A film that's suffered under the shadow of Picnic at Hanging Rock and My Brilliant Career - especially the latter, even though it was made earlier.
It does feel familiar - a coming of age period piece with its spirited heroine battling against society etc etc. It lacks three things Career had: female gaze (Beresford directs with great pace and energy, and strong casting all that stuff... but doesn't have the nuance that Armstrong brought), the X factor of Judy Davis and Sam Neill (Susannah Fowler is fine, just not Judy Davis), and a more coherent story in the relationship between Davis and Neil. This does have Fowler's relationship with the older girl, which is sensitively handled, but introduced late in the day. Maybe the film would have been better if it made more of the lesbian angle.
Barry Humphries is fun. Candy Raymond is excellent - her three Beresford performances were all different: seductive slightly insecure suburban minx, French school teacher, slightly bogan investigator. John Waters is strong value. Sigrid Thornton (who in hindsight probably should've played the lead) is a bitch like she was in FJ Holden. Kerry Armstrong is in it too. I vaguely recognised the other girls.
I loved the cricket scene.
It moves with speed, has intelligence and literacy. I think the two main reasons Beresford thrived while other contemporaries faded were his literacy (he was always optioning books) and the pace of his films.
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