SPOILERS. The TV guide summarized the plot something like: "Lonely Australian boy falls for Ugandan girl in sequel to, 'The Year My Voice Broke'". Sounds like a loser all the way. But there was nothing else on, and this DID have at least Nicole Kidman in it. Turned out to be surprisingly interesting. Not gripping, not shocking, not disturbing, not provocative, but engaging. The boy is a nerdish intellectual in a boarding school, teased by many of his classmates. The young girl is something of a rare bird too, there not being that many Ugandan boarding school girls in 1965's Australia I suppose. The two marginal people meet and are attracted to one another in an adolescent way. One thing leads to another, the duo are caught by authorities in flagrante delicto, she returns to Uganda where her father has crossed both paths and swords with President for Life Idi Amin. The nerd is expelled and goes home. She writes him regularly but then, as Ugandan political troubles crest, the letters stop. After a long period he receives another from her, telling him everything is straightened out and she would like them to be together. Fade out on his voiceover.
It does sound dull, but it's well done compared to its categorical peers. The acting is quite good on everyone's part. There is a sense of place and time, a feeling for the creaky faux-British boarding school and its faculty with their varying tempers. It captures well the awkwardness of adolescents at formal dances, and the eagerness as well. There is some frank talk about sex, including a brief but amusing exchange between the two lovers when they are embracing in a dark place and he cracks a -- what's the Aussie slang for that, again? The looks of the performers are about right too. He's a short ectomorph with oddball features, while she is sensitive looking and attractive, although not on the ethereal plane achieved by internationally famous African models. She's not drop-dead gorgeous, she's just pleasant to see, from some angles a bit like Cynda Williams, rather like a girl in a boarding school. By the end of the film, after their affair has evolved in its complicated way in this particular social world, we've gotten to know them and we like them.
We admire their classmates too. And this is where this coming-of-age movie differs from the typical Hollywood fare. Most American movies about adolescents -- and there seem to have been thousands of them in the last decade or so -- are overdrawn in every way. In its American equivalent, the two lovers would look different: he would have the face and the teeth of that nerdy emoticon on Yahoo! She would look like Halli Berrie or Molly Ringwald. And both of these kids would be 30 year-old actors. The sex would be graphic instead of delicate. Instead of a funny scene involving a glimpse of the girls in their whalebone undergarments, the heroine would be seen emerging from a pool in slow motion and opening her top, rather like Phoebe Cates. When the couple made love, instead of seeing the two side by side in the ever-dwindling onscreen image of a bed, she would jump his bones, rather like Kim Cattrall. There would be a terrific goofball, kind of like Sean Penn, providing easy guffaws. And the classmates and faculty would be clearly divided into good and evil. She's black so she'd be subject to all sorts of racial taunts, kind of like the girl in "The Craft." The racists would get their comeupance in the end, when they would be punished and made to suffer. The athletic student who gets into a ring with the nerd and beats him unconscious would look and consistently act brutal, and he would also be humbled and made to suffer.
This movie meets none of those tedious expectations. The kids all seem to be played by kids. Some of the guys are funnier than others but none is entirely on his own planet. (The laughs come from subtler sources.) The athlete who pounds the hero to a pulp is not a bad kid; he saves the hero's bacon towards the end, and not for selfish motives. The tall snooty beauty played by Kidman has been standoffish during most of the film but when she catches the Ugandan sneaking in after an illegally late tryst, instead of squealing on her she invites her into the parlor for a drink, during which she confesses her own variety of desire. When the nerd and the Ugandan split up for what appears to be the last time, neither of them weeps. And they don't fall into a hot feverish final embrace either. They shake hands and part quietly. When the nerd reads his letter at the close, we wind up really hoping that the gods will allow them to be brought together again.
Can you see what I'm getting at? This isn't a great movie. It's too quiet, it lacks the ambition, it deals with small problems. And yet it represents a monumental improvement over the crap that we've been subjected to since the 1980s. The dumb cliches are for the most part refreshingly absent. It's a story in which there are no artistic breakthroughs, no penetrating insights into human nature, no social critique, only a story that catches your interest and hangs on to it gently, the way these two kids might hold hands.
It does sound dull, but it's well done compared to its categorical peers. The acting is quite good on everyone's part. There is a sense of place and time, a feeling for the creaky faux-British boarding school and its faculty with their varying tempers. It captures well the awkwardness of adolescents at formal dances, and the eagerness as well. There is some frank talk about sex, including a brief but amusing exchange between the two lovers when they are embracing in a dark place and he cracks a -- what's the Aussie slang for that, again? The looks of the performers are about right too. He's a short ectomorph with oddball features, while she is sensitive looking and attractive, although not on the ethereal plane achieved by internationally famous African models. She's not drop-dead gorgeous, she's just pleasant to see, from some angles a bit like Cynda Williams, rather like a girl in a boarding school. By the end of the film, after their affair has evolved in its complicated way in this particular social world, we've gotten to know them and we like them.
We admire their classmates too. And this is where this coming-of-age movie differs from the typical Hollywood fare. Most American movies about adolescents -- and there seem to have been thousands of them in the last decade or so -- are overdrawn in every way. In its American equivalent, the two lovers would look different: he would have the face and the teeth of that nerdy emoticon on Yahoo! She would look like Halli Berrie or Molly Ringwald. And both of these kids would be 30 year-old actors. The sex would be graphic instead of delicate. Instead of a funny scene involving a glimpse of the girls in their whalebone undergarments, the heroine would be seen emerging from a pool in slow motion and opening her top, rather like Phoebe Cates. When the couple made love, instead of seeing the two side by side in the ever-dwindling onscreen image of a bed, she would jump his bones, rather like Kim Cattrall. There would be a terrific goofball, kind of like Sean Penn, providing easy guffaws. And the classmates and faculty would be clearly divided into good and evil. She's black so she'd be subject to all sorts of racial taunts, kind of like the girl in "The Craft." The racists would get their comeupance in the end, when they would be punished and made to suffer. The athletic student who gets into a ring with the nerd and beats him unconscious would look and consistently act brutal, and he would also be humbled and made to suffer.
This movie meets none of those tedious expectations. The kids all seem to be played by kids. Some of the guys are funnier than others but none is entirely on his own planet. (The laughs come from subtler sources.) The athlete who pounds the hero to a pulp is not a bad kid; he saves the hero's bacon towards the end, and not for selfish motives. The tall snooty beauty played by Kidman has been standoffish during most of the film but when she catches the Ugandan sneaking in after an illegally late tryst, instead of squealing on her she invites her into the parlor for a drink, during which she confesses her own variety of desire. When the nerd and the Ugandan split up for what appears to be the last time, neither of them weeps. And they don't fall into a hot feverish final embrace either. They shake hands and part quietly. When the nerd reads his letter at the close, we wind up really hoping that the gods will allow them to be brought together again.
Can you see what I'm getting at? This isn't a great movie. It's too quiet, it lacks the ambition, it deals with small problems. And yet it represents a monumental improvement over the crap that we've been subjected to since the 1980s. The dumb cliches are for the most part refreshingly absent. It's a story in which there are no artistic breakthroughs, no penetrating insights into human nature, no social critique, only a story that catches your interest and hangs on to it gently, the way these two kids might hold hands.