Feb 2013 While frontman Mike Meston’s pathos-hued falsetto and delicately placed harmonies still form the melodic spine, the overall effect is razzed-up by a louder, braver, boomier, crashier sound. Layered with analogue keyboard, at times Abbey Road-style reverb on Meston’s vocals, impossibly low, slow bass (Paul Dopper) and the psychedelic jam towards the song’s end, this laid back sound of the tropics is anchored firmly to alt-rock.	Bob Evans - Familiar Stranger Evans’ songwriting, forming the spinal column of the album, is as strong as ever, so while the production here is front and centre, a quintessentially gen-Y sound, it’s bona fide Evans. Musically diverse, it moves through a very current, heavily produced pop sound in the first tracks, towards a ballad-y midsection, full of strings and harmonies, and then back again to something harder edged.
Epicure, The Age Food and restaurant reviews for The Age, Including The Age Good Cage Guide, The Age Good Food Shopping Guide and The Age Good Food Under $30	Deckchair Cinema Film synopses for Deckchair Cinema program including Darwin International Film Festival and Flix in the Wet

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ABOUT

PORTFOLIO

The High Places

The Sleepers Almanac X

Editors Louise Swinn and Zoe Dattner are shrewd arbiters of the dense, fibrous space inhabited by the short story.

Small Acts of Disappearance

While she describes in some detail the daily grind of her disease – the careful evasion of meals, the food phobias, the hospital stints and group therapy – the work is a philosophical undertaking, and Wright confronts anorexia’s more metaphysical concerns with a poet’s precision.

7 Chinese Brothers

Stories I Want to Tell You in Person

It is as if by sheer sleight of hand that we suspend disbelief long enough to accept the larger than life character before us - how does an adult woman find herself in these situations? Can the ingénue shtick be real?

You Don't Have to Live Like This

Though it’s fiction, it comes at a time in real-life history when the fading lustre of the American dream – and indeed, the American empire – is felt with particular acuteness.

She's Beautiful When She's Angry

What could have settled for being a neat little 101 primer of second wave feminist history instead confronts and teases out the complexities that the movement faced, even within itself, revealing a host of growing pains in its attempt to encompass the myriad female experience.

Stone Mattress: Nine Tales

Fans of Atwood's work (who may or may not have been hanging out for a novel length work) will not be disappointed by this collection. Atwood’s genius throughout is to be razor-sharp funny, even while she prepares us, speculatively, for a bleak future.

A Girl is a Half-formed Thing

When the thread of the story itself becomes obscured by the girl’s inner chaos, if you can surrender old reading habits and squint just so, a three dimensional image is suddenly revealed, clear and devastating.

Consolations of the Forest

In connecting place and experience with wider concepts of the human condition, Tesson picks up where the great 19th century travel writers left off, offering an illuminating portrait of today's Russia, and more generally, the condition of modern life.

Your Fathers Where are They?

Dave Eggers’ latest work is both a social polemic and tightly paced hostage drama – a page-turner, even – taking in the length and breadth of the modern American condition.

Stoner

The Dig

Strange Weather in Tokyo

An eerie and quietly enigmatic love story by Japanese novelist Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo lures the reader in to its strange atmospheric pressure with its delicate, dreamlike quality.

Leaving the Atocha Station

The Young Desire It

Palo Alto (2013) MA15+

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby

Coming Forth by Day (2012) CTC

10,000km (2014) CTC

Ballad of the Weeping Spring (2012)

Israel: A Home Movie (2013) CTC

Farewell My Queen (2012) CTC

Flowers of War (2011) CTC

Beauty (2012) R18+

The palpable, understated tension of each shot bubbles diabolically beneath the surface, and when the film explodes in a shocking climax, it comes with a visceral shock that is set to change everything.

Your Sister's Sister (2012) CTC

Lore (2012) MA15+

Tense and beautiful, the drama of the film forms a restrained tableau of a German springtime in full bloom set against the aftermath of war: death, lice, hunger and mud. Each shot works in still-frame as a piece of art and the result is a stunning fusion of beauty and death.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011)

Shot in long, unbroken single-takes, the trance-like tension is broken with the occasional thickening of plot when subtle but shocking details of the characters’ lives are revealed, only to slip quietly away amid long, existential moments of characters staring into the middle distance.

I Anna (2011) CTC

Appropriate Behaviour (2014) CTC

It Felt Like Love (2013) CTC

Rich visual minutiae give the plot its potency – beautiful, shadowy, semi-focused close-ups of the cherubic face of Piersanti, and long, languid takes of young body parts going through the motions of youth.

Josh Pyke | 15 Nov 2012

Tim Rogers | 5 Sep 2012

Dappled Cities | 29 Sep 2012

Green Stone Garden | 16 Feb 2013

Bob Evans - Familiar Stranger

Epicure, The Age

Food and restaurant reviews for The Age, Including The Age Good Cage Guide, The Age Good Food Shopping Guide and The Age Good Food Under $30

Deckchair Cinema

Film synopses for Deckchair Cinema program including Darwin International Film Festival and Flix in the Wet