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American smalltown movies usually cast their settings as microcosms of the nation (from Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life to Wayne Wang's Because of Winn-Dixie and Pixar's Cars), or as the lairs of redneck psychos just waiting for a chance to get their claws into pesky city slickers who have taken a wrong turn (as in 1970s films such as Race with the Devil and the recent House of Wax remake).
In Australian movies, however, country towns tend to be insulated hotbeds of intrigue, places filled with secrets that are frequently sexual in nature. Ever since our local filmmakers discovered their voices during the renaissance of the '70s, it has been this way, from The Mango Tree's Bundaberg (1977) through to Mullet's Coollawarra (2001). Of late, it has become especially popular, as seen in Peaches' Swanreach, Love's Brother's Hepburn Springs, Strange Bedfellows' Yackandandah (all brought to life in 2004), and now The Caterpillar Wish's Robe, a picturesque town on the South Australian coast.
Written and directed by VCA graduate Sandra Sciberras, the film is a promising but uneven drama that sets a 17-year-old girl's search for her father against a background of smalltown tensions. Emily (Victoria Thaine) is a bit of a loner who spends most of her spare time riding her bike around, wielding a camera but not wearing a helmet, an omission that is likely to leave a large part of the audience worrying about the risks she's taking.
She doesn't exactly hide the fact that she's taking photographs of middle-aged men, but her motives only gradually become clear. Her mother, Susan (Susie Porter), a topless waitress at the local pub, has told her that the father she has never met and whose name she doesn't know was someone who only briefly passed through the town.
Emily's collection of photos is a testament to her yearnings, as is her attachment to Stephen (Robert Mammone), a fisherman whose wife and daughter perished several years before. She would like him to be her father, which is why she is forever trying to engineer a relationship between him and her mother.
At the same time, she has a secret boyfriend, Joel (Khan Chittenden), the son of the local policeman (Philip Quast) and Stephen's sister (Wendy Hughes). One thing is clear: although they don't know about the relationship with Emily, Joel's parents certainly don't approve of her mother, who is struggling to make ends meet and whose shack on the outskirts of town is in marked contrast to their luxurious mansion.
Assisted by Greig Fraser's fine cinematography, Sciberras presents an economic portrait of the town, an idyllic setting frowned upon by persistent grey skies and riven by all-too-human errors of judgement. One gets the sense that, such is their fallibility, these characters are locked on to a route from which there is no escape.
For some, the coincidences that hinge the story together will inevitably be taken as a sign of clumsy plotting. However, as is the traditional way with melodrama, there's no such thing as coincidence: it's always a question of the ways in which fate creates its own intersections. Here, it's all to do with the choices - and the many mistakes - that the characters have made.
Central to these are the film's divided families and the chains of responsibility that bind parent and child together. "I should never have let things get so out of hand," says Susan's mother (Elspeth Ballantyne) of the estrangement that began with Susan's teenage pregnancy. But she's not the only one at fault.
The film's bold plunge into melodrama - in the way it has been plotted, shot and scored - certainly push the intensity of the Australian smalltown story up a notch or two. But it's a pity that the events of the past, including Stephen's family history, his sister's fraught marriage and the issue of who Emily's father is are so glibly set aside by the awful montage with which the film ends.
© The Age Company Ltd.
