CAUGHT INSIDE

Director, Adam Blaiklock. Aust. 2010. 92 mins

This small-scale, lost-at-sea-with-a-maniac thriller made its mark in the ‘Freak Me Out’ genre section of the Sydney Film Festival. A self-funded independent production, it’s the confident debut feature from established commercials and short film director Blaiklock. There’s a yacht-load of good actors, especially the Monster and the Damsel In Distress, the tense situation is well established and the breathless climax delivers plenty of thrills, though perhaps not as much blood and gore as modern genre fans have come to expect. With Darclight signed as world sales agent and interest coming from international festivals, this handsomely shot movie looks set to punch beyond its weight.

The Hedonist, a beautiful ocean-going yacht, heads for the Maldive Islands in the equatorial Indian Ocean with a party of six Australians on a 12-day chartered cruise of renowned surfing sites. The captain (Peter Phelps) reminds them that on board he is the dictator. The two women holidaymakers are the only non-surfers: practical Alex (Leeanna Walsman) is making a video documentary of the cruise; glamorous Sam (Daisy Betts) is escaping a bad online experience where her privately videoed striptease was leaked to MySpace and scored over a million hits. Standing out from the men is Bull (Ben Oxenbould), a mighty-muscled, lank-haired misfit, at first apparently sweet-natured and helpful, but soon revealed as a sociopath and stalker with a volcanic temper.

Oxenbould is terrific as the King Kong of this island paradise, and Betts is nicely equivocal as the potential victim who sometimes enjoys employing her sexual attraction. A climactic meal scene where the fearsomely calm Bull serves up uncooked fish is particularly powerful. The actors clearly do their own surfing in some rousing on-and-under-the-waves sequences.


WASTED ON THE YOUNG

Director/Writer, Ben C. Lucas. Aust. 2010. 96 mins

Debut director/writer Lucas makes a strikingly stylish impression with a tense high school drama that world premiered in competition at the Sydney Film Festival where it received an ‘honourable mention’ from the international judges. Packed with good-looking young actors — there’s nobody over 18 in sight — an under-30s audience will respond well to this sex-obsessed, drink-and-drugs-fuelled story of school and internet bullying told with pop pace and visual panache. Aided by flashy editing and a driving soundtrack of drums, rumbles and throbs, Lucas never lets his audience rest. There are plot twists, time dislocations and shock wish-fulfilment fantasies. It’s a super-cool, handsomely assembled package with significant international box office potential.

All the final year (17/18 years old) rich kids at an expensive private school have smart phones, the latest in game-playing computers and very active Twitter accounts. “Text me,” says pretty blonde Xandrie (Adelaide Clemens) and wide-eyed newcomer Darren (Oliver Ackland) knows he’s in with a chance. But Darren’s smooth new stepbrother Zack (Alex Russell) is the school swimming leader, campus boss and drug supplier, and he’s had his eye on Xandrie, too. The stepbrothers share their father’s enormous, ultra-modern house, a base for regular anything-goes parties. When Xandrie is slipped a ‘date rape’ drug Darren and Zack are on the way to becoming deadly enemies.

Adults are conspicuously absent from this movie — no parents, teachers or police appear to modify the increasingly murderous behaviour of the kids, who must live (and die horribly) by their own tribal rules.

This is a smartly assembled portrait of wealthy, wired teenagers armed with the latest communication equipment — everyone texts/phones/videos throughout — but unable to battle the school’s corrupt power structure. With fast cutting, special effects and three attractive leads, especially the dazzling, increasingly busy Clemens, this is a brilliant beginning for movie-savvy Lucas.


