Med 231- Australian Cinema
Assignment 2
Elizabeth Fox 30284167
Somersault
Director/ script writer: Cate Shortland
Executive Producer: Jan Chapman
Producer: Anthony Anderson
Editor: Scott Gray
Casting: Nicki Barrett
Production: 2004, Hopscotch Films
Release Date: 16/9/2004
Running Time: 105-107mins
Cast
Abbie Cornish: Heidi
Sam Worthington: Joe
Lynette Curran: Irene
Erik Thompson: Richard
Hollie Andrew: Bianca
Leah Purcell: Diane
Olivia Pigoet: Nicole
Blake Pittman: Karl
Awards
Somersault won 13 awards at the 2004 AFI awards. It beat the previous record of 8, which was held by Lantana and Newsfront.
Abbie Cornish: AFI Best Actress
Sam Worthington: AFI Best Actor
Lynette Curran: AFI Best Supporting Actress
Erik Thompson: AFI Best Supporting Actor
Winner Best Film
2004 AFI awards
2004 IF awards
2004 Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards
Official Selection at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival
Collecting Information
Due to recent release of Somersault information was most readily available on the Internet. No books featured any information and the journal databases featured little to no information. However websites such as RottenTomatoes and IMBD where helpful in sourcing information and reviews.
The online presence of Somersault and Cate Shortland was fairly strong with each search for information returning numerous results. However information on Box office takings was impossible to find.
Bibliographical details of interviews with film makers
The only interview that I was able to find with the film makers was one conducted by
Margaret Pomeranz for ABC ‘At the Movies.’ The interview within its self was very helpful it gave an in-site into how the three main characters came to be.
Cate described in the interview how she attended a court case in her hometown of Canberra in which a gay was beaten. Present at the court case was the young man accused of the attack,his young girlfriend and the older gay man. This was the birthplace of the characters.
We have Erik Thompson’s character as the older gay man. The we have the young ‘sorta straight guy a little bit confused by his sexuality’ hence the character of Joe. Then we have Heidi’s character, a young innocent girl.
Heidi’s dialogue is also largely based around that of a 18 year old friend of Cate’s. Which how the character of Heidi is so realistic in regards to people her age. The events in which took place, the party scences are actually that described to Kate by her young friend, they are a true realistic account of what young people in Canberra do on a Friday night.
What we must remember when the viewing the film is that Cate wanted the film to be ‘emotional, not just a voyeuristic exploration’
Unfortunately this was the only interview I could find, however it has proved extremely important in a true understanding and appreciation of the text.
This interview can be viewed at www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txts
Bibliographical details of reviews in newspapers, critical essays in journals and discussions in books.
Due to the recent release of the movie critical essays and articles in books and journals are not available. However many reviews from various magazines and databases have been found.
Following a screening of the movie in July at a Melbourne film festival many reviews where published. This screening pre-ceeded the films September release.
Michaela Boland from New Yorks variety magazine desdcribed the film as ‘Shortlands moody coming-of-age drama”( M, Boland;Variety Magazine NY july26-aug1 04, accesed via murdoch catalogue)
Where as Russell Edwards of the same publication thought differently: “Shortland appears to have a great fascination with objects like pine needles and gas jets, but the pic’s visual flourishes tend to be distracting in their restless artiness” (R. Edwards : Variety Magazine, NY, June 7-13 04)(Accesed via Murdoch catalogue)
However the Australian centre for the moving image thought differently applauding Shortland’s work ; “her work is remarkable for its lyrical, poetic imagery and dynamic performance” ( www.acmi.net.au/cateshortland.jsp)
Margaret Pomeranz described the movie as ‘delicate, exquisite and raw”. BBC considered the movie to be ‘mesmerising’ and the Edinburgh International Film Festival described the piece as ‘Remarkable- It’s a masterpiece’
As you can see the uptake to the film was fantastic reviews screamed international success.
Section 2
Plot
“Love can turn you upside down” a very fitting tagline for this movie. Somersault is an Australian Drama. Set in the small town of Jindabyne, we experience the life of Heidi played by Abbie Cornish . A 16 year old girl who has run away from her home in Canberra after she was caught kissing her mothers boyfriend. From this first scene , we know a lot about Heidi. She is a confused girl who is un-aware of the differences of love and sex. Upon arriving in the small snow village, Heidi uses sex for comfort and for a place to sleep. She is scared of being alone and is willing to give sex to complete strangers in return for their presence throughout the night.
With in a few days of arriving in Jindabyne , Heidi meets Joe played by Sam Worthington. Joe is the son of a rich local farmer. His character is extremely intense to watch and almost frustrating at times, although his character is meant to be ‘troubled and lonely’, his character does not evolve into the expectations I as a viewer held for him. I personally wanted to see him open up a little more and to get a broader understanding of what he was thinking, instead of the constant hard stares we continually see.
Joe and Heidi’s relationship is one of a strange nature. We see leaps between both maturity and immaturity. For example: They go out for dinner as adults however when there , Heidi decided to swallow all the chilli to get back at Joe , a sign of immaturity. We as viewers are mistaken into believing at times that Heidi is indeed older than she is, these moments quickly snap us back to reality, and we remember she is only 16.
After Heidi and Joe first meet, Heidi meets Irene. Irene played by Lynette Curran is the owner of a local hotel. They become friends and Heidi manages to convince Irene to allow her stay is her sons unit. In order to pay rent Heidi finds a job at the local BP service Station. There she befriends fellow co-worker Bianca , played by Hollie Andrew’s. There relationship seems rather shallow with most conversations only consisting of a few words at a time. Bianca invites Heidi to her house. While there she learns that Bianca’s brother Kyle is autistic. This relationship does not last long as Bianca’s father , a sly and oddly creepy person ‘explains’ to Heidi , with sickly sense of irony that Bianca and Her are two very different people, and he would prefer if they stopped seeing other. During scene, they are sitting in a car on a secluded road. Everything is dark and cold and an obvious fear of this man and his true threat to Heidi’s innocence is created. The next day Bianca starts screaming at Heidi that she knew what she had done with Roy. The relationship was over. Heidi’s obvious innocence had been manipulated and used against her.
Roughly halfway through the movie, the story takes an unexpected twist. After Heidi’s episode at the restaurant and Joe’s fight with his friend somehow Joe ends up at the house of Richard, an elderly gay man played by Erik Thompson. Joe ends up kissing Richard. Richard tells Joe that he doesn’t know what he wants, Joe disagrees. The scene then changes to Joe driving home and walking into the kitchen where his dad is reading the newspaper. Joe starts to cry, we as viewers know he is reaching out for help, where as his dad just thinks he’s drunk. This gay plot line ends here. We as viewers are given no real closure on this side of Joe, however I think this was intentional, as Joe himself did not truly know what the future held for him.
The relationship between Irene and Heidi takes a tumble when Heidi distressed by Joes actions walks around the hotel drunk and naked. This results is Heidi questioning Irene’s son. Irene breaks down and tells Heidi how her son was in gaol for shooting a man. It is at this point also that Heidi confides in Irene about what she has done and that her mother is not really dead and that she had run away. Between them Heidi was able to change. Instead of running way from her problems she confronts them and allows Irene to ring her mother to tell her where she is.
Although Joe and Heidi don’t get back together, something still exists between them. In the final scene when Heidi’s mum comes to get her , Joe and heidi look at each other and smile. They share a connection which they themselves will only understand, whether it was love or simply friendship it was maybe the most significant moment in the film. They had both completed ‘somersaults’ so to speak. Both had evolved to stronger and changed people. Heidi had learnt the difference between love and sex and was a stronger person because of that, much the same Joe had learnt that she was just ‘a root’ so to speak. The tagline is fact causmatic of a somersault. You turn upside down but eventually you roll over and are back in an upright position. Much the same in love ‘it can turn you upside down’ but eventually you will recover.
My opinion
Generally speaking I thought the film was great. I found the passion between Joe and Heidi extremely emotive and at times distressing. I found my self wanting to shake sense into them sometimes however this response was more than likely pre constructed by Shortland.
At times however I found the movie lacking something. There was an element of flatness to the script which I think could have been eliminated by a deeper level of character development. For example: what was it that possessed Heidi to kiss her mum’s boyfriend in the first place. Why did she choose Lake Jindabyne and what did her relationship with the man she rang once she arrived in Jindabyne consist of. There seemed to be no real insight into Heidi’s life before the script started. It was hard to place a context around some of her acts.
Also although the cinematography was indeed a masterpiece I found my self in a similar position to that of Russell Edwards of Variety who wrote: “Shortland appears to have a great fascination with objects like pine needles and gas jets, but the pic’s visual flourishes tend to be distracting in their restless artiness” (R. Edwards : Variety Magazine, NY, June 7-13 04)(Accesed via Murdoch catalogue) Certain still shots of objects such as the cow made me attatch some kind of significance to this object in the upcoming plot. However nothing actually eventuated. Even my room mate who watched the movie after me asked what was the significance of the cow. To put it simply, there was none, it was just a cow.
Previous work
Somersault was the first full length feature film written and directed by Shortland. Prior to this she was a well know short film maker and her previous films included Flowergirl ( 1999) and Joy (2000). She has also directed a number of TV series. These include “Bad Cop, Bad Cop”(2002) ( 4 episodes) an obvious TV flop. MDA(2002), which stared some brilliant Australian actors such as Sea Changes Kerry Armstrong and Neighbours Jason Donovan. Yet the most significant TV series she has directed was the First Series of the critically acclaimed “The Secret Life of Us”(2001). When viewing Somersault(2004) there are some very obvious ‘Secret life’ similarities, ranging from plot lines to character resembelance. It would be very easy to say that the character of Joe is quite similar to that of Ritchie, a young man with a girlfriend who finds out that he is in fact gay. In fact one of the comments about this movie on the IMBD website called Somersault ‘a movie length Secret Life of Us’(Kris-149, www.imbd.com)
In regards to prior works of the actors and their influence on their characters in Somersault all some of them have played similar characters before. Abbie Cornish played a drug loving teen in the outstanding Australian movie ‘One Perfect Day’(2004) and Sam Worthington is fantastic as playing the rough but utterly gorgeous ‘aussie’ bloke in movies such as ‘Bootmen’. However in the case of Erik Thompson’s character of Richard, I don’t believe his role as ‘Mitch’ on All Saints would have prepared him for the controversial kiss with Sam Worthington.
Australian Significance
This film should and I believe it has made a huge impact on the way Australia films are regarded on an International scale. Reviews from around the world screamed success. This film has repainted the expectations of Australian films. We can now pride ourselves on films which not only carry an obvioully Australia stamp but also the conventions of great artistic and stylistic conventions. It has been described as “a magical and complex debut drama from Cate Shortland about concealed emotions that are churning,weaping, waiting to be discovered.” ( Urban Cinefile Critics, Urban Cinefile, www.rottentomatoes.com). Shortland in my opinion paints a relistic image of Australia, although I love those great Australian films like Muriels Wedding which are so obviously Australia, this is a new direction is Australia Film , it is films which asks questions and points to occurrences which may go un-noticed in the same ways films such as American Beauty did only a few years ago. I truly believe this film will open the doors to an international stage for other Australian Films of a similar nature.
Genre
I believe this film to fit into the category of Drama. It is nitty and gritty, sometimes tear jerking and other times extremely heart warming. It is an extremely emotive film constructed around fantastically emotive scenery. It is a love story of sorts, but as much a journey about life. I consider it to be drama because of the issues in which the film is dealing. We have teenage sex, emotional unbalance and situations which could very easily result in terrible outcomes. It is a serious film based around serious events. It is not a comedy nor a road movie. Therefore I decided it was drama for what it was not , it did in my opinion fit into any other catagorty besides ‘ the women’s film’ therfore I reached the conclusion that based on the subject matter it was in fact a drama.
References
Margaret Pomeranz : www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txts
M, Boland;Variety Magazine NY july26-aug1 04, accesed via Murdoch catalogue
(R. Edwards : Variety Magazine, NY, June 7-13 04)(Accesed via Murdoch catalogue)
( Urban Cinefile Critics, Urban Cinefile, www.rottentomatoes.com)
www.acmi.net.au/cateshortland.jsp
BBC
Edinburgh International Film Festival
Filmography
Somersault , Cate Shortland 2004, hopscotch Productions
Secret Life of Us: directed by Cate Shortland 2001, Channel 10
American Beauty 1999
One Perfect Day 2004