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The Caterpillar Wish, writer-director Sandra Sciberras' gentle coming-of-age drama, has three things going for it: Location, location, location. Filmed on the windswept limestone coast of South Australia against a backdrop of gulls and lapping water, it uses the off-season languor of a resort-town setting to build a wintry, pensive mood that is evocative and beautiful.
While considerable surface appeal guarantees this small film a slot on the international festival circuit (it just screened in Israel's Australian Film Festival), its commercial prospects will be hurt by a heavy-handed narrative that rapidly sinks into the overwrought melodrama of a daytime soap.
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Emily is secretly dating Joel (Khan Chittenden), the teenage son of bully-boy policeman Carl (Philip Quast) and Elizabeth (Wendy Hughes), whose marriage is falling apart because of Carl's philandering. Elizabeth's widower brother, Stephen (Robert Mammone), serves as confidante to Emily, who is none too subtly trying to set him up with her single mom.
© The Hollywood Reporter