SOUTH SOLITARY

Director/Writer, Shirley Barrett. Aust. 2010. 120 mins

Shirley Barrett’s new movie, which opened the Sydney Film Festival before a packed 2000+ audience, is a touching study of loneliness set on a meticulously recreated 1920s lighthouse island off the fiercely stormy southern Australian coast. Period details have been lovingly assembled — costumes, set dressings, dialogue, manners and the day-to-day routines and technicalities of lighthouse keeping in a bleak and hostile environment. This admirable precision, plus some spectacular location filming, will guarantee international festival attention in the coming months, but the slow moving story of damaged souls desperately seeking companionship will prove a tougher sell at the local box office (commencing July 29).

This is only Barrett’s third self-penned feature in fourteen years. Her brilliant debut, Love’s Serenade, also starring Miranda Otto, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1996, and her darkly witty Walk The Talk played festivals in 2000. She works patiently, prepares thoroughly and is an excellent director of actors. South Solitary rewards as much with its humane psychological insight as with its lighthouse reportage.

Meredith Appleton (Otto) arrives by launch at South Solitary, a desolate lump of rock topped by an elegant, white, pencil-slim lighthouse that her intolerant, homourless uncle George (Barry Otto) is to manage following the suicide of the previous keeper. She brings a live, serene lamb for company and reminds herself “I must try to remain cheerful”. It’s a difficult resolution, for the ascent by a rickety haulage system to the top of the rock is dangerous, and, once there, the accommodation is bleakly primitive. The stiff-backed uncle and the niece with an unhappy past must make the best of things.

Already on the island is assistant keeper and inveterate womaniser Harry Stanley (Rohan Nichol), with his wary wife Alma (Essie Davis) and their three feral children. The inexperienced Meredith is grist to their bored will. Harry twinkles an eye, Alma sees trouble and remains aloof, 10-year old Nettie (Annie Martin) first takes over the lamb, then abandons it to the island. Also employed is the brooding, silent Jack Fleet (Marton Csokas), a Welshman damaged by the Great War and now as far from Europe as possible.

The daily routine on this few hundred square yards of looming rock pounded by crashing waves and frightening gales is marvellously created by Barrett and her actors. Miranda Otto, in virtually every scene, gives a fully rounded portrait of a naïve, lonely, needy woman unsure of her worth. Barry Otto (the actress’s father) is exceptional as the unbending martinet, loyal to the lighthouse keeper’s duties and code of honour.

After the cast is whittled down to two at the halfway point a painfully slow, shy courtship develops — psychologically accurate, perhaps, but overlong and hard going for any multiplex audience expecting faster complications and racier payoffs. Older female audiences, currently so under-served, may be more tolerant.

Production values are first class. There’s a powerful sense of a distant time and a very distant place. A long search for suitable locations meant that filming was done at two separate lighthouses — one for the spectacular exteriors, and another for the authentically cramped and beautifully preserved interiors.


THE KINGS OF MYKONOS: WOG BOY 2

Director, Peter Andrikidis. Aust. 2010. 101 mins

This blokey hard-working farce features two sex-obsessed mates amid the beach bars and bikinied dollies of tourist-magnet Greek island Mykonos. Made primarily for an Australian fan base untested for a decade on the big screen since the original Wog Boy hit, this follow-up was shot mainly on Mykonos with a number of well-known Greek actors. It has potential for business in Greece where local distribution is handled by Odeon Films. The movie opens wide and with a large advertising budget in Australia on May 20.

The slang term ‘wogs’ in Australia once referred disparagingly to Mediterranean migrant groups. Nick Giannopoulos, comedian son of Greek migrants, embraced and helped to diffuse the insult in the late 80s and 90s with his stage shows (Wogs Out of Work, Wogarama, etc) and long-running TV series (Acropolis Now). His 2000 feature The Wog Boy is currently at 16 ($A11.5 mill) in the Top 100 Australian movies ranked by takings at the local box office. It is unlikely to be challenged by this late, warmed-up sequel.

