TERRA NOVA (R). (Dendy) Director: Paul Middleditch Stars: Jeanette Cronin, Paul Kelman, Angela Punch McGregor, Trent Atkinson, Teo Gebert, Ritchie Singer, Vince Jones, Gillian Jones Running time: 87 minutes.
An unrelentingly grim, bleak and depressing film, Terra Nova is almost the cinematic equivalent of listening to an album of Leonard Cohen's most mournful songs. New Zealand born director Paul Middleditch makes his feature debut with this confronting and down beat story of a disturbed young mother attempting to overcome enormous odds and strike out on her own.
Following a bout of post natal depression, Ruth (Jeanette Cronin, who had small roles in Black Rock and Dark City, etc) has been confined to a psychiatric institution by her domineering parents. One night she surreptitiously returns to her parents' house to take her four year old daughter Tuesday away with her. Arriving in Australia, Ruth finds a temporary haven at Terra Nova, a dilapidated beach side boarding house run by the sympathetic Margie (Angela Punch McGregor, in the role for which she was nominated for an AFI award in 1998).
However, the creaky old house and its small contingent of hopeless and destitute residents is no real place in which to raise a young daughter. Reluctantly, Ruth leaves Tuesday in the care of Dud (Trent Atkinson), a sensitive teenage artist, who shares a room with his older brother Simon (Paul Kelman, a veteran of several local tv series). Simon is also sleeping with Margie in lieu of paying rent. On the first day, while Ruth is out looking for work, her flat is burgled by Warren (Teo Gumbert, from The Boys, etc), the schizophrenic neo-Nazi. Simon leaps to her defence and batters Warren senseless. When he also begins an affair with Ruth, the tensions in the boarding house increase. Eventually some harsh truths about the residents and their pasts are revealed.
This is a cold, unsettling and alienating film. Middleditch's insights into his characters are rather naive, and their complex relationships don't always ring true. He doesn't allow the audience an opportunity to make any sort of identification or emotional connection with the characters and their plight. Cronin struggles to make the enigmatic Ruth a sympathetic heroine, while Kelman brings a volatile edge to his performance. McGregor dominates the film with a superb performance that perfectly captures Margie's air of weariness.
Terra Nova is not a film that audiences will embrace with any sort of warmth or enthusiasm. The film deals with themes of loss, loneliness, failure, and is suffused with an air of despair and desperation. A motif of water continually runs throughout the film, although the imagery is often allusive and bewildering. Terra Nova is also terribly dull and painfully slow moving. The film is primarily shot in cold grey colours, which adds to the oppressive and claustrophobic atmosphere. Nonetheless, cinematographer Simon Arnold creates some powerful and evocative imagery along the way.
In some ways, Terra Nova invites comparisons to the recent Praise, another local production also set in a decrepit boarding house. Whereas John Curran imbued that film with a streak of optimism and albeit black humour, here Middleditch offers little relief along the way.
When Ruth finally gathers the courage to leave this bleak house it is far too late, as most of the audience will have despaired of a happy ending long ago.
* greg king http://www.netau.com.au/gregking
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