The girl who wanted touch, affection, and love. Heidi, a teenage girl living with her mother, touches her mother's boyfriend's tattoo and finds herself sharing a moment of sexual intimacy. Why would she leave the door open in what seems a small apartment leads me to believe she wanted to get caught at a subconscious level, because of a need she has to be noticed. This is a girl with major issues, stemming perhaps from abandonment -- her biological father is never mentioned nor seen -- and who has a magnetism of presence and a preternatural sensuality that she uses without knowing the repercussions.
This is the premise of Cate Shortland's bleak, but unforgettable coming-of-age tale of of a sixteen year old girl who decides to take matters into her own hands and become Alice, falling through the rabbit-hole, and taking the steps to her own awakening. It's not a new idea (then again, what is?) -- the theme of an underage girl leaving home and wandering alien streets, often at the expense of meeting dangers that lie in wait have been done to death, even in a gender-bending movie like BREAKFAST ON PLUTO.
However, this is an at-a-glance observation. There's much more going on in Shortland's movie. It could be seen as an allegory on the search for love in a world of illusion: Heidi seeks men because deep inside, she wants to connect, to belong, to love and be loved. She missteps the second time around with a guy she meets at a club and who leaves her the next morning for his girlfriend. A phone call from what seems to have been a trick also proves fruitless. Upon looking for a job to support herself she makes the mistake of flirting with a store owner and then an older man sitting outside in a vehicle in a parking lot.
And then she meets Joe (Sam Worthington, in a role reminiscent of Heath Ledger in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN due to his character's stoic nature and resistance to communication). Joe is a young farmer who has, we learn later on, never been with a woman, much less expressed affection towards them. He's an alcoholic, and has what seems to be his own sexual turmoil. Heidi's relation with Joe is nearly wordless and relies on touch, on gestures, on moments of restrained intimacy that differentiates it from her previous sexual encounters. However, she wants more: she brings the issue of expressing affection towards Joe who warns her with two words, "baby steps." However, the heart wants what it wants, and hers craves love, and thus ostracizes Joe.
So what happens when what seems to be a sure chance at love fails or looks like it's going due south? Heidi unravels like a spool of string let loose.
First she's invited to a co-worker's house where she meets the man with whom she flirted with in order to get a job. This time, he's not as nice but chilling: he drives her home, and details more cerebral than seen indicate he's raped Heidi while warning her never to come close to his daughter again. It's a masterful scene of restrained horror, in which the camera focuses on Lake Jindabyne, the night sky, and Abbie Cornish's chiaroscuro face as tears stream down her face and the man teases a lock of her hair.
Later, she spins completely out of control and gets herself in a horrible predicament, but this is precisely what has Heidi make a turnaround. It's, again, what seems to me to be an allegory of growing up from a child to an adult in a world that is full of hues of blues and magentas and holds little reality but enormous danger. Heidi is a precocious young woman, drifting from failed encounter to failed encounter until she realizes that it doesn't matter -- being loved -- and makes an important gesture of rejection, a reversal at that, to Joe's extended hand. She's grown up, and faces a future.
Cate Shortland's movie is a little uneven. It looks at time that shots are kept in order to maintain a poetic nature that somehow gets lost in translation -- it's as if the movie were overdirected. Abbie Cornish, however, rescues the movie and is a revelation as an actress, allowing her own body language and sad, questioning eyes to do the talking in a part that is complex because it requires that the actor playing it shed all notions of glamour while exuding it -- the kind that does exist in rough trade. She pulls off playing a girl playing a woman with such ease that I almost forgot it was actual acting. Ergo, the movie belongs to her, and points to a great career ahead.
This is the premise of Cate Shortland's bleak, but unforgettable coming-of-age tale of of a sixteen year old girl who decides to take matters into her own hands and become Alice, falling through the rabbit-hole, and taking the steps to her own awakening. It's not a new idea (then again, what is?) -- the theme of an underage girl leaving home and wandering alien streets, often at the expense of meeting dangers that lie in wait have been done to death, even in a gender-bending movie like BREAKFAST ON PLUTO.
However, this is an at-a-glance observation. There's much more going on in Shortland's movie. It could be seen as an allegory on the search for love in a world of illusion: Heidi seeks men because deep inside, she wants to connect, to belong, to love and be loved. She missteps the second time around with a guy she meets at a club and who leaves her the next morning for his girlfriend. A phone call from what seems to have been a trick also proves fruitless. Upon looking for a job to support herself she makes the mistake of flirting with a store owner and then an older man sitting outside in a vehicle in a parking lot.
And then she meets Joe (Sam Worthington, in a role reminiscent of Heath Ledger in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN due to his character's stoic nature and resistance to communication). Joe is a young farmer who has, we learn later on, never been with a woman, much less expressed affection towards them. He's an alcoholic, and has what seems to be his own sexual turmoil. Heidi's relation with Joe is nearly wordless and relies on touch, on gestures, on moments of restrained intimacy that differentiates it from her previous sexual encounters. However, she wants more: she brings the issue of expressing affection towards Joe who warns her with two words, "baby steps." However, the heart wants what it wants, and hers craves love, and thus ostracizes Joe.
So what happens when what seems to be a sure chance at love fails or looks like it's going due south? Heidi unravels like a spool of string let loose.
First she's invited to a co-worker's house where she meets the man with whom she flirted with in order to get a job. This time, he's not as nice but chilling: he drives her home, and details more cerebral than seen indicate he's raped Heidi while warning her never to come close to his daughter again. It's a masterful scene of restrained horror, in which the camera focuses on Lake Jindabyne, the night sky, and Abbie Cornish's chiaroscuro face as tears stream down her face and the man teases a lock of her hair.
Later, she spins completely out of control and gets herself in a horrible predicament, but this is precisely what has Heidi make a turnaround. It's, again, what seems to me to be an allegory of growing up from a child to an adult in a world that is full of hues of blues and magentas and holds little reality but enormous danger. Heidi is a precocious young woman, drifting from failed encounter to failed encounter until she realizes that it doesn't matter -- being loved -- and makes an important gesture of rejection, a reversal at that, to Joe's extended hand. She's grown up, and faces a future.
Cate Shortland's movie is a little uneven. It looks at time that shots are kept in order to maintain a poetic nature that somehow gets lost in translation -- it's as if the movie were overdirected. Abbie Cornish, however, rescues the movie and is a revelation as an actress, allowing her own body language and sad, questioning eyes to do the talking in a part that is complex because it requires that the actor playing it shed all notions of glamour while exuding it -- the kind that does exist in rough trade. She pulls off playing a girl playing a woman with such ease that I almost forgot it was actual acting. Ergo, the movie belongs to her, and points to a great career ahead.