“Nice idiots” Steve (Giannopoulos) and his Italian/Australian mate Frank (Vince Colosimo) are now well into their 40s. Grey hairs undercut their continued devotion to chasing Melbourne girls and tuning flashy automobiles. When Steve gets an international phone call from an uncle telling him he’s inherited a two-and-a-half-million euro stretch of prime sandy beach, off they boldly go to inspect their “united nations of pussy”. The ensuing family skulduggery and mildly comic confusions are intercut with many terrific helicopter shots of the rocky centre and sun-kissed beachy perimeter of Mykonos.

The two love interests — statuesque Greek actress Zeta Makrypoulia and flashing-eyed Italian Cosima Coppola — are great value, and far better catches than our half-witted, overgrown boys deserve. It could only happen in the movies.


I LOVE YOU TOO

Director, Daina Reid. Aust. 2009. 107 mins

Romantic comedy is a deceptively tricky genre and rare for Australian movies. Peter Helliar’s screenplay certainly attracted decent funding, both commercial and government, and the production values in director Reid’s debut feature are high. But the level of wit is disappointingly low and there’s an inconsistency of tone that fails to marry Apatow-type buddy bawdiness with heartbreak wistfulness. The movie opens wide on May 6 after a formidable TV and billboard campaign that will ensure a decent first week. Distributor FilmNation is taking it to Cannes where international prospects will focus on the reliably quirky presence of Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent, Death at a Funeral) and Yvonne Strahovski (three seasons co-starring in NBC’s Chuck).

Jim (Brendan Cowell) is 33, an overgrown child-man who lives with his married sister and drives miniature trains for a living. Along with his chubby mate Blake (writer/comedian Helliar in his first acting role), Jim seeks girls at local clubs. Improbably, his hangdog look charms Alice (Strahovski), an attractive English tourist. Three years later she wants more from “the worst boyfriend in the world”, and Jim is too dim to properly respond to her “I love you”.

Dumped and confused, Jim meets an American photographer, the dwarf Charlie (Dinklage), who is mourning his late wife while dreaming of towering supermodel Francesca (Megan Gale). Charlie’s heartfelt plight makes an uncomfortable mix with the blokey boorishness.

The overlong movie looks good. Cinematography, editing and music are in the hands of highly experienced practitioners. The cast, especially the magnetic Dinklage, is mainly fine. It’s the script that needed a rom-com masterclass.


BENEATH HILL 60

Director: Jeremy Sims. Aust. 2010. 122 mins

‘Based on real events’, this Great War story of gritty heroism and general slaughter focuses on the tunnellers and miners who dug deep under rat-infested trenches to lay mines, blast bodies and gain a few yards of frontline mud. It’s a new angle on the otherwise familiar movie take on WW1 horrors, convincingly recreated by director Sims. This strongly acted, earnest Australian story will undoubtedly find a welcoming audience locally. There has been a scramble to complete the two-hour feature in time for a wide national release (160+ screens) on April 15, the week before the Anzac Day long weekend. WW2 Aussie epic Kokoda pioneered this strategy in 2006 and cleared $A3.2. Set mainly in Europe, with some German speaking characters, Beneath Hill 60 has definite international potential.

Anzac Day is Australia and New Zealand’s national day of remembrance to honour the 1915 landing of the Empire’s untested southern warriors at Gallipoli, Turkey. It was there, it’s said, that Aussie ‘mateship’ was forged in the fires of overwhelming defeat. Beneath Hill 60 tells how mining engineer, Oliver Woodward, played with rock-solid integrity by Brendan Cowell, leads a disparate team of matey, mucky, brave Aussie diggers to detonate a vital German outstation on a ridge outside Ypres.

Starting in France in early 1916, the movie establishes Woodward’s newness in the trenches before flashing back 18 months to his idyllic life in rural Queensland and his fascination with Marjorie (Bella Heathcote), the dazzlingly pretty 16 year old he is shaping up to marry. But he’s been sent a batch of white feathers and, damn it, he knows where his duty lies.

