What's New

View by Name

Rants

About Us

Amy [viff] Dir: Nadia Tass Country: Australia

The quality of films from Australia never ceases to amaze me. How do they do it? Is it something in the water? Bottle it! Wow.

This movie contains one of the most excruciatingly agonising scenes I've ever seen in a film. There is one scene where we all *know* something big, dramatic and important is just about to happen. This is where everything will become clear. We all know what will happen, but we don't dare atmit it to ourselves. The stage is set for disaster. We all know this. Meanwhile, everyone does their thing as if nothing was wrong.

Hitchcock explained suspense really well (I'm paraphrasing here). If you show a scene of a dinner table and it suddenly explodes, the audience gets maybe 10 seconds of intense feeling. Surprise! But if you show the bomb under the table while the people are eating, and make sure people know it's there, the audience will be in suspense for the entire duration of the scene, however long it will be.

Now that I got that out of the way, I have to make it clear that this is certainly not a suspense film. Most of it is bright, there are some very funny scenes (singing cops come to mind) and a very touching story of a girl who can't hear or talk.

This one fights with "Bird People of Japan" as being the best film I've seen so far this festival, and certainly is one of the best films I've seen all year.

See this film.