This movie holds up well. Seeing it people must have imagined really great futures for writer Everett de Roche and director Colin Eggleston - and while both had decent careers (de Roche especially) they never quite hit the heights promised (or at least implied) by this low budget flick.
Still, they have this. It's not a masterpiece and shouldn't be over-hyped. The running time does feel padded - I feel at heart this was a 60 minute feature if that. Because there's not much story - it's really a collection of incidents, a building of unease and mood... the cigarette but in the grass, the shooting of a dungog, animal cries, a deserted beach.
It helps that the locations are so beautiful - desolate, isolated, stunning, with the sand dunes, and bush and sea. Also Vincent Monton's Panavision photography is breathtaking. The sound and editing are first rate.
There's good playing from John Hargreaves; less assured work from Briony Behets (who goes overboard... I kept wishing for Wendy Hughes). But she's not bad and the drama is solid. Critics have complained about the unlikeability of the two leads - but that means when they die we don't feel so bad.
Also the characters feel real - he's a bit of a bogan, for all this white collar job: he likes shooting gun and beer and Playboy; he's controlling and won't listen to her, and she complains; there's been adultery in the past involving another couple and an abortion which is causing trouble; she's unhappy, wanting to connect with her husband but not really. Maybe it's because I'm getting on in years myself, in life and my marriage but I found this surprisingly engrossing.
Behets goes topless and engages in some masturbation to a Harold Robbins novel - a bit of sex was a good idea, but to Harold Robbins? It does seem a little extraneous.
There are other flaws to be sure, but it's interesting and original and there is some decent drama, powerful atmosphere and some knock out moments such as the death of Behets and Hargreaves.
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