Back at the mud-caked war, he and his crew have been ordered to taste the frontline horrors of Belgium. Colonel Rutledge (Chris Haywood), the pompously blinkered English officer-in-command thinks this whole tunnelling business is a waste of time. Of course the Aussies prove him wrong.

Cowell makes a thoughtful, determined leader, though he looks clearly older than the specified 24. The acting is strong from a large company of actors, convincing in all but their gleaming 21st century dentistry. There’s a late introduction to subtitled German soldier/miners listening for clues in underground chambers only inches away. It’s a device that cleverly broadens understanding of the battle’s complexity.

The freezing, rain-lashed trenches and bomb-blasted no man’s land were recreated in tropical Queensland, an impressive achievement by Sims, production designer Clayton Jauncey, and experienced cinematographer Toby Oliver, who also relishes the challenge of shooting the many candle-lit scenes underground. There’s a lush score, composed by Cezary Skubiszewski and played to the hilt by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

The ‘real events’ tag can have its downside. When the Aussies arrive at Hill 60 the main underground killing chamber has already been dug and loaded with 455 tons of explosives, packaged and wired by an earlier team of Canadian miners, which tends to dent our hero’s achievement. Hollywood would not have allowed that, whatever the historical facts.

Nevertheless, Woodward presses the plunger on cue and 10,000 Germans are blown away. The explosion, an end caption informs us, was heard in faraway London. And the Germans recaptured Hill 60 a few weeks later.


THE LOVED ONES

Director/Screenplay: Sean Byrne. Aust. 2009. 84 mins

After the Saw series, Australia leads the way in oh-my-god, shut-your-eyes teen ‘torture porn’. This latest classy example is doing the festival rounds (San Francisco, SXSW, New Zealand, Hong Kong) ahead of its local release in August. It’s an impressive debut feature from writer/director Byrne who spills blood, boils brains and cannibalises naked teens with wicked energy.

Lank-haired heartthrob Brent (Xavier Samuel) is being stalked by plain Lola (Robin McLeavy) who haltingly asks him to the school formal. He politely refuses - big mistake! – and soon he is kidnapped by a Lone Nut (John Brumpton). Lone Nuts are also something Australian horror movies do very well, only this Lone Nut comes with a Nutty Daughter, who turns out to be the spurned Lola, known to her doting father as Princess.

Byrne slowly but surely lures you into accepting major weirdness and ratcheting tortures, leading to a grand guignol display of sadism, not for the squeamish.

Movie references abound. The school dance recalls Carrie, and not since Play Misty For Me has there been such a loopy, predatory young woman as Princess. McLeavy, plumply demure in pink, is horribly convincing.

Samuel does a good line in teen moodiness, though once the rivers of blood start mingling with his long sweaty locks you don’t get to see much of his face.

There’s an excellent sound track packed with Australian tracks, featuring repeated airings of the madly catchy ‘Not Pretty Enough’ by Kasey Chambers. Original music by Ollie Olsen is edgy, and there’s elegantly creepy location work by cinematographer Simon Chapman.

An outrageous finale invites laughter, and gets it.


MAO'S LAST DANCER

Director: Bruce Beresford. Aust. 2009. 117 mins

Li Cunxin’s best-selling 2003 autobiography told of his barely credible journey from poverty-stricken peasant childhood in rural China during the Cultural Revolution to becoming one of the West’s leading classical ballet stars. Bruce Beresford’s handsome movie version captures the epic simplicity of Li’s story — astonishing luck coupled with a fierce determination — and stirs strong primal emotions about love of family, country, personal freedom.

With many passionate and colourful dance sequences expertly choreographed by Graeme Murphy, the film is a must for ballet-lovers and a strong arthouse contender likely to appeal more to a female audience. Success with a broader audience is less certain, though everything has been done to present Li’s world of ballet as tough, athletic and definitely heterosexual.

It’s officially an Australian product — much studio work plus the many on-stage sequences were shot in Sydney — though the casting and extensive location work in China and Houston make this the most international of movies. Following its world premiere at Toronto, the movie opens locally on October 1.

When Li Cunxin (pronounced “Lee Schwin-sing”) finished his dancing career he settled in Melbourne, becoming a stockbroker and motivational speaker. The book’s huge success lead him to plan the film, for which he raised much of the undisclosed budget. Potential deals in the UK and US were mooted, but he went for the Australian team that made the award-studded 1997 biopic Shine — producer Jane Scott and writer Jan Sardi.

Sardi uses the device that worked so well in Shine: three actors play the prodigy hero. Li is first seen as a 10-year-old (Huang Wen Bin), one of the seven undernourished sons of his overworked mother (Joan Chen) and father (Wang Shuang Bao).

Chosen by visiting officials, for no apparent reason, to be sent to Beijing to study at Madame Mao’s Dance Academy, Li endures unhappiness and iron discipline before becoming his teenaged self (Chengwu Guo, a powerfully talented young dancer). Through a politically incorrect tutor, he discovers western ballet techniques via secret videos of a soaring Mikhail Baryshnikov.

The adult Li (Chi Cao) is the standout student when Ben Stevenson (Greenwood), Artistic Director of the Houston Ballet, visits the academy. With Stevenson’s enthusiastic backing, Li is awarded a rare short-term cultural scholarship to visit America and join the Houston company.

At first gobsmacked by skyscrapers, cash machines and kitchen appliances, Li soon settles in, Chinese-English dictionary to hand (“Upon my soul,” he ventures). He grabs the career chances that come his way and falls for pretty blonde dancer Liz (Schull). When the Chinese delegation starts to worry about their flighty citizen, a tug-of-war develops that soon challenges Li’s ingrained values and desires.

Sardi and Beresford marshal this rich material with precision, treating it as a ‘hero journey’, a mythic tale of victory over impossible odds. If this goodies v baddies approach reduces credibility and leaves many unanswered questions, it certainly heightens Li’s cinematic adventure and ensures, against all odds, a happy ending for everyone involved.

And how fortunate were they to find a dancer/actor/looker like Chi Cao to play the seemingly impossible-to-cast lead role. Cao, Chinese-born-and-trained Principal Dancer of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, leaps, soars and spins just as brilliantly as the movie requires. Bruce Greenwood is sensitively sympathetic as the American mentor; Amanda Schull gives the underwritten girlfriend a warm reality.

Graeme Murphy’s choreography is a big factor in the film’s strong emotional impact, with excerpts from many ballets including his brilliant interpretation of Swan Lake. The ludicrous revolutionary ballet staged at the Beijing academy for a rapt Madame Mao is a highlight.


BALIBO

Director: Robert Connolly. 2009. 111 mins

In 1975, five young Australian TV journalists covering the invasion of East Timor by the Indonesian army were murdered at Balibo, a border village. The murky story of the ‘Balibo Five’, denied and covered up for over 30 years, is grippingly recreated in Robert Connolly’s angrily authentic, fast-paced movie.

Local audiences with some background knowledge should be intrigued and press coverage will assure a strong showing when Balibo opens the Melbourne film festival on July 24 before going on local release August 13. Prospects elsewhere are less certain, though the dominant presence of Anthony LaPaglia in the lead role should bring critical acclaim and a strong chance of awards. His committed performance as a washed-up journo who grows into a passionate advocate for the truth is the movie’s major international selling point.

Shot on location with loving attention to period detail, the movie’s take on these long-buried events is convincing. Based on the 2001 exposé Cover-Up by Jill Jolliffe and co-scripted by Australia’s foremost screen dramatist David Williamson (Gallipoli, The Year of Living Dangerously), Connolly seamlessly mixes 1975 news footage with a three-pronged narrative, helped by Nick Myers’ complex edit.

The story kicks off with Juliana (Bea Viegas) coming to East Timor’s capital Dili to tell her story to the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, established after her country obtained independence from Indonesia in 1999. She remembers befriending Roger East (LaPaglia), an Australian journalist, at her family’s hotel in November, 1975.

East is first seen just before his arrival in Dili, an overweight, alcoholic mess whose career as a crusading journalist has dwindled to hack PR work in Darwin. Visited by young José Ramos-Horta (Oscar Isaac), fiery junior representative of the one-year-old East Timorese government, East reluctantly agrees to run the East Timor News Agency, but only if Ramos-Horta will help him uncover the fate of the five reporters who have just gone missing at Balibo.

As the two make their way through a panicked city and enemy-infested jungle, we flashback again to the doomed news-gatherers. Connolly’s three strands are expertly woven together, coming to twin climaxes where terror and cruelty overwhelm everyone. These ‘killing field’ scenes are not for the squeamish.

LaPaglia, also credited as an Executive Producer, names East as “probably the best role I’ve ever had”. Unglamorous and mostly unsympathetic, it’s a challenge which elicits a very fine performance. Isaac (Body of Lies, Che) is an unstoppable, intelligent sparring partner. The two find some much needed comedy in their uneasy
relationship.

Tristan Milani’s hand-held camerawork adds to the authentic feel, especially as the doomed young reporters are often shown doing all their filming from the shoulder. However, too many hand-held close-ups are a shaky distraction at more dramatic moments.


BEAUTIFUL KATE

Director/screenplay: Rachel Ward. 2009. 101 mins

Actress Rachel Ward’s debut feature is a handsome and intense love story, a gothic tale of buried guilt and family dysfunction set in Australia’s outback. With lashings of sex played out amidst long-buried secrets, Beautiful Kate is awash with Ward’s own spiky, brittle dialogue, delivered with relish by her cast.

It’s a big step forward for Ward, whose previous short films - especially The Big House (2002) and Martha’s New Coat (2003) – have won local awards and notched up TV sales. The presence of husband Bryan Brown as co-producer and actor is a bonus, as is Rachel Griffiths, returning to Australian movies in a surprisingly minor, though highly effective, role. The strong language, sex scenes and morally questionable relationships will naturally limit audiences when Beautiful Kate opens in Australia on August 6 (following a world premiere at Sydney Film Festival), but a buzz will surely grow for the younger players, especially newcomer Sophie Lowe as the eponymous Kate; international interest seems assured.

Much of the movie’s considerable dramatic tension comes from the steady revelation of past misdeeds, horrors and fiercely guarded secrets.

The screenplay is based on an American novel written by Newton Thornburg in 1982 and set on a once-thriving farm absorbed into the Chicago sprawl. Ward successfully re-imagines the Kendall family’s remote farm - once rich and green, now arid and broke - in the spectacular Flinders Ranges of South Australia. Cinematographer Commis, also making his feature debut, makes the most of this scenic elegance with some classy framing and crafted night-work.

Writer Ned Kendall (Ben Mendolsohn) drives “halfway across the continent” to be with his dying father Bruce (Bryan Brown). With wannabe-actress Toni (Dermody) in tow, he is greeted by his long-suffering sister Sally (Rachael Griffiths) at the isolated, drought-ravaged farm where they grew up in thrall to their bullying patriarch. Three members of the family are already dead – the shadowy mother, never seen in flashbacks; Ned’s elder brother Cliff (Scott O’Donnell); and his twin sister, the beautiful Kate (Sophie Lowe). Much of the movie’s considerable dramatic tension comes from the steady revelation of past misdeeds, horrors and fiercely guarded secrets.

Ward follows two parallel stories – Ned’s present-day rage at Bruce’s bad-tempered dying; and scenes that show the unhealthy family dynamic of adolescent Ned, Cliff and restless, experimenting Kate. It’s a tricky intermingling of youthful zest, middle-aged angst and dying despair: and Ward brings it off with a dry wit and a gothic lyricism – much moonlit love-making, owls and weirdly focussed dreamscapes.

Mendelsohn is bleakly arrogant as the haunted, damaged writer, a potentially unsympathetic role. Brown, though perhaps too young and healthy-looking, clearly shows the selfish cruelty that has warped his family. Griffiths brings compassion and wisdom to her few scenes. Maeve Dermody, as the ditzy fish out of water, and the dazzling, contained Sophie Lowe bring much-needed lightness to the gathering tragedy.

Ward has chosen some excellent country songs for her soundtrack — the emotional climax comes at a dance - and the original guitar-based incidental music by Tex Perkins and Murray Paterson is discreet and moving.


SAMSON & DELILAH

Dir/scr/cine: Warwick Thornton. Aust. 2009. 101 mins

The stand-out world premiere (of eight new Australian dramas) at the recent Adelaide Film Festival, Warwick Thornton's debut feature is a mainly Aboriginal-made movie, a fierce frontline report on contemporary life in the Central Australian desert. Though presented as a teenage love story with heart and humour, Samson & Delilah may not make a dent at home beyond the arthouse on its May 7 release (through Footprint Films): Australian multiplex audiences have proved resistant to indigenous movie-making. But this is an undoubted international festival starter – an inside look at a world rarely, if ever, depicted on the big screen. It has been eyed by Cannes and the buzz is strong.

The honest naturalism of the two young leads is the main reason for the film's intense grip and power. Rowen McNamara (Samson) and Marissa Gibson (Delilah) were greeted with a deserved and thunderous standing ovation at the premiere.

Thornton 's previous short films, also made with non-indigenous producer Kath Shelper, brought him attention and Berlinale prizes (for 2005's Green Bush and Nana in 2008). Here, with a budget of $1m (A$1.6m) and acting as his own cinematographer, he took a 35mm camera and a skeleton crew into the 45-plus degree heat of the outback where his cast of non-actors live, and the result is documentary-like in its hand-held depiction of rundown, no-hope locations.

Rake-thin Samson, aged 15, wakes in his bleak shanty room and immediately starts sniffing dregs of petrol from a battered tin. Across the dusty track, 16-year-old Delilah wakes to care for her elderly Nana. She administers morning pills, then wheels the old lady to pray in the shanty church, then past the pay-phone that rings but is never answered, to the doctor's mobile surgery for more pills. Shadowed by the bored, persistent Samson, the two spend the rest of their day dot-painting a large canvas, for which they are promised A$250 when completed.

The relationship between the two youngsters is unspoken, initially revealed only via the spice of Nana's cackle. There can be few – if any – movie love stories where the two principals converse so little, look each other in the eye so seldom. Nana dies suddenly and Delilah is unfairly beaten by local women for not taking enough care of her grandmother. Samson steals the community's only vehicle and the two head for the nearest big centre, Alice Springs.

Squatting for weeks under a noisy road bridge, they meet Gonzo (Scott Thornton, the director's brother), a voluble alcoholic tramp who shares tins of noodles with them. Utterly without money or prospects, Delilah is astonished to discover one of Nana's paintings with a $22,000 price tag in the window of a trendy art gallery. Stealing paints and canvas, she makes her own dot-painting which she unsuccessfully attempts to sell to coffee-drinking locals. The gallery owner won't even look up from his desk.

Things go from bad to worse. Delilah is abducted by local white youths, Samson's petrol-sniffing intensifies, and something nasty occurs which produces gasps of shock. This is uncompromising story-telling, but Thornton thankfully manages a comparatively upbeat conclusion, finding youthful hope amid the ruins of a once-proud culture.

The film has little dialogue, shot most in the Warlpiri language with subtitles. Gonzo speaks, rants and sings in English – his liveliness and wild optimism comes at just the right moment — and his rendition of the Tom Waits classic Jesus Gonna Be Here is most moving.