Writer/director Shirley Barrett's Love Serenade is the story of a pair of sisters—shy, awkward waitress Miranda Otto and petty, sadistic hair stylist Rebecca Frith—who live lives of quiet desperation in a rural town in Australia. They're given a much-needed thrill, however, when George Shevtsov, an eccentric, hedonistic DJ, moves next door and sleepwalks through affairs with both sisters. It's easy to see why Love Serenade didn't receive the sort of crossover success afforded to fellow Australian exports The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert and Muriel's Wedding, with which it shares a similarly sadistic/campy edge and a soundtrack laden with '70s favorites: It's a much darker film that's similarly pitiless toward its hapless characters, but it lacks the sort of populist, feel-good ending that tends to endear movies to foreign audiences. Yet, in many ways, Love Serenade is a far superior film, due in no small part to the brilliant performance of Shevtsov, who gives his laconic small-town Casanova a Zen-like serenity that's hypnotizing to both the sisters and the audience. Sure, his character is a selfish, boorish, aggressively unattractive man who toys with the sisters with supreme indifference, but it's a mark of the brilliance of Shevtsov's performance that he also makes his character almost charming and oddly attractive. Otto and Frith contribute fine performances as well, and Love Serenade makes excellent thematic use of the title song by Barry White, but it's Shevtsov's work that makes the movie such an irresistible sleeper.