The irreverent Australian teen who survived the first advance of puberty in 'The Year My Voice Broke' finds himself enrolled in a strict, boys-only boarding school and attracted to a demure young girl (played by newcomer Thandie Newton, in a remarkably natural performance) from the equally cloistered girl's academy across the river. He fact that she's a refugee from Uganda isn't an issue (except to indicate how each is an outsider in their respective schools), and their refreshingly colorblind romance lifts the film above the average horny teenage mating ritual. Writer director John Duigan identifies every bane of post adolescent life (braces, pimples, raging hormones), but beyond that captures all the tyranny of petty academic oppression and the terrible yearning of sexual awakening, depicted for once without any bogus slow motion ecstasy or crass innuendo. With so many grace notes it seems mean to point out the usual irritating prop of unnecessary voice-over narration, and the unrealistic optimism of the resolution: teen romance rarely ends happily-ever-after, even in rose-colored memories.
