Dawn and Peter O’Neil live with their kids in rural Queensland in a ramshackle house shaded by a gigantic Moreton Bay fig tree (which took the filmmakers weeks to find, apparently…it’s really quite magnificent). Clearly, the family are not materially wealthy, but life is good. Then tragedy strikes: Peter has a fatal heart attack. The film (a French-Australian co-production) focuses on Dawn and 8-year-old daughter, Simone, as they struggle to come to terms with their loss.

Simone finds solace in the heart of the tree – a junction of trunk and branches, where she sets up a shrine to her father. She fancies she can hear him talking to her through the rustling leaves, and in time entrusts her mother with her secret. Dawn, too, comes to associate her late husband with the tree, which sends its hyper-fast-growing roots out to embrace the house, as if in response.

The tree’s benevolent mood takes a sinister turn when a relationship develops between Dawn and a local plumber: a massive branch breaks off, crashing through the roof and coming to rest across her bed! Lotsa symbolism happening here…and there’s more. Frankly, it’s all a bit laboured by the end of the movie.

Obviously, then, this film operates partly on a lyrical level, but there is a problem here – a clash, rather than a happy confluence, between poetry and realism. Continue reading ‘The Tree’ – Movie Review →

South Solitary trailer and interview with writer-director Shirley Barrett

South Solitary is a tiny, remote island in the Southern Ocean pounded by the Roaring Forties, with a lighthouse plonked on its clifftops for the benefit of occasional sea traffic. It’s 1928. The population of the island has recently declined from 7 to 6, with the death of the head lighthouse keeper. Enter the deceased’s irascible and pedantic replacement, George Wadsworth (Barry Otto) and his niece, Meredith (Miranda Otto).

Meredith is an overgrown Orphan Annie; her disagreeable uncle is the only family she has – the only anyone she has, actually, after losing her fiancee in WW1. Rather Dickensian setup, if she wasn’t in her 30s. Thing is, she has a bright, bubbly personality and is physically attractive. It doesn’t make sense that she’s tagging along with her uncle to a lonely post on a godforsaken rock in the middle of the scowling sea.

The plausibility issues do not stop there. Continue reading ‘South Solitary’ – Movie Review →

You know how Margaret Pomerantz gets when she’s moved by a film – all gushy and tremulous, brimmy about the eyes, and instantly defensive if poor old Stratton dares to offer up any critical observations that might suggest she’s going a bit over the top? Well, I was in danger of doing a Pomeranz with this review. Then I attended last Sunday’s Q and A screening at the Luna. Second viewings tend to amp up one’s critical faculties. You know what’s coming, so you’re more aware of structural elements, less inclined to be swept up in emotional response. But second viewing or not, this movie is potent – irresistibly so. Continue reading ‘The Waiting City’ – Movie Review →