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SOMERSAULT
8/10
Australia
2004 : Cate SHORTLAND : 106 mins
If there's
one thing current cinema doesn't need, it's yet another sensitive coming-of-age
tale tracing a painful first love. Which is why Australian entry Somersault
comes as such a terrific surprise. Even the setting is unexpected - rather
than the well-traversed outback or sprawling suburbs seen in so many Aussie
movies, Shortland's debut unfolds in the wintry surroundings of Jindabyne,
a New South Wales lakeside ski-resort which could easily pass for New
Zealand or the damper sections of North America's west coast.
This is where
16-year-old runaway Heidi (Abbie Cornish) ends up after fleeing her home
in the far-off city - she'd been caught by her mother in a compromising
clinch with the mother's adult boyfriend. Attractive but penniless, naive
but seldom afraid of using her sexual allure to get what she wants, it's
clear that Heidi could end up in serious trouble. She soon finds accommodation
and maternal care, however, from motel-owner Irene (Lynnette Curran),
while drifting towards a tentative romance with farm-boy Joe (Sam Worthington).
Despite being in his mid-twenties, and a reputation as the local lothario,
Joe turns out to be no more mature than Heidi herself...
 From
the very first scenes, it's clear that debutant writer-director Shortland
knows exactly what she's doing - she has firm control over everything
we see (evocatively rough-edged cinematography by Robert Humphreys) and
hear (shimmeringly downbeat score by band Decoder Ring). Heidi is acutely
attuned to the textures of her environment, and Shortland's eye and ear
for detail captures this inner-life with a winning combination of economy
and intensity that recalls Christine Jeffs' Rain
and Lynne Ramsay's Morvern
Callar.
But while
those movies both lost focus in the latter stages, Shortland has the vision
and skill to sustain her picture to feature length without stumbling into
melodrama or losing her grasp of tone. Nor does she float off into a dreamy
world of burgeoning teenage-girl sensuality and allow lyricism to overwhelm
narrative concerns - as in Sofia Coppola's The
Virgin Suicides. In contrast, Shortland keeps her feet firmly
on the ground - there's a welcome strain of tough bleakness running through
the story that may remind some audiences of Boys
Don't Cry, or The Boys by Rowan Woods, who's thanked
in the end-credit crawl.
Crucially,
this isn't just Heidi's story: and it's only when Worthington's terse,
ockerish Joe becomes a major figure in the drama - and is forced to grow
up very fast - that Somersault really gets going. They make an
attractive couple - he a charismatic cross between Ewan McGregor and Pierce
Brosnan; she an elfin beauty despite looking like Jack 'White Stripes'
White from certain angles. And Shortland coaxes such moving, convincing
characterisations out of them that, despite the age-gap that makes them
an impractical long-term couple, we find ourselves firmly rooting for
their hard-won happiness, either together or apart.
14th September,
2004
(seen 25th August : FilmHouse Edinburgh : public show - Edinburgh
Film Festival)
click
here for an interview with director Cate Shortland
click
HERE for our full coverage of the 2004 Edinburgh Film Festival
by Neil
Young